Core Curriculum
Overview
The Fast-Track Professional MBA program is a 48-credit-hour program comprised of 16 courses designed to provide individuals with a solid foundation from which to expand their professional business skills in preparation for more senior level roles within organizations. The content is delivered through a blended delivery model using traditional classroom instruction and distance learning tools. This model allows working professionals the ability to earn their MBA with the flexibility and convenience they desire. The following curriculum will be offered in the Fast-Track Professional MBA program.
Skills and Perspectives for Effective Leadership
Focuses on the development of fundamental leadership skills, such as self-awareness, strategic thinking, creating a motivating environment, empowerment and delegation, managing change, and team processing. A key objective is to provide participants with a full evaluation of their current leadership style and potential and, by interacting one-on-one with a personal leadership coach, to develop an individualized action plan for improving and broadening leadership capability.
Economic Analysis for Business Leaders
Introduces students to basic economic principles and applications. Standard microeconomics, also called price theory, studies the social organization known as the market. Microeconomic analysis allows us to trace how the decisions of individuals — consumers, workers, managers, entrepreneurs, financiers, and so on — interact to produce a social or market order. As such, microeconomics is the cornerstone of all economics. More recently, microeconomic analysis has been applied to decision-making within organizations such as firms, government agencies, and nonprofits. These new applications include the assignment of decision rights and responsibilities, the use of motivation and rewards, the evaluation of performance, the "make-or-buy" decision, and other aspects of management, corporate finance, and accounting.
Analytical Tools for Decision Making
Enhances the analytical skills of business managers who must make decisions based on quantitative data, specifically in environments characterized by significant uncertainty. Students develop the knowledge and skills necessary to interpret and generate the output associated with each of the quantitative topics covered. Specifically, students will (i) recognize the types of problems for which each method is appropriate, (ii) identify the information required by each method, (iii) make organizationally-relevant decisions based on the output associated with each method, and (iv) recommend additional data collection or analyses that will aid in decision-making. The course will demonstrate that decision-making can be improved through the systematic gathering, compilation, and interpretation of data.
Financial Accounting and Reporting
Provides a general understanding of the basic accounting information needed to read and understand financial statements. The primary focus is reading financial statements to manage a business or to make investment or credit decisions about businesses. Students will also be exposed to the fundamental procedures used to record, analyze, summarize, and report accounting information to be aware of how the accounting system operates.
Concepts of accounting (such as cash vs. accrual), the format and content of financial statements, and interpretation of corporate annual reports will be covered. In addition to the general conventions that underlie all accounting information, students will delve more deeply into many of the more important accounting areas such as revenue and expense recognition, accounting for operating assets (i.e., accounts receivable, inventories, and property and equipment), inter-corporate investments, and accounting for transactions with capital providers (lenders and owners).
Managerial Finance
Considers the responsibilities, concerns, and methods of analysis employed by corporate financial managers, and the role of financial markets and institutions in the modern economy. Broadly speaking, we focus on the two fundamental decisions that determine what projects should the firm undertake (the capital budgeting decision) and how the firm should finance those projects (the capital structure decision). Specific topics include valuation, discounted cash flows, capital budgeting, capital market theory, corporate financing, options, and contingent claims.
Marketing Management
Emphasizes the role of marketing in creating value for customers, which in turn leads to value for other stakeholders in a firm (e.g., owners, shareholders, employees). The main objective of the course is to improve your ability to (i) assess market opportunities by analyzing customers, competitors, and the strengths and weaknesses of a company, (ii) design effective marketing strategies to maximize a company’s chance of winning in these markets, and (iii) communicate and defend your own marketing recommendations and critically examine and build upon the recommendations of others.
In this framework, the course explores key issues such as value of products, customers and brands, methods to analyze customers and competitors, customer segmentation, product positioning, and the role of new technology. Key takeaways include both a general structure for analyzing marketing problems and some specific quantitative tools.
Operations Management
This course explores how firms can organize their operations to more effectively align supply with the demand for their products and services. Throughout the course we illustrate mathematical analysis applied to real operational situations, seeking rigor and relevance. The aim is to provide both the tactical knowledge and the high-level insight required of general managers. We demonstrate how companies can and have used the principles developed in this course to significantly enhance their competitive position.
