Susan Brown
09:59:51 AM
Thank you for joining us for today's live Q&A session on Duke's new FinTech degree. We'll get started in a few minutes. Several questions were submitted before the chat, but you can also submit questions live during the chat by typing in this chat feature. You may not see the question appear on the screen, but we will, and we will address it. Thank you!
Hello and thank you for joining us for today's Live Q&A session on Dukes, New Fintech degree will look at started in a few minutes. Several questions were submitted before the chat, but you can also submit questions live during the chat by typing in the chat feature that you're seeing on the screen. You may not see the question appear on the screen. But I want to assure you that we will an will address it thanks.
OK let's get started. I'm Susan Brown and I'm here with doctor. Jimmy lens Jimmy welcome. Thank you good morning. Great we have a lot of great questions. So I'd like to go ahead and jump into those if you don't mind perfect alright.
This is a great question is the program tailored more towards computer science majors or engineering majors. Or maybe even other types of majors. The answer is yes. We have so I think you should look at kind of the outcome and the program and I can talk about the skills. I think that students should have rather than majors and what we're really looking for is people with an interest obviously in financial technology.
And then that have background in some background in technology. Maybe some experience even in finance, but also a skill sets in around math. That's really intrinsic. I think for for success in the program don't have to be a math. Major certainly but they have a little bit of background in math a little bit of background in programming, possibly those would be great skill sets for the program great you mentioned.
Having experience is work experience required for admission. I would say it's not, but what are you looking for independent you know? I think that's a great question people always wonder and a debate about work experience. We're looking for both. I think that it's really important for the class to be a diverse class. So some with coming from undergrad and then others with significant work experience I've actually spoken to several students or several.
JD Hastings
10:03:30 AM
Link for FinTech webpage: https://meng.pratt.duke.edu/disciplines/fintech
Perspective students who have between 5 and 10 years of experience in the workforce. They come from a variety of different majors, primarily working in different areas of financial services now and I think that having both is really important to the class into the class learning. Great I agree. I think having a variety of experiences really leads to great cap class discussion? Absolutely.
There's nothing like experience, there really isn't an being able to share anecdotes from your actual work. Life with the rest of the class, either to illustrate points or to teach because I think students always will teach themselves to some extent, absolutely and what I like to say about fresh graduates is that they come into the program. Bright eyed an ready to learn an with great ideas because they haven't quite yet been jaded by years of work experience? Absolutely. I think one of the things that.
New graduates add, is a much broader perspective and that's something that usually will narrow after years in industry so that mix is really necessary. I think for for the successful class excellent excellent and my colleague. JD Hastings has. I posted a link for everyone. So you can read more about this new master of engineering in financial technology at Duke University.
Here's a good question about the application itself.
Where should I spend the most time on preparing my application the GRE?
JD Hastings
10:05:19 AM
Duke Master of Engineering application requirements: https://meng.pratt.duke.edu/apply/requirements
I would say that the jury is one piece of the application and you might need to take some practice tests and prepare for that. But I don't want students to think wrapping this. I think that that's the only thing we look at Oh absolutely. I think the GRE is obviously a good measure of one facet of people's life and that's all we are going to look at every candidate individually and we're going to look at them holistically. I think that basing a decision on one aspect.
Is would be a shortfall for us and for for the candidates that would ensure you would certainly not not have the diverse class that we're looking for absolutely and save JD has just posted a link to the application requirements. We require a statement of purpose, which I always say. Why do you want to do this degree resume 3 recommendations that can be academic or professional depending on your station in life if you are a current college student. It's perfectly fine for them to be academic.
If you are working professional it's fine for them to all be professional mix is also appropriate as well, and the jury is just one component? Absolutely. I think having a having the ability to look at the whole student through things like the statement of purpose that provides so much perspective an again. We are trying to trying to have a mix of students and this is one way to ensure that is that we can see these students holistically excellent.
