January 31, 2007

Dear ________:

I am pleased to serve as a reference for Rebecca ------. I have known Rebecca since 2005, when she took the Management of Organizations class with me. The following semester, she enrolled in my Human Resources Management class. In addition, she has assisted me with my research as part of our work/study program. As a result of our contact in and out of class, I believe that I know Rebecca quite well.

Rebecca is one of our most outstanding students. Because the Management of Organizations course is taught on the graduate level, I believe that it is possible to distinguish truly exceptional students from those who are merely outstanding. In the class we discuss the philosophy of science, evaluate theories of organizational behavior and apply macro organization theories to actual situations. There is no text book; students read these theories in their original form as well as the scholarly literature that evaluates the theories’ adequacy. The materials are technical, abstract, philosophical, and far over the head of most undergraduates.

Rebecca found the material challenging, but could understand many of readings before we discussed them in class. More than that, she quickly synthesized each new article with the other material that we studied. While her classmates were still struggling to achieve some level of comfort with the new articles, she was making comments and asking questions about the relationship between the new articles and the material that we had already studied. During the first third of the semester, most class meetings are supposed to be discussion sessions during which I ask questions and suggest topics for students to discuss. Rebecca always let others go first, but because she was always prepared for class and understood the course materials on a deeper level than other students, she was able to answer the difficult questions that none of her classmates could answer. Rebecca’s performance was also exceptional in that she was able to inject an unusually high degree of creativity into her work without compromising rigor. Her creativity was most obviously in her applications of theory to business cases. In this format, she also demonstrated superior written communication skills.

The following semester, in the Human Resources Management course, Rebecca excelled far above her classmates. In this course, we use a graduate level textbook and focus n the more difficult, technical facets of HRM, such as the validation of selection instruments. Rebecca demonstrated great facility with this very difficult material. In addition, the students are required to write a term paper that reviews the scholarly literature on a HRM technique, such as assessment centers, or a problem, such as turnover. The students work with a group so that they can split up the work of writing various parts of the paper, conducting the literature search and outlining the structure of the paper. Rebecca had problems with a sick relative and had to travel to St. Louis quite frequently, so she wrote her paper by herself. Because of her frequent absences from Memphis, she felt that it would be difficult to schedule meetings with a group of students. Her paper was far better than any of the others. She did a superb job of collecting, organizing, and presenting the relevant literature. She demonstrated her analytical ability by reviewing literature that contained multivariate statistical analysis, far more complicated than her introductory statistical analysis course prepared her to interpret. She was able to provide a logical outline for the disparate articles she reviewed while demonstrated her excellent writing skills in the way she connected the articles and the way she provided bridge material to help fill in the gaps in the literature. Her paper was one of the two most outstanding papers I have received over the fifteen years that I have taught this course.

I would not characterize Rebecca as a memorizer or a trophy chaser whose sole aim was to achieve a high GPA. She had a hunger for learning and enjoyed the intellectual challenge of the course. Her work indicates an incredibly high level of self-discipline, focus and motivation.

In her work for me, Rebecca has demonstrated her superior computer skills. She has created very intricate charts for me and restored several questionnaires that involved extremely complex formatting that even our departmental secretary could not do. She needed minimal direction from me and completed this work very quickly. I believe her work clearly indicates that she has superior design and computer skills.

In addition to her obviously superior intellectual ability and her proven skills in analysis, synthesis and written communication, Rebecca is a really delightful person. She appears, at first, to be somewhat shy, but is actually a great conversationalist and a good listener. She is truly concerned about the college and her student colleagues. I have been very impressed by her insight into the strengths and weaknesses of our program. She has a perspective that is rarely found in students who are usually more concerned with getting through the program than stepping back and evaluating it. She is unusually mature for an undergraduate student.

In conclusion, I think Rebecca is an unusually fine person and an exceptional student, and I take great pride in claiming her as a graduate of our program. I highly recommend her for graduate work in accounting. She brings such an exceptional array of finely honed skills to her academic work that I expect her to be a great success in graduate school and beyond. I highly recommend her.

Sincerely,

Dee Birnbaum, Ph.D.

Associated Professor of Business