Part-time MBA student juggled work, family, classes for four years to achieve his goal

As a part-time Rutgers MBA student, James Kindelsperger mastered some skills that allowed him to succeed through four years of studies.

A working professional with a full-time job and a young father with a wife who had her own career, Kindelsperger faced the task of coordinating schedules, “being there for everyone,” and often collaborating with classmates with responsibilities of their own. 

The juggle was “challenging,” Kindelsperger said. But he quickly added, “Difficult and impossible are two different things.”

“It is definitely achievable,” he said.

Kindelsperger, who had spent six years working in data after college, took a job with Rutgers University in 2019. In the new job, he was responsible for managing Sales Force and other data management systems. It was an upward career move, he said, but it also meant moving away from family and a caring support system in Florida.

Kindelsperger said he had thought about earning a graduate degree after college, and when he learned about his employer’s tuition remission benefit, he felt it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. His children were still young enough that he felt he could complete an MBA before they started playing sports and joining other activities that he didn’t want to miss.

As he selected courses – two a semester even during the summer – he had to coordinate his classes around his wife’s board meetings “so she could watch the kids when he went to class.”

“Scheduling was key,” he said.

The other scheduling challenge occurred when he was assigned group projects with three or four other Part-Time MBAs who were also juggling jobs and lives. “That was tricky. Sometimes we broke off into pairs, sometimes we didn’t meet until 9 or 10 at night,” he said. “We would have to get creative.”

Working graduate students are often strategic in their approach to completing a program, and Kindelsperger was no different. He varied his courses so he always had one quantitative class and one qualitative class, and he leaned heavily on guidance from Kathleen Price, an MBA program student counselor, who prevented him from taking too many electives and ensuring he stayed on course to graduate. 

Before he completed the MBA, he was offered a new job at Princeton University, where he is senior business analytst for the university's financial aid office. He said he leveraged a lot of what he had learned in the program when he interviewed for the job. He added new skills, such as the programming languages, Python and R, to his resume. “I could say with confidence what I could deliver,” Kindelsperger said, adding that those things included data governance, what workflows would look like as well as his ability to communicate clearly to tech and non-tech colleagues. 

Kindelsperger finished the Rutgers Part Time MBA Program in December and participated in the graduate program commencement ceremony in May. “It felt exhilarating,” he said. “It felt like a true accomplishment.”

-Susan Todd