Welcome back to the Victors in Grad School podcast, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about finding success in graduate school. I’m your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, and today we have a fascinating guest joining us. Dylan Straka, the Vice President for Finance at Premier Security Solutions and one of the Greater Flint area’s “40 under 40 to watch,” will be sharing his experiences and insights with us.
In this episode, Dylan takes us on a journey through his educational path, starting with his undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Michigan Flint. He then delves into his decision to pursue a master’s degree in accounting and finance, highlighting the unique situations that motivated him, including the financial support from his grandparents and the opportunity to gain work experience at a local accounting firm.
Dylan also provides valuable advice on managing the delicate balance between full-time work and graduate school. From time management strategies to reaching out to professors for support, he shares valuable insights on how to navigate the challenges of juggling multiple responsibilities.
Tune in to this episode of Victors in Grad School as we explore the journey of a driven and successful professional who has found his path to success by pursuing graduate education. Let’s dive into the conversation with Dylan Straka.
This podcast is brought to you by The Office of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint. If you’re still wondering about other things to consider when it comes to graduate school, you can also contact the Office of Graduate Programs at UM-Flint. We’re here to answer questions Monday – Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST. You can also find out more about the 50+ programs that the university has to offer here.
Transcript
Christopher Lewis:
Welcome back to the Victors in grad school podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, director of Graduate Programs for the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, we’re on a journey together. I love being able to talk to you every week as you are thinking about grad school. You’re in grad school looking at that light at the end of the tunnel, or you’re just figuring it out as you go along. This podcast is all about helping you find success in that grad school journey. And there are specific things that you can do. No matter if you’re going to grad school to get an MBA versus going to law school or med school, there’s lots of things that you can do to make sure that you are successful. And we do that every week by bringing on great guests. People that have gone before you have done this, have been successful and are coming to share their own experiences with you. And with every person that comes on, I learn a little bit. I know that you’ll learn a lot as well as you listen in. And this week, we’ve got another great guest with us today. Dylan Straeka is with us today. And Dylan is the vice president for finance for Premier Security Solutions. He also last year was named one of the Greater Flint areas, 40 under 40 to watch. And I am really excited to be able to have him on here today, to be able to learn about his own experience and to have him share that with you. Dylan, thanks so much for being here today.
Dylan Straka:
Thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to it.
Christopher Lewis:
Well, I’m excited to have you here and to have you talk about your own experiences. And I know that what I would love to do is be able to turn the clock back because you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan Flint. You got a BBA in Accounting here, and then you went on and continued on to get a MBA in Accounting and finance. And I would love to go back in time because I know that at some point in time, as you were going through that undergraduate degree, there had to have been some point in time where you said to yourself, I want to continue, I want to get that master’s degree. What were the reasons that you chose to continue on and to go forward to get that master’s degree and go into graduate school?
Dylan Straka:
There were two kind of unique situations, one being I had the funds to cover it. People ask you all the time, what motivates you? And my answer is always my grandparents. My grandma grew up very poor in the south. She had a third grade education. She actually went hungry a lot upon her passing. Her will left money for my brother and I to go to college. She wanted to make sure we wouldn’t have to experience the same hardships that she did. I stayed local. I went to Mott for my first year and then U of M Flint. So the money that I would have had to spend on room and board was actually really able to cover over half of my Masters. So I was fortunate kind of in that regard. But the other thing, as you mentioned, I got my undergrad from U of M Flint, and that was partially driven because of work experience. The company I had worked for throughout high school knew I wanted to go into accounting. The owners both went to U of M Flint. They met there, as a matter of fact, and said, hey, we know you want to go into accounting. What if we open up a position here for you? Basically, we know you want a U of M fan, so you’ll get your U of M degree and you can get some experience while you go to school. So I worked throughout all four years of my undergrad, which created, because of my age, a unique situation that, to advance further, I couldn’t just make up the years. I needed the education. And so as soon as I graduated with my BBA, I went right into my MBA program.
Christopher Lewis:
The fact that you just said that as you were going through that bachelor’s degree, you did work full time, and you had to do a lot of balancing, I’m sure, to try and not only do that full time work, but also be able to be successful in your undergraduate degree as well. So talk to me about balance and how you were able to best balance that work that you did as you went through your degrees.
