Top Cop is Top Student at Top Business School

A Chief Superintendent with West Midlands Police is named this week as one of the top business students in the country.

Mike Goodwin, previously Area Commander for Sutton Coldfield, was one of four executive students in his cohort awarded an MBA with Distinction at Warwick University Business School graduation ceremony taking place on 13 July 2001.

Mike joined West Midlands Police from the Metropolitan Police in London seven years ago and has served in operational posts in Birmingham city centre, Coventry and Smethwick. He is now attending the Strategic Command Course at the Police Staff College at Bramshill, Hampshire, following which he is eligible to apply for assistant chief constable posts later this year.

The award of MBA with Distinction follows three years of part time study, the successful completion of thirteen one-week modules and the submission of an 18,000 word work-related dissertation.

Mike said: "The Warwick MBA has helped me enormously in being selected for and coping with the rigours of the Police Strategic Command Course. Most importantly it has also helped me operationally in the delivery of practical results and the management of significant change in each of my most recent command postings.

"The thirteen one-week modular format of the Executive MBA Programme, spread over three years is ideal for busy senior managers who wish to develop professionally yet must still deliver performance in accordance with the pressures of a demanding executive role.

"The Warwick MBA has given me an excellent insight into strategic management. In my view the modules on service management, human resources management, and management of change were of very high quality indeed and I have found them to be of direct application to many of the issues facing the police service today. The public sector management module run by the Warwick Institute of Governance and Public Management was also first class and gave me an important insight into the dominant issues affecting current and future government policy.

"Aside from the taught elements of the programme I have also learned a great deal from the experience of fellow managers from top private sector companies not only from England but also from Europe as well as Canada, Singapore and South Africa. In my case, once the inevitable jokes about parking tickets and speeding fines were dispensed with, it was clear that there was mutual respect for what each of us brought to the course."