Someone has asked if there will be waivers available for people who attend this webinar absolutely if you have attended this live. Q&A session and you go to submit your application send us a note. We have an email address that we can give to you and we will absolutely wave. Your application V. It's currently $75.00 so that's our $75 gift to you.
Perfect excellent excellent.
Let's talk about curriculum.
The question is does the curriculum combined projects with closed node examinations? How are the classes structured yeah? What a great question. I've been waiting for this question this is good so the classes are we teach in an engineering school and engineers are known for building things and so all of the classes are what I would call hands on they are all very practical in nature, and were there to teach you.
Susan Brown
10:07:48 AM
Fee waiver requests: pratt_masters@duke.edu
JD Hastings
10:08:11 AM
Note: you can find out more about the general curriculum and curriculum description on the FinTech webpage listed above!
I don't want to say there aren't going to be in exams because there certainly will be exams. But we were there to teach and to instruct in different areas of financial technology and so the everything is meant to be very hands on just like it would be in industry, you learn by doing and that's the way I've always taught that's the way I worked for 25 years in industry. I would learn by actually doing things and so I think that all of the classes will have that.
Emphasis so in things like blockchain students will actually be building things on the blockchain in machine learning. We will actually be using machine learning algorithms. In the robo advising class. They will actually build a robo advisor from the very basic coding. All the way up and that stop by someone who who is already built a couple of Robo Advisors that are actually being used in industry so I think because of the people that we have teaching a lot of them come from industry. A lot of lot of industry experience. This is the way that we this is our normal operating procedure.
And so we want students to feel really comfortable, not just with the theory. But with actual practical application of things and so that's the way will be teaching excellent excellent.
Here's a question, we've kind of already covered some of this, but maybe we can talk about it a little more? What attributes does the program value in applicants? Yeah, I think that's that is a good question and I think that every applicant has to think about this in for themselves too. There are I think the one of the chief attributes that we're going to look for is people that have a real interest in financial technology and in particular kind of cutting edge.
So the development of new user interface is the development of new processes. The development of new user experiences. That kind of Outlook and having that kind of interest is really important. In addition, if students have some programming skills. We will certainly help them an we have an assessment things like that. Those attributes are always going to be a positive kind and understanding of some of the practical mathematical concepts.
Those are really important because a lot of what we do involves math involves machine learning. Output is all expressed in terms of probabilities so understanding those kinds of things in a really practical way is important. So those are the kind of attributes but I think that too. I wouldn't want to say it's just for this kind of major or that kind of major because there are a lot of folks who have different kinds of undergraduate degrees. I think that this will.
This will be resonate with and that have this interest right excellent and can you say a little bit more about the types of jobs a student might be interested in going into after this theory? Yeah, I think because at the end of the day. That's where all were all interested in what are we going to do after we're done. I think I think not asking that question puts everybody in everybody gets a little bit uncomfortable, so I see. I see it break it broken down kind of this way.
I think about probably 30 to 40% of the students will go to work for one of the big financial institutions so think one of the big banks one of the big wealth management firms. One of the big brokerage firms. Something like that probably another 30 or 40% will go to work for what I would call a large *** tech company so think rocket mortgage. Thank LendingTree Soufi. Those kinds of places that are fintechs, but they're really big now. Even Robin Hood kind of falls into that space.
The there will probably be another 20 say 10 to 20% of students that will go in work with one of the smaller startup Wintax, an early stage company because a lot of students. I've talked to so far are really, really interested in that and then I think there's going to be 10 or 15% that start their own companies right out of school I will be disappointed if that doesn't happen, but almost everyone. I've spoken with has that that entrepreneurial spirit that.
They're kind of looking for cutting edge technologies and being able to do cutting edge things and so I think the kind of roles that they'll go into will be along those lines. I mean, there are a lot of things that are going on. In some of the legacy firms that I think students will be able to apply real cutting edge and development kind of solutions for excellent excellent. I do want to remind everyone that you can post questions live to this event, where currently covering.
The questions that were submitted with registration. But if you have any questions that you think that we can address those here.
A student writes I'm interested in research of consumer preference by machine learning.
