MBA 6000 Management Essentials — 3 credits

Advanced Management Essentials prepares students for the rigorous work they will encounter in future MBA course work. This interdisciplinary course serves as a method of leveling for all students to ensure they have a solid understanding of essential business principles in preparation for graduate-level MBA coursework. Students will complete online business learning modules and assess their knowledge of a topic before and after the learning module is completed. Topics for the business modules include: management, marketing, economics, global studies, business law, ethics, accounting, finance, information systems, and statistics. Simultaneous to assessing and developing their knowledge in these subject areas, students will build their skills in library research, APA writing and citations, presenting, and case study analysis.
Prerequisite: Admission to the MBA program.

MBA 6100 Personal and Team Leadership — 3 credits

Business leaders across industries are charged with leading themselves and others in complex and dynamic work environments. This course allows students to understand and develop personal and team leadership skills to prepare them for roles of increasing visibility and responsibility. Through thorough self-assessment and reflection, students will gain a deeper understanding of their own personal leadership style and values. They will then explore how their individual leadership styles are expressed through their leadership of teams in a professional environment. Students will analyze and experience the challenges and opportunities with leading and managing team members with diverse perspectives and experiences. The exploration of personal and team leadership sets the foundation for continued leadership development throughout the MBA program and beyond.

MBA 6150 Managing Innovative Talent and Teams — 1 credit

Managing people and organizations is complex in today’s diverse world. To be successful, managers require innovative strategies and skills that address systemic change. This course provides students with insights, frameworks and tools for recruiting, hiring, developing, promoting, and retaining talent in ways that reduce bias and increase inclusivity. The course also examines the role organizational leaders play in establishing inclusive talent management systems. Students will engage in an online simulation exercise designed to uncover ways implicit biases perpetuate pay gaps for women and underrepresented groups. Students will also use critical thinking skills to develop an inclusive talent management plan, which works to improve the way organizations manage talent at the systems level.

MBA 6202 Financial Accounting for Managers — 2 credits

Financial Accounting is concerned with preparing and sharing financial statements designed to reflect the organizations' performance and financial condition. The timely, relevant, and reliable information of the Financial Statements helps facilitate decision-making by investors, creditors, financial institutions, and other interested parties. Managers, executives, and leaders all need to be able to analyze and think critically about their organization's financial performance. This course provides a base level of knowledge needed by managers and organizational leaders to understand and discuss company financial statements and financial performance to support good decision making. This course will familiarize students with the basic principles and practices of financial accounting by studying the concepts that underlie the financial statements. The course begins with an overview of the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows. The course then examines the most common and significant transactions related to revenue and expense recognition, cash, accounts receivable, inventory, long-term assets, liabilities, and equity.

MBA 6300 Managerial Accounting for Decision Making — 3 credits

The purpose of this course is to apply accounting concepts to management decision-making to improve organizational performance. Students will learn how to apply accounting concepts to make effective business decisions and address business problems. The concepts covered include budget forecasting and control, cost volume profit analysis, break-even analysis, incremental analysis, the cash budget, and planning for capital investments.
Prerequisite with concurrency: MBA 6202.

MBA 6400 Strategic Marketing-Building Value and Brand — 3 credits

This course focuses on trends in marketing today that require marketing professionals and leaders to focus not only on designing and marketing products but also on the impact of products on consumers, consumption, waste streams and the resource capacity of the planet to support current rates of resource use. Within a framework of sustainable marketing, students will examine marketing theory, concepts, processes, and communications channels used to build customer value, to achieve a competitive advantage and to accomplish mission driven objectives through the lenses of innovation and global justice. Students will understand core strategic marketing principles and how the marketing function has become central in a technology driven global business environment.

MBA 6500 Healthcare Systems and Policy — 3 credits

This course introduces and examines the main features of the U.S. health care system. It explores the complex relationships among consumers, providers, and payers. Topics include delivery systems (e.g. hospital-based care, primary care clinics, home care, retail clinics, and long-term care settings), reimbursement systems (e.g. Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, managed care organizations), and drug and medical device companies. The course pays close attention to the incentives facing the main players in U.S. health care. While developing an understanding of the U.S. health care system, students will learn to apply basic economic reasoning to analyze important health policy issues in the United States.

MBA 6810 Healthcare Quality — 3 credits

This course on Healthcare Quality is designed to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the principles strategies, and tools used in healthcare quality management. Through readings, discussions, case studies, and assignments, students will explore various aspects of healthcare quality, including measurement, improvement, patient safety, and the development of quality-driven healthcare organizations.

MBA 6900 Behavioral Economics and Decision Making — 3 credits

This course examines the managerial decisions within the framework of economic theories. Use of fundamental economic concepts in business decisions by entrepreneurs, managers, owners and employees is explored. Case studies will be used to apply economic principles and concepts to understand the structure of the firm, constraint optimization, and business strategy for enterprises operating in global context. Using the text and supplemental readings, the course will utilize a variety of topics and theories to increase students' overall understanding of the economics discipline.
Prerequisite: Admission to MBA Program.