Dylan Straka:
I was fortunate that most of my undergrad was part time. I did take a semester off, and because of that first job, triggered an early internship with a local accounting firm. And so I did have that semester off. But once I went full time into a new role after I graduated with my bachelor’s, it was a challenge at first, I’ll be honest. I had to figure that out and maneuver that and try a few different things. And one transparently was and my advice to anyone going into a Master’s program, you have to do some of the work every single day. You might only have a class on a day or two, and like many of you, maybe in undergrad, I tried to cram it all in on Sunday. That does not work in the Master’s program. Even if you can only get in 45 minutes or an hour of work every day, you have to get that in. And with that scheduling and mine was an instant night and day difference from being part time and just having to focus on school to being full time employer and then school on top of it. But many of my classmates also had the responsibility. They were married, they had spouses, they had children. So that created all other schedules. So really the schedule and I’m more in finance now, but the position I was in during my MBA was more accounting based, so I had tax time as well. So where periods I worked 50 or 60 hours a week. So you really have to manage your time properly. And unfortunately, and many people will attest to this, just being transparent, some of your social things will have to you have to give that up for a little while, but the sacrifice is worth the reward 110%. I think the thing too, and I saw an instant transition with this as well, was you’re in class with your colleagues and the professors, some of them switched from being Miss Professor So and So to by their first name. We would go out for drinks after class sometimes and things like that. And they saw you more as a peer and a respect came with that because you are a working employee. With that, your professors really want to help you. And so they understand if you have situations come up with work or with family life, so go to them. I think that’s the biggest advice I can say. They have office hours that so often go unutilized. And I think people are a little bit fearful at first, especially me, because I was a young MBA student. But they really want to help you.
Christopher Lewis:
Some students are definitely afraid to step out to make those relationships, or they don’t know how to create those relationships because there is that power imbalance, we’ll say, or a sense of a power imbalance that they have experienced through their undergraduate degree that as you just mentioned many times, will flip or change. There still is a knowledge imbalance, but the power differential is different in graduate school. Talk to me about what you or other students that you saw, what you did to be able to create those strong bonds with your faculty members as you made that transition into graduate school.
Dylan Straka:
The dynamic and the discussions in the classroom were night and day difference. And I was much more engaged in the grad than the undergrad because my very first class, I sat down and transparently. I was the youngest person in that class. It was all working people, most of them. Their company was paying for them to come back to school so they could further advance. And you went from discussing theory to real life problems. Classmates would bring, hey, we’re really struggling with this, with work. And if it was applicable, the whole class would try to solve it. Or if it wasn’t, it could be a topic that quickly went off that a classmate had had experience within their professional working career. For me, as a young person. It was really educational. They became a huge resource for me and still are to this day. There’s a group of us that we still bounce ideas off of one another. And I think just the context of the conversations that the professor and the student can talk on a level that in some shape or form have somewhat each experience with it shifted that dynamic and respect a little bit.
Christopher Lewis:
You just said that you were one of the youngest in your classes and that during those classes a lot of times, especially in an MBA, but in other fields as well, the people that are in those classes are bringing their professional experience and making the learning tangible. Being young. Talk to me about what you had to do to be able to overcome some of that lack of experience, even though you were working as an undergraduate, to be able to feel like you were contributing as much as those that might have been in the workforce for.
Dylan Straka:
Ten plus years or some 20 or 30 I had even found that really wanted to advance for those last ten years. I think I was always respectful of their knowledge. I had still had a few years under my belt and had worked in divisions that others hadn’t. So that gave me a little bit of an advantage. But I’ve always been an advocate for never be afraid to ask a question, even if you think it’s stupid, because there’s likely someone else that is going to ask it in the room. So have a desire to learn. And I always tried to be a sponge and pick up wherever I could. Probably one advantage I had, especially over some of my classmates, I had worked with some on a team that were in their fifty s and the technology piece of it. Technology was a piece that had to be ingrained into me. It was part of the education system when I went. But my classmates in their 50s, that could be a challenge for them. So that was a little bit of advantage that I had in areas where they had the years on experience.
Christopher Lewis:
Now, you talked about the fact that you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan Flint. You continued your degree at the University of Michigan Flint. You probably could have gone other places and because of that you still chose to stay and to continue your degree. Talk to me about that and what was going through your head as you were making that decision of where you wanted to continue and get your master’s degree and why you ended up deciding to stay and continue your education at the University of Michigan Flint.
Dylan Straka:
That’s a great question and I have a few answers for this one. Transparently was proximity. The company that I had started with during my undergrad was a few blocks away. So being close by was very advantageous to me. Another was the hours my advice to anyone is if you can do your MBA in class, in person, do it. And specifically, it seems like the U of M flint’s MBA program was designed around working people. They realized that a majority of their people were working professionals. And I had late night classes or mixed mode classes. And the flexibility of the schedule and to actually get my degree done in the time I wanted was very appealing to me. And I don’t think Transparently U of Employment gets the credit for the caliber of the professors and then the students that go there. A dear friend of mine, I met him in my first class, my first day in my MBA program his company was sending him back to because they wanted to make him CEO of their company. And that totally surprised me, but didn’t, as I learned as time went on, know we had kids that were commuting from Detroit in various suburbs of major cities because they realized the caliber of the program that we had.