How is data insured to be valid an not forged or fake wow wanted detail question. But it's great. I love the fact that somebody is writing in an posting a question like that, so there are so somebody asked a really detailed question. I'm going to give him a really detailed answer so with any kind of data along these lines. It's always best to have a control group that we can use against this one of the great things about machine learning is that we have a lot of different approaches, we can take.
So if we have some control data that we can use that we can kind of benchmark it against we can use regression type algorithms or Bayesian regression type algorithms to kind of gauge or score. Other data to make sure that it's valid and then once we know the data is valid and we can use it for things around consumer preference. The other thing that we can use if we don't have anything to score it. By is we can use some clustering algorithms so K means.
And similar algorithms allow us to to cluster like things together, so we can look at the attributes of the data and say you have the algorithm basically cluster them together, so we can see what is similar and then? What doesn't look similar those things on the periphery that would probably tend to be fake or incorrect data. I don't want to say just fake it might be problematic data.
That is on the outside so there are a couple of different machine learning techniques right off the Top of my head I can think of that that we can do this with the other kind of nice thing about machine learning. And because somebody asked this question. I'm going to go into this other part is we can do a lot of sentiment analysis. So, I actually did an experiment with students just this past month in class where we took 10,000 book reviews from Amazon. I was thinking about Amazon reviews about you were talking so that's the ultimate in unstructured text right. I mean, it's just somebody writing a review of the book.
And you know how you have the review and then you have the you know 12345 stars that you can get it. And So what we were trying to do is we were trying to look at the actual text and understand from the text. The sentiment that was being written and be able to predict what the scores would be based on that and so we used about 75%. So 7500 of the reviews and we clean the text and we manipulate it in a couple of different ways, and run it through some algorithms and.
We train it using the actual scores that were given.
And so with the other 2500 we tested the algorithm out that we just built and we were about 8182% accurate being able to do it. It's not bad, especially kind of on the fly. Just just doing something like that. But that's how using using unstructured text and using these kind of algorithms. There are certainly the possibility to do that and to look and while machines never going to be able to think or understand the context of a word. We can create so in this case, I created 1000 variables.
That were based on words or word sequences, those kinds of things and certainly we can do the same kind of thing around a different kinds of sentiment. This was sentiment around you know what people thought about a particular book but we could certainly do with customer sentiment or anything like that? Absolutely. It's a lot of fun to do those those those are great experiments wonderful wonderful.
JD Hastings
10:16:28 AM
Any questions? Post them to the chat!
You had mentioned to me before we got started that you have spoken to perspective students and gotten some really great questions. What are some questions that you would want to share or answers. I guess that you would want to share with a wider audience ensure so one of the things that I've been. I love talking to perspective students by the way an I encourage people to reach out to me and shoot me. An email and will set up some time to either do a call or a Skype call or whatever, so it's great to do that one of the questions that I've heard.
Probably most often of the people I've spoken with over the last couple of weeks is around work experience in around the program and these are individuals who have say 3 four five up to 10 years of work experience and their wondering about coming back to the program is this program right for them, but one of the things that they're noticing because they are working in then in their environment is that wait a minute. The environments changing. I've only been here 5 or 6 years and I can already see the environment, changing it's moving.
In this other direction or maybe there is just more interesting things to do if I had a different skill set and so there wondering wow. This program like is it like some of the other programs. I've seen maybe at business schools that are like concentrations and this is not a concentration right. This is a graduate degree Masters in the engineering school in financial technology. So it is everything we do is around financial technology is not just a couple of course concentration. It's very, very practical. It's very hands-on.
As I said, we build things and the other thing is it's very integrated in the school. This isn't something off to the side or something that this is part of Duke University. So the students are coming. They are part of the University environment, they are. It is very much integrated with the rest of the school just like any other Masters Program, or anything like that, so it is very much part of the school just like every other major that we have here. We certainly have returning students and in this case, I think having.