MBA 6953 Independent Study — 3 credits

Independent study offers students the opportunity for specialized research not covered in a course offering, by the action project or thesis. Students work with a faculty advisor to develop a learning contract, which specifies the content and objectives of the study as well as the requirements and procedures for evaluation. The amount of credit earned for the study also is included in the learning contract.
Prerequisites: Permission of the faculty and department chair or program director.

MBA 7050 Design Thinking for Innovation — 1 credit

Organizations that integrate design-thinking principles into their corporate strategies perform better in the marketplace. Companies such as Apple, Airbnb, and Nike use human-centered approaches, which create breakthrough ideas and drive business performance. This course challenges students to reframe their thinking and develop a mindset that puts users at the center of problem solving. Students will learn the 5-phase design thinking framework – empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test – to iterate innovative solutions that put users first. In the process, students begin to challenge the typical business assumptions, which often focus on operational constraints, in favor of a new way of thinking which unleashes creativity and innovation in the context of a real-world organizational project.

MBA 7150 Operations and Supply Chain Management — 3 credits

This course provides an understanding of how a company’s resources (human and financial) work in concert to create value and gain a competitive advantage for companies. This course examines operations strategy related to a company’s organizational structure and its resource acquisition and deployment in delivering its products and services. The course introduces a conceptual framework linking how a firm manages its supply and how well that supply matches the marketplace demand for the firm’s offering. Topics include inventory management, resource planning, capacity planning, sourcing, supply chains and logistics.

MBA 7200 Corporate Finance-Funding Innovation and Creating Value — 3 credits

Students in this course will explore financial issues confronting managers of today's global firms. The course will focus on the unique international financial environments and associated risks that confront global firms, and will explore the strategies managers use for dealing with these environments and risks. Learners will monitor current events in international financial markets through various web sites and the financial press. Students will demonstrate skills of analyzing the international financial environment and the role of the currency market in domestic and international business.
Prerequisite: Admission to MBA Program.

MBA 7350 Customer Insights and Strategy — 2 credits

This course takes a cultural and anthropological approach to uncover consumers’ motivations and better understand how they think, feel, and select brands. Students will practice ethnographic research and customer immersion techniques on a client-based consumer insights project with a local business or national brand. Students will learn about qualitative research techniques, collect and analyze data, and distinguish the difference between data and the behavioral insights that drive consumer purchase decisions. Students will also learn how to translate their findings into a compelling evidence-based story culminating in a set of recommendations for senior leadership audiences.

MBA 7450 Agile Project Management — 3 credits

This course provides a systematic and thorough introduction to all aspects of project management, emphasizing tools that improve the ability to plan, implement and manage projects during their entire life cycle, from scoping the project until its closure. Methodologies of estimating time, costs, and risk for completion and the measurement of progress and performance will be covered. Emphasis will be placed on the necessity of agile and chaos project management for today’s fast-paced environment where project managers must establish seamless teams with the ability to be fluid and continuously update strategy, accounting for constant change and update strategy while providing continuous and seamless delivery.

MBA 7500 Managing People and Organizations — 3 credits

Managing people and organizations is complex in today's diverse world. To be successful, managers require specific strategies and skills. This course examines and compares various strategies for successful management within organizations. Topics include: the manager's influence and challenges regarding organizational behavior, individual and cultural norms, motivating others, managing conflict, communication, decision making, and problem solving. Additional attention will be given to issues of power, influence, and politics within organizations and how managers can develop a plan to achieve cultural synergy, corporate responsibility, and social justice within organizations.

MBA 7660 Business Intelligence — 3 credits

Students will learn and apply descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive data analysis. Students will learn the skills needed to gather, analyze, and interpret data for informing effective business decision making. Additional emphasis will be placed on comprehending the limitations of data and evaluating the ethical implications involved in gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data. Analytical topics covered include data mining, data visualization, spreadsheet models and optimization models, simulations, and decision analysis. Statistical analysis software will be used extensively in this course for analyzing and displaying data that a typical firm may encounter in making key business decisions.

MBA 8200 Strategic Management Capstone — 3 credits

Working in teams, students will collaborate with a community organization to engage in an interdisciplinary consulting project. Students will apply key business concepts and leverage the capabilities and skills developed throughout the MBA program for the benefit of the client organization. Students will document and confirm the project scope, prepare a project charter, and develop a reasonable workplan. They will regularly engage members of the client organization in managing all aspects of the project timelines, milestones, and deliverables. Each team will complete all agreed-upon deliverables in accordance with their specific project scope with an end goal of developing and delivering sustainable, innovative solutions and recommendations.