Dan Zuccarello waited more than 30 years to return to school for his MBA. On May 21, he graduated from the Rutgers School of Business-Camden. Zuccarello, who currently serves as a manager of the quality control laboratory at Daiichi-Sankyo, a global pharmaceutical company in Bethlehem, Pa. began his MBA program in the 1980s at Rutgers School of Business- New Brunswick.
After reading an advert for the program that he received in the mail, explaining that the program only met on Saturdays and attending an information session on the Professional MBA program offered at the Rutgers-Camden campus, Zuccarello decided it was time to go back to finish his MBA. “I always felt my career was limited because I was only a scientist,” Zuccarello told Rutgers News. “I had no business background and all of my education was in biology and chemistry. I was an analytical chemist for 35 years, but was running a business. I was being asked to handle finance, accounting, and human resources and I had no background in it. I wasn’t a fish completely out of water, but I wasn’t comfortable.”
Zuccarello explained that during his time in the PMBA program at Rutgers, he never felt like he was out of place and he was able to connect with his fellow students. He was also able to immediately apply what he was learning in the PMBA courses to his work at Daiichi-Sankyo. “We were taking classes on business practices and skills, and I was able to go downstairs onto my manufacturing floor and watch it take place in real time. I was able to talk the talk,” Zuccarello told Rutgers News.
He tells Rutgers News that the experience of the PMBA program has already opened new doors for him and he hopes to be able to expand his business career in his company by working on an international assignment. He also hopes that his story inspires more professionals that are later in his career, like him, to pursue their master’s degree.