A little bit of experience and having that perspective on wait a minute. I see the world changing. I am really looking forward to those students in the classroom because I think they're going to add a lot to it, and they can for the students at articulating straight from undergrad. They can provide that perspective on. Hey, you know what the world is changing and these are the skills that we need if we want to go into these areas into we want to go into the more creative areas. If we want to go into areas that are expanding and that people have a huge interest in hiring into great right. Let's talk a little bit about the student experience.
And I can say more about this master students at Duke Engineering are well taken care of I guess I would say they end up having a great experience. We see Masters as a good population here at Pratt. We provide a lot of resources for them in the career services space in the academic advising space and in kind of events and things like that and.
Durham NC, I think a lot of people need to get to know Durham, a little bit more. JD could you post some information about Durham for our chat viewers, but Durham is a really exciting city to be a young professional in. It's a good place to be a graduate student. I think you're right a Durham well. The whole RTP area? Is is a very, very young, very creative space, I would think.
JD Hastings
10:20:16 AM
Duke/Durham guide: https://durham.duke.edu/
Susan Brown
10:20:30 AM
We love Durham!
Per capita is probably one of the most educated places in the United States is the and because of that. I think it kind of lends itself, it to not only graduate students, but it lends itself. The whole environment lends itself to kind of an educational persona that that's been cultivated here and we do have other major universities right in the area. The other thing I really have wanted to talk about a little bit is, is the kind of the geographic area that we're in.
JD Hastings
10:20:37 AM
Discover Durham: https://www.discoverdurham.com/
So I think that people sometimes forget that Charlotte, NC is the 2nd largest banking center in America and is actually home to our will be home to the largest merger bank merger since the financial crisis, VB&T and SunTrust are merging to form truest bank, which will be headquartered in Charlotte. Neither one of those banks are headquartered in Charlotte. Right now, so for all practical purposes. Bank of America is headquartered there. Wells Fargo has a huge presence there, so I might say so. You can kinda headquartered there.
Truest bank will be headquartered there Ally Bank of course, is headquartered there. We have TA cref, which has the majority of their folks there Bright House financial is there so there are just a wealth of financial firms that are headquartered in Charlotte, which is about 2 about 2 hours away 2 hours drive away. It's an easy drive. I do it often. I work with a lot of the folks industry in Charlotte at some of the major financial institutions.
Harsheen Khandpur
10:21:38 AM
Does Duke have partnerships with Fin-tech firms/big financial institutions for the purposes of projects or webinars or personal interaction with those companies during the course of the program?
And that's something else that you know that we have the opportunity to do is to kind of expose our students to a lot of the companies that the large companies that are there, but also a lot of the fintech companies there because QC fintech? Is a very large incubator of new companies as is the same kind of kind of environment here in the Research Triangle Park. We have a large thin tech sponsored group that is.
Constantly turning over new companies, bringing new people into the into the mix and if you look at the area and some of the new company. Some of the things that are being done really cutting Edge Technologies, a lot of IBM's blockchain. For instance, here in the area Red Hat. Of course, a lot of people know BM despite Red Hat. It's a company right here in the area. There are a lot of companies that are basically fintech type companies that are headquartered either here.
Or over in the Charlotte area that students can have the opportunity to possibly work with intern with in different ways, and do projects with.
Mintao Wei
10:22:58 AM
Hi! Thanks for the introduction. It's been very clear and helpful. I am wondering if there are any career services for this program. Would you mind talking a little bit about it? Much appreciated.
He had great that leads me to a question that was posted does Duke have any partnerships with fintech firms or big financial institutions for the purpose of projects or webinars or personal interaction. With those companies during the course of the program absolutely so I myself sit on the board of 2 different financial technology companies, which have expressed interest in working with our students. In addition to that. We've been in contact with a number of firms.
JD Hastings
10:23:23 AM
Hi Mintao! They'll get to your question soon. Until then, please check out this link: https://meng.pratt.duke.edu/about/career-services
That have expressed an interest in doing projects with us doing capstone projects with us and doing internships with us so these are both large financial institutions and some of the regional in super regional institutions. So yes, that has been in fact, I think I would say managing expectations is probably the hardest part of that people are interested in seeing or students.
