Master's of Business Administration (MBA 30 Credits)

Throughout history, technology provided opportunities for innovation, resulting in changes in business and society at a global scale. These technologies often disrupted business policies and processes, impacting jobs and organizational structures. Students examine how technological innovation is experienced in society and viewed over time and into the future by business people, philosophers, and sociologists. Students explore the question, How do we imagine that business, society and our place within will be affected as technology continues to advance?

Decision-making in any organization cannot be separated from financial considerations, and those involved with strategic planning and operations need to understand the impact their work has on the organization's financial performance. Managers must understand the organization's financial models in order to make a meaningful contribution to the overall success of the organization. Students will focus on using financial information rather than creating it and will use case studies and simulations to experience low-risk financial decision-making.

Students apply design thinking, lean principles, and value stream mapping to innovate, make informed decisions, and drive continuous improvement, ensuring a firm's operations contribute to its competitive position. The course covers process analyses, cross-functional integrations, and ERP system implementations.

Students learn organization analysis from a holistic perspective. Financial reports and financial ratios are the basis for traditional organizational analysis and builds from that foundation into the analysis of customer, supplier and employee metrics. Focus is on the Balanced Scorecard and other holistic approaches.

Marketing has the power to shape and influence individuals, communities, and society in myriad ways. Technological innovation continues to change the way we market to consumers, and the ways in which consumers interact with products and services. In this course, students will explore and critically examine the impact of current issues and emergent technology on enhancing the customer experience while at the same time applying foundational marketing approaches to build strategies and tactics for an organization of their choosing.

Students use a framework to explore the dynamics of human interaction within and between organizations. Throughout the course, they will use a perspective that a key function of management is to negotiate for resources and use that perspective to develop collaborative relationships with employees, vendors, suppliers, and interested communities.

Students explore the development and execution of an innovative and imaginative business strategy for the future. They consider answers to questions such as, How do you identify an opportunity for a new business that meets an otherwise unmet need? What happens when an organization fails to change when faced with a challenge to their traditional model? How can you mitigate risk? What are the processes that organizations use to keep themselves focused on changing stakeholder requirements and needs?

Communities look to business to have a positive impact on the world through their actions, so organizations are changing the way they do business. Mission-driven for-profit organizations are examining their HR policies, supply chains, organizational structures, marketing and even finance as they adapt to purpose-driven business models. Students explore what it means to be a purpose-driven organization by examining new business models, and the fundamental changes and challenges an organization experiences when they view business through a multidimensional lens.

Students will complete in-depth research of current issues by exploring political, organizational, global perspectives, or other dimensions of a topic. After examining diverse points of view and critically evaluating them, students will present their own perspective on the issue.

This course is built around a project that is designed to apply, in a comprehensive manner, the core areas of knowledge around which the MBA has been built. The project may be performed for a current employer, a sponsoring workplace or as an internship as either a service-learning project for a qualifying nonprofit organization or another organization of the student's choosing.