Christopher Lewis:
I really appreciate you sharing that as well, because I’ve seen that myself and I see the quality of instructors here. And I guess as you think about success and you talked about a success in a number of different ways, but you were successful. You got through your master’s degree. And as you made that transition from your undergraduate degree into graduate school through graduate school, and you think back on it now, what do you feel that you had to do to set yourself up for success and what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout your graduate school journey?
Dylan Straka:
And this was also kind of part the surprising piece that I wasn’t expecting in the Grad program was the networking. What you put into the degree, you will get out of it. And I really made an effort to try to get to know my professors and my classmates. And we had classmates, Chris, that hired one another. Job opportunities came up, and then all of a sudden, it was their class colleague, but it was also their boss from nine to five during the day. And from that we helped someone would be applying for a job or interviewing or get an offer letter. We would help them negotiate. And then I think something people don’t realize also is your professor is more than a just professor. Most of them come from corporate backgrounds at U of M flint. They have their own contacts and have a genuine desire to help. So we had professor connections that maybe it didn’t lead to a job, but maybe it led to some business opportunities to do business together. So I would say that was in terms of the success that was advantageous to me, and I think that could be advantageous to anyone pursuing a master’s degree at U of M flint.
Christopher Lewis:
It’s been a few years since you’ve finished that master’s degree. Now that you’ve completed that degree, and you think about the graduate education that you went through. How do you feel that you use that graduate degree on a daily basis? And how has it prepared you for the next steps in your career?
Dylan Straka:
Something to note for everyone listening, I was at U of M Flint for eight straight years and partially considering going back for another degree. So if that doesn’t show my love for it, I don’t know what does. But to answer your question, working with teams, that was especially in the MBA program in the business world, it is very collaborative. You are not siloed off. And no matter if it’s Finance, Marketing, Technology, Operations, they all work together. And U of M from my very first class pushed that. I think every class we had to do some type of a teams project, and you got every walk of life with that. So part the teams and then part that MBA. The program was designed so well that, like I said, Technology, Marketing, Finance, Operations, you had to take classes in all of those. And so even though I’m Accounting Finance focused, I feel like I have better understanding of how each division functions. I’ve had meetings today alone in various different departments, and you get pulled into those. So I think having a better understanding of it really gave you more confidence to speak about, hey, this might not be my background, but I do have some education in this regard, and I think I can be helpful in it. And it’s the team atmosphere 100%.
Christopher Lewis:
So as you think back to your graduate degree and think back really to that transition that you went through again from undergraduate to graduate, and you think to that younger self, are there things that you wish that you would have known or that you wish that someone would have told you? That would have helped you find success in grad school that much sooner.
Dylan Straka:
Part of it would go back to it is 110% worth the sacrifice, but in terms of social aspects, you will have to sacrifice to do it. I think it’s your quality of life after the fact and your knowledge and your experience you gain from it is worth it every time. I also think too, no one’s holding a gun to your head into what timeline you have to have this done. Take it at your own pace. There were periods where maybe my work or my personal life were going to be more relaxed and I could take an extra class or two, or maybe I learned quickly that during tax time, I needed to take less courses. And then it kind of molded into a new shape as I went into it, and it worked out so much better, but just be okay with that, that I was just going to get a general MBA. And then I realized the caliber of the classes in that getting. I got an accounting concentration and then a finance concentration with that as well. Those three extra classes, because they were so specific and honed in, they were worth the extra year it took me. And then with that a little bit, I think just kind of bookending. Something I said earlier is that this is not something that you can try to cram in on a Sunday. And I think especially so many of my classmates, their corporation or their company was paying for them to do it, be transparent with work. I had several classmates that sometimes, especially during finals time and things like that, their corporation gave them an hour or two that particular week, every day to work on coursework, because they saw the value they’re investing in you financially. They want you to be successful, they want you to do well in a course. I think knowing all those things would be really helpful to anybody going into.
Christopher Lewis:
It as we finish up today. Dylan, any other final thoughts? Any other tips that you might share with a prospective graduate student, someone that’s thinking maybe an MBA, but could be something else that you have gleaned in your own experience that you feel that could help them to find success?
Dylan Straka:
My advice would be to anyone that if you’re thinking about it, take a class, take one, see if you like it. I even had friends in my first class that started out in the MBA and switched to an MSA, a Master’s in Accounting. And if your goal is to professionally grow and gain more experience, gain more education, don’t feel like you have to do this multi year major, whole degree, try a class and see how it goes from there. That would be my biggest piece of advice. And I even had classmates that their company really wanted them to get better acquainted in a specific subject. So even though they signed up for it, they just took three classes in technology and it or three classes in finance. It was transformational for them in their work life.
Christopher Lewis:
Well, Dylan, I just want to say thank you for sharing your own experience with us and for all of the things that you shared today, and I wish you all the best.
Dylan Straka:
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. It was fun.
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