The first part of the course emphasizes the processes by which goods are produced or services delivered. Process analysis in this context ignores variability with respect to customer arrivals, service times, production rates, or quality, and seeks to structure operations to maximize supply given the limited set of resources available to the firm. In the second part of the course, we extend process analysis to incorporate both supply and demand variability, and examine the associated impact on waiting times and the corresponding losses due to operational delays. The remainder of the course focuses on managing uncertain demand, both within the firm and across the supply chain. Flexible supply processes are most effective in matching supply with demand; however, process flexibility is usually expensive. We discuss how to determine the appropriate level of supply flexibility for a given environment and explore strategies for economically increasing a firm's supply flexibility.
Information Technology and Strategy
Despite the growing trends in outsourcing and downsizing of IT operations, "information" continues to be a critical business resource that must be managed efficiently and effectively. The purpose of this course is to sensitize students to the strategic and operational aspects of IT management. The course will provide students with a holistic understanding of IT’s role in supporting, shaping, and enabling business strategies. The overarching goal is to broaden the outlook towards IT and treat it as an integral and intrinsic component of all business functions. It will provide both a broad and in-depth coverage of key challenges, trends, critical success factors, and best practices.
Effective management of the "information" resource entails (i) recognizing its power and potential, (ii) learning about the underlying tools and technologies that can help realize this potential, (iii) developing a suitable IT strategy which is in synch with the overall business strategy, (iv) identifying and justifying necessary investments to effectively execute the IT strategy, (v) making decisions on how best to procure and manage the IT assets, (vi) securing the IT assets, (vii) dealing with and overcoming the various implementation challenges, (viii) benchmarking and measuring the effectiveness of the IS function, and (ix) staying abreast of technological trends and implications.
Advanced Leadership Skills
Focuses on processes for negotiating and resolving practical and ethical conflicts encountered in business environments. A conflict may occur whenever two or more parties have a disagreement. A conflict becomes a dispute when one party makes a claim for action against another party, and the latter party refuses to satisfy the claim. Negotiation is a system of interaction among parties wherein a resolution of the underlying conflict or dispute is attempted.
A negotiation may involve one or more parties trying to improve a position regardless of the cost such improvement imposes on the others. This approach is described as distributive or position-based negotiation. Sometimes this type of negotiation is called win-lose since it is assumed that the parties believe that to win they must take something from another, thereby causing that party to lose. As an alternative, a negotiation may involve a mutual effort to improve everyone's status. This approach is known as integrative or principled negotiation. It also is referred to as win-win negotiation since the parties are searching for ways that will enhance the outcome for everyone.
Strategic Management
Combines elements of traditional corporate strategy with principles of large-scale organizational change to produce an overview of strategic management as an organic process for adapting the firm to its changing environment. Topics of study include practical issues related to mental frameworks and human behavior, environmental and competitor analysis, and change implementation.
Legal and Regulatory Issues
Creates an enhanced level of awareness of many legal issues that directly impact the way that leaders conduct business. Student will be exposed to the rule of law and the law of property as the necessary foundation for a successfully functioning private market in the modern nation. The rule of law provides the certainty required for complex business transactions with strangers, and the law of property frees people from having to spend time guarding their resources and gives incentive to new resource creation, development, and transfer by ensuring both today and for the future that what is yours remains yours.
The law of property applied generally and equally under the rule of law rests at the hub of Western legal systems, even those with considerable redistributive taxation. The other areas of law spread out from the hub like the spokes of a wheel: contract law is the way an owner exchanges resources in a property-based legal system; tort law and criminal law provide deterrence to injuring an owner's resources through compensation and punishment; business organization law describes how owners can pool resources for productive purposes; regulatory law is an administrative extension of tort law, and so forth. Even constitutional rights can be thought of in property terms and no less an authority than James Madison thought so.
Overseas trip (Optional)
The Fast-Track Professional MBA offers an optional overseas trip as part of an International Business course offered in the spring semester. In recent years, students have taken trips to China and Cuba and gained exposure to international business practices and culture. Students choosing this elective course earn three hours of academic credit. Costs for the trips are in addition to tuition for the three-credit-hour elective. This expense included airfare, accommodations and most meals. Trip destinations and pricing are subject to change and will be announced each fall.
