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WhY MUST I REMEMBER ThAT COMMUNICATION 57

mation about legal implications. For the most part, legal implications
arise from negative recommendations.
The letter below is one that Dr. Forbus wrote for an MBA student
who was seeking a new position. The candidate’s name is redacted, but
the letter is a good example of a positive recommendation, and one which
involved careful thought, planning, writing, revising, and proofreading
prior to mailing.

Sample Letter of Recommendation
December 13, 2012
LEX Products Corporation
15 Progress Drive
Shelton, CT 06484

Dear LEX Products Corporation:

____ is a candidate for the position of Mechanical Project Engineer
with your firm. I write in unqualified support of his candidacy.
Mr. ___ was my student in MBA 505 (Marketing Management) at
Southern Connecticut State University. He stands out in my memory
for multiple reasons: (1) quality of his deliverables; (2) quality of his
intellectual contributions to class discussions; and, (3) quality of his
analytical skills.

Like many students coming into an MBA program from a non
business discipline, Mr. ____, an engineer, entered my classroom
overly cautious because of his skepticism about marketing. By his
own admission, he didn’t have much respect for marketers or for the
marketing discipline. Over the course of the semester, little by little,
I saw a change in Mr. _____’s thinking. Through reading, emails
with me, and stimulating disagreements in class, he began to appre-
ciate that marketing is part science and part art. This fact seemed to
appeal to Mr.’s left-brain dominant academic training and profes-
sional experience.
Mr.____’s deliverables, including his strategic marketing plan for a
new product, his analytical response papers to theoretical and applied