Like right now and I have to tell them hold on you know, we're getting there. We're getting there, but there's been an extreme amount of interest in this and I think because it's coming out of an engineering school, even more interest around around what we're doing, yeah for sure. Great someone asked about career services. And so I'd like to say a little bit more about that. One thing I think we're Duke Engineering excels is that we have a team of career service professionals who work one.
Only in the engineering school, no other department's get to use them. Just engineering and they're focused on master students. They don't work with undergrad. They don't work with PhD just master students. We have a team of about 4 career advisers and professional development leader who really help students with getting ready for career fairs mock interviewing.
Getting that resume in shape exploring companies connecting with alumni that kind of thing and I think that the professional development. That's available to students makes you a better professional eventually once you get there, so workshops and seminars and workshops can be anything from negotiation and sales of negotiations and things like that, or business etiquette in a dinner, like say say your somewhere and there are 17 Forks in front of you.
20 years are still seems a workshop for that, so career services. JD has posted a link and thank you for that JD but Chris Services is a hallmark of Duke Engineering Masters programs. We don't have any outcomes. Yet for fintech students. But we will in the future and we post a lot of detailed information on average salary an actual job titles on actual locations and we look forward to seeing.
What all these students are going to do they have a lot of great resources here? I think that's so important. I know I've had a couple of perspective. Students ask about career services and in particular, those that have been out in the workplace. A little bit their first experience might have been great or it might have been terrible. But there are cognizant of it and they were asking about those kinds of things and I think that's a great question to ask it's interesting. I was recently at a conference that ripple sponsored and this is a?
Kind of a global consortium of universities that ripple which is the large blockchain company has put together and had us all together and there were people from Asia and from Europe and North America S America. It was it was really it was a great conference and I was asking a little bit about. I was asking some of my colleagues at different universities. Nobody has a program like this and so I was asking kind of what they were doing and things along those lines and I was asking how often the question of career services comes up.
And everybody said not near enough.
And that students students aren't asking enough about that that they all should be asking and this was from University of Kyoto to Denmark to North America. They said students didn't ask about that near enough and they should be more cognizant of that. I think ours is unique here because we do not only is it in the engineering school, but it's just for the Masters in the engineering school very, very different perspective, but everybody thought boy. This is a question you should be asking a lot more and I don't know if students don't think about it.
Or maybe there a little bit apprehensive about asking well. I think career services at the undergrad level is very different. It's you know you might meet students who have never been to their career services office or they were just looking for internships and maybe some resume reviews. I think the number one piece of advice. I could give to a student who's coming into this program is well, 2 pieces of ice. One read your email because because I'm sorry, but that's still how a lot of communication happens.
Crew services sends out an email every week that says here's what's happening right. It can be overwhelming to see all that, but pick and choose? What's important to you show up and take advantage meet with career advisers. Talk to them about what you want to do after the degree and use the resources here at do to help forge that path. Yeah, absolutely absolutely going in with eyes wide open is really important. I think absolutely.
I don't see any more questions. I'm going to give you a few more minutes to post them. Jimmy you gave an introduction to yourself in the overview that I hope everyone watched would you mind giving us quick overview of who you are? I just for this audience. I would love too, so I was in industry for about 25 years I started off trading equities and derivatives on the West coast and then moved into algorithmics trading I lead a?
A fairly large firm that was acquired an continued on that path doing a lot of work in the algorithmics pace. I ended up moving a little bit because I think that's one thing that people have to remember is you always change, though the world changes and you have to change a little bit and so I applied some of those skills in a little bit different way. I was the chief risk officer and the chief credit officer for Wells. Fargos brokerage firms for about 5 years and following that I was the head of technology risk.
And then they had a predictive analytics for awhile for Wells Fargo before leaving and matriculate ING into into my academic role, which I absolutely love and it's nice because as I mentioned I'm still on a couple of Boards of financial technology companies. And so I still very much keep my hand in the industry roles. I speak it. A lot of industry events and still have a lot of Contacts there and so I still have one foot in that world but also 1 foot in.
