Tuck School MBA Program Refines Core Curriculum
Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business recently announced it has enhanced the core curriculum to further support the school’s mission. While at Tuck, students should learn “the values of confident humility, empathy, and judgment in a way that is personal, connected, and transformative.”
These changes further support Tuck’s new evaluation criteria for MBA applicants, which considers “niceness” a core value.
Challenges and Goals of the Revised Core Curriculum
Dean Matthew Slaughter’s curriculum review committee, chaired by Professor Phil Stocken, identified five design challenges for the new curriculum.
- The need to grow wise leaders
- The need for students to analytically develop and defend a point of view
- The core must reflect timely and timeless content
- The core must address contemporary business issues
- The need to help students navigate their career choices
“The world has changed significantly since we last [2008] took a systematic look at what we teach in the core and how we teach it,” Slaughter said in January. “While many individual courses have been refined to keep pace with emerging business forces, a thorough review that considers these forces in the context of the core curriculum as a whole will strengthen this foundation of learning at Tuck.”
What Will the New Curriculum Look Like?
Now, the curriculum will include greater integration between courses, co-curricular activities, and extra-curricular activities. “We want to use those experiences to further enrich the core,” Stocken says.
In addition, the school will boost its emphasis on career readiness. During the first year, Tuck will focus on students’ self-awareness as well as the characteristics of different industries and career choices. That way, students can conduct a more thorough, reasoned career search.
Students will also have more chances to learn and practice skills related to big data, analytics, and computer programming.
Finally, Tuck School will place greater emphasis on leadership. “We’re moving the leadership framework right into the introductory term,” Stocken says, “So it sets the foundations for students’ subsequent learning.”
Learn more about the new changes to the Tuck School MBA curriculum here.
