Contact:
Victor Rogers
Emory University
Goizueta Business School
Victor_rogers@bus.emory.edu
404-727-0568

Emory’s Goizueta Business School to Launch
New Full-Time MBA Curriculum

“Preparing students for the next job and fifth promotion”

ATLANTA (Mar. 6, 2008) – The faculty of Goizueta Business School has approved major changes to the curriculum of the full-time MBA program. The new curriculum will be implemented beginning with the class entering fall of 2008.

Key structural changes characterize the new curriculum: 1) more linkages from management theory to ‘management practice,’ 2) greater degrees of freedom for students to pursue a concentration earlier in their studies; and 3) better integration of courses, career planning and leadership development. Further, Goizueta’s commitment to developing future leaders through our world-class leadership development program intensifies.

The new curriculum is Goizueta Business School’s response to the changing landscape of business.  Corporations demand more from their MBAs and sooner.  In addition, there are the new realities of business including globalization; heightened complexity of business environments; an acceleration in the pace of change; and, an increased focus on data-driven decision-making. Curriculum reform is emerging as a key competitive tool amongst top business schools.

Before designing the new curriculum, the MBA Curriculum Committee conducted extensive research which included surveying Goizueta Business School alumni and current students, employers, and deans of other top business schools, as well as benchmarking Goizueta’s curriculum with other top MBA programs.

“With the new curriculum, Goizueta students will continue to have the benefits of our small, close-knit community, combined with increased flexibility to pursue a tailored plan-of-study,” said Doug Bowman, Professor of Marketing and Chair of the MBA Curriculum Committee whose charge was to design the new curriculum. “This places Goizueta Business School at the forefront of the next generation of MBA curriculums.”

First, the new curriculum is more experiential, with explicit linkages from management theory to the practice of management.

A key innovation is a new core course with the placeholder name of “Management Practice.” It will be a vehicle for real integration, exposing students early to various career perspectives, and providing opportunities for contextual problem solving and decision analysis.  A key objective is to address a crucial managerial responsibility: quickly solving a business problem with ambiguous or less than perfect information at one’s disposal. Framing problems and finding the data to analyze and support making a timely decision is an important skill that needs more emphasis in MBA programs.

Second, students will have greater degrees of freedom – the ability to pursue greater depth of study in a chosen concentration earlier in their plan of study.

There will be more room in the first semester for career preparation and in the second semester for students to take more electives in preparation for internships.  The Curriculum Committee used the phrase “preparing for the next job and fifth promotion” to guide them through the development process.

Third, the new curriculum is better integrated, with broad recommendations about core course content and its timing.

The Committee’s research highlighted the need for enhanced rigor, and continued emphasis on building analytical skills. The core class structure is reengineered to improve the sequencing of courses and their content, eliminate duplication of material across classes, and to achieve better integration.  Foundational analytical skills are sequenced right at the beginning of the first semester, allowing for more analytical rigor in core courses and core material that follows. There also is explicit structure to better integrate career planning and leadership into the curriculum, which is rare.

Under the new curriculum, students will:

• Begin the Fall semester two weeks earlier;
• Complete all but one of their core courses by the end of the first semester; and
• Complete twice as many elective courses before going into their summer internships.

“In addition to the ‘Management Practice’ innovation, the new curriculum will continue to reinforce the School’s mission of educating principled leaders for global enterprise throughout the year,” said Steve Walton, Interim Associate Dean of the Full-time MBA Program and Associate Professor in the Practice of Information Systems & Operations Management. Concentrated emphasis will be placed on the School’s mission during theme weeks, one on Principled Leadership and one on The Global Enterprise.

“We help our graduates develop the knowledge, insights, and abilities they need in order to make significant positive contributions to the organizations and societies they serve,” said Walton.

Emory’s Goizueta Business School offers a Two-Year MBA Program, a One-Year MBA Program, an Evening MBA Program, two formats of the W. Cliff Oxford Executive MBA (Weekend and Modular), an Undergraduate Program and a Doctoral degree, together with a set of innovative non-degree Emory Executive Development programs.