You know probably 2 feet in the academic world like 3 feet and so that's kind of my background. So I've had the opportunity. In all of those roles to do a lot of different kinds of development and things like that. So I have a number of patents pending for different sorts of financial technology and things that are more applicable to actually the customer experience and customer facing type of type of applications were so happy to have you here at welcome?
JD Hastings
10:30:59 AM
Dr. Lenz social media. twitter: jimmie_lenz
If if a student wants to follow you to see where you are to see what you're doing. What is the best social media to to follow Jimmy lens. There are there 30 great there is my Twitter, which is just Jimmy underscore lens. There aren't even IE IE Jimmy Jimmie underscore lens. LENZ there is linked in which I have tons of stuff on LinkedIn and then there's my personal website, which is just Jimmy Jimmie.
JD Hastings
10:31:19 AM
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmie-lenz-5a80485/
Each lens, Len Z.com and I post things on all 3 and I would love to hear from perspective students with questions or thoughts or if they want to arrange a call. I'm very open to that kind of thing. Love hearing from people excellent. Angadi is throwing up links for all of those ways to reach you. Yeah, I guess I well great do you have anything else you want to cover?
JD Hastings
10:32:02 AM
https://www.jimmiehlenz.com/
Harsheen Khandpur
10:32:07 AM
Does it add to your application if you come from a Fintech background?
You know, I I think that I just want to make sure that people feel really comfortable at the program. Once they've had a chance to review all the information to ask us hard questions about it. I think that's something that I like getting it makes me I know that people are thinking really hard about this weather. There matriculate ING out from undergrad or their out in industry working I would love to hear more questions.
About kind of what we're doing, and what we're thinking about the programme about in particular, individual classes. If you have questions about that kind of what they're going to be doing and I'm kind of an open book in that regard. I mean that's what I'm here for I'm here to teach so I'm very, very happy to answer any kind of questions great 'cause. We had one more come in perfect doesn't add to your application. If you come from a fintech background specifically wow. That's a good I think.
I think everything adds to your application that would certainly be. I think a positive if you already have a little bit of perspective. Again, I think that adds to that diverse class because classroom discussion? Absolutely. If we have somebody that has that background that would certainly be a plus. I think they're going to be adding something from a perspective that's probably fairly unique in the class and the fact that they've already had hands on some hands on experience sure that would be a great thing I think.
And I think, but I think all of those kinds of unique attributes add to your application. Can I give a quick story? Sure, so I when I was I worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers? I was a director there for about 3 years and absolutely loved it super place fun people to work with I still keep in touch with a lot of them and one of the things that I was asked to do while I was there was to kind of help fill out new office that was being opened in China.
They're opening a big office and so they were recruiting people and they were trying to get somebody to go through and look at applicants and talk to applicants and that kind of thing.
And so for one particular role. It came down to 2 people and they have both been to Graduate School and they both done internships and all kinds of things like that, and one person had been 40 student had gone to their undergraduate degree in finance and applied math, too, underrated story. They had intern at Goldman Sachs and then they've gone to Graduate School and graduated.
And we are applying applying for this just stellar the other person. Not quite a 40 also had an undergraduate degree from a strong school had gone to graduate had done an internship, but their internship over the summer was actually at a production company music production company 'cause I played bass in a rock band. The cool factor on that right and so he was just going to grad school and so we're both applying the same thing 2 totally different people and so they said, So what do you think and I said?
The bass player, yeah, everybody needs a good base play I said, Yeah, I said, so they're like this. Other Canada has all this experience in Goldman Sachs and all this kind of stuff and I said, but he can. Talk to people about a lot of different things. and I don't know if this other person can.
And so I think having those all those different things. So being the bass player in the rock band adds to your Azure application is what I'm trying to say all those unique things that is not just the academic stuff is not just where you've worked or maybe just where you've been turned those other things, I think that add to the story that are just great to hear so all of you need to go and put an ad in your local indie paper looking for others to start your rock band but I think I think what you're saying is is that we?
