Orr Fellowship launches a partnership that guarantees fellows admission to Butler’s MBA program. Photo courtesy of Butler University.
LAUREN FISCHER | STAFF REPORTER | lrfischer@butler.edu
This September, Butler’s Lacy School of Business (LSB) announced its partnership with the Orr Fellowship on admissions to the Butler MBA program. Now, any Orr Fellowship alum is guaranteed admission to the program.
Potential students will complete their undergraduate degree, then spend two years in the fellowship. Following the fellowship program, they can join the MBA program, where their fellowship counts towards six elective credits. Any Orr fellows — including those who have already graduated from Butler, or even finished their fellowship — can take advantage of this opportunity, as it applies retroactively.
The Orr fellowship is an early-career development program that focuses on setting ambitious students up for work with businesses in Central Indiana or Evansville. Students with interests in entrepreneurship and business are eligible to apply to the program.
If a student is awarded the fellowship, they are placed into a full-time paid job focused on professional development. The fellowship takes students from universities across Indiana. About 30 universities were represented in last year’s group of recipients, and Butler had seven seniors awarded.
Luke Bickel, senior director of graduate programs at Butler, explained that this partnership developed organically and quickly due to Butler’s involvement with the fellowship.
“[Butler has] had a lot of Orr fellows join [its] MBA [program] over the years,” Bickel said. “[The program evolved] as an effort to try to promote more Orr fellows to join [the MBA program].”
There are currently four fellows in the MBA program. Among them is Emma Bachtel, a first-year MBA student, who graduated in 2023 from the University of Saint Francis.
She went through the process of applying to the Orr Fellowship during her last year of college, eventually ending up at Hylant, an insurance brokerage firm, as a regional program coordinator. Afterwards, due to Butler’s partnership with both the Orr Fellowship and Hylant, she decided to pursue her MBA at Butler, bringing in nine credits from the fellowship.
“I applied to several other MBA programs and was accepted to them, but Butler was by far the most affordable for the resources that [students] get,” Bachtel said. “It was the best bang for [my] buck.”
Bachtel still works for Hylant, now serving as an enterprise project coordinator, but wanted to get her MBA to build upon the business skills that she gained during her fellowship. She also explained that her experience in the Orr Fellowship prepared her for the intensity and rigor of the MBA program, making it a natural next step for her career.
“The Orr fellowship made me believe that I could be a leader, and my MBA is helping me develop the skills I need to be a business leader,” Bachtel said.
This partnership helps students jump into the workforce after college, while also encouraging further education and valuable experiences.
Steven Emch, president of the Orr Fellowship, stated that the partnership addresses two key goals within higher education.
“One is supporting our local universities and continuing to provide opportunities for the talent coming out of all of the universities,” Emch said. “Our [primary] goal here at Orr Fellowship is about equipping, recruiting and connecting the next generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs, and this is a clear furtherance of that goal.”
To guide individuals during their fellowships, Dugan Hall hosts the entry and exit meetings for the Orr fellows. There, fellows discuss their plans post-fellowship and complete all onboarding. It allows Butler to showcase the campus and remind fellows of the graduate opportunities that LSB provides.
With this new partnership, students are recognized for the work they have put into completing their fellowship and rewarded with an opportunity to save both time and money. Butler’s MBA program then focuses on further setting students up for success in an environment where they can learn from qualified faculty, as well as their peers.
“The academics get better because of the work experience and the context that [fellows] got from the fellowship, and their work experience gets better because of the practical knowledge that they learn in the MBA,” Bickel said.
Butler hopes to provide an opportunity that allows students to set themselves up for success. Both programs are rooted in building a prosperous future for individuals, and with this partnership, it has all become easier.