It's again moves to that holistic look at the application an looking for things beyond what's on the transcript absolutely? What's on the transept? What's your GRE grades? Are you have to have something more than that, and so location skills absolutely and so that this person. That's already worked at a Finn tack. They're probably going to be unique. This is probably not going to be a whole lot of applicants. We have they've already worked at syntax right right and the communication thing triggered something in me to talk about our graduate communications team that helps students with.
With riding with presentations with small talk, I guess I would say they're really great resource for international students, but also for domestic students as well. We have a team of professionals who work in our graduate communications group and again there just for engineering, just for masters and one of them is repeatedly.
So great, I think having those kinds of those kinds of tools and having the ability to take advantage of that kind of thing that I think speaks volumes about the integration of this program into the school as a whole and that is something I've heard from as I said a couple of different people. But I think it speaks volumes about how we kind of think about the students and how we think about the graduates and how we try to keep that the other thing I've been like shocked about.
So I was out at at visiting alumni and I've had like tons of alumni reach out to me. Duke alumni are that bad. I mean, I have it's been shocking? How many people. I had no idea. These are some of these are friends of mine. I just didn't know they were do columns. Some of these are people I've never met before my life and they reached out via LinkedIn or Twitter or my blog and they've volunteered. Hey, what can I do to help out the program and these are people that have?
Started very large fintech companies and solve them can't mention the names, but very large companies. I've had people reach out from consulting firms. I've had people reach out from some of the banks. I had one guy who is the general partner of large venture capital firm out in Palo Alto. He's a do kilom I've had folks reach out one of the guys from the International Continental Exchange, which a lot of people will know is the ice. I CE E is probably the largest exchange operator in the world now.
You know, people like that have reached out the alumni network. I don't even have to explain it to anybody because the amount of outpouring. I've had from folks that I didn't ask anything of that connection unbelievable. Unbelievable, cannot tell a quick story. Sure, I was not at this event, but another admissions professional from another school was we had an event with engineering alumni from several schools and the person said.
When they got there, most of the Illuminati Tendies were kind of leaning against the wall looking at their Phone except for this group of people who were talking so animatedly like they were best friends and he thought those are the Duke Alumni. It doesn't matter when they graduated it doesn't matter what they studied. It's a connection that they're so excited to help each other so excited to meet each other. There are true, Blue I guess that's a gnarly but yet alumni. Here are the best an engineering, especially great.
I have been really overwhelmed in my time here at the number of people that have reached out to me. I'm just totally unsolicited. What can I do to help you this? Is you know? I've read about the program. I've heard about it. I mean, I have a couple of people who have run it on their company websites. I mean, it's really it's just not even asking for those kinds of things and people are willing to really think step up and step out to help out the school to help out students to help out alumni.
JD Hastings
10:40:06 AM
again - feel free to reach out via email at pratt_masters@duke.edu
It's been it's been quite overwhelming excellent. Duke has a pretty strong alumni base 180,000 strong right now more every year or every year and growing excellent excellent well. That's it for questions. You can try and get another quick, one in I'm watching but but Jimmy. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this time you know this is this has been fantastic. It really has. I enjoy being able to do this an kind of share some of the experiences and my excitement about the program.
And honestly the excitement about from the whole school. It's funny. When I was introducing myself to some of the some of the folks on the Hall that I share an office on.
Everybody already knew who I was it was, it was really amazing. Everybody there like Oh yeah, I've already heard about you. This is like this is like a query program. It really is. I think a different kind of environment. This is although it's a big University. It feels much smaller in that sense, because literally everybody on the Hall and there probably 8 or 10 of other offices. On everybody knew who I was before, I even walked in is the welcome wagon it was.
Alright well on JD has posted or email address and I've got it up on this slide here. Thank you so much everyone for joining us today. Thank you to doctor Jimmy lens. There is I'm Susan Brown and I really appreciate your time today reach out to us if you have questions thank you.