Georgetown McDonough Revamps MBA Program
Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business recently announced it has redesigned its MBA curriculum and will launch the changes in fall 2012.
From the very first term, the new curriculum–which applies to both the full-time and MBA Evening programs– is filled with both classroom and experiential learning that will develop Georgetown McDonough students into innovative, principled, and entrepreneurial leaders with a global perspective to make a substantial impact on business and society, the school says.
“As the global business landscape is continuously changing, MBA programs must equip their students with the skills to be innovative leaders””whether they are joining established organizations or becoming entrepreneurs,” says Dean David A. Thomas. “This new curriculum will strengthen our MBA program and provide our students with the knowledge and confidence to advance their careers and make a difference in the world.”
The new MBA curriculum will feature a greater focus on integrative teaching, with five new courses designed from the ground up to involve cross-disciplinary teams of faculty. Going forward, core courses will adhere to a longer semester format rather than a modular one, which will allow students more time to absorb and examine the material and provide greater rigor in understanding and application.
In response to the more data intense nature of today’s business world, the new curriculum will place greater emphasis on the quantitative and analytical skills necessary to make sound business decisions. Also, the Georgetown MBA will include a deeper commitment to ethics through a new course tentatively titled Principled Leadership for Business and Society that integrates knowledge and perspectives from leadership, ethics, and corporate social responsibility to explore the challenges of modern business decision making.
Prashant Malaviya, chair of the MBA Curriculum Task Force and associate professor of marketing, notes that the new curriculum will bring about a re-imagining of the global experience that runs through all core courses. “We are infusing our entire curriculum with global issues to prepare our students to work in the expanding world of business””not just for today, but for the future.”
Changes ahead include a three-week opening immersion course for first-year MBA students on the Structure of Global Industries. This experiential learning course will teach them to identify and understand global markets, ethical decision making, the fundamentals of team dynamics, and persuasive communication skills.
Replacing the Global Residency program is a broadened Global Business Experience, which begins in the fall semester of the MBA students’ final year with both classwork and hands-on experiences consulting for organizations around the world. Students will then host a Global Business Conference at the end of the spring term, where they will share their experiences with fellow students and business leaders from around the world.
The school believes this conference will extend the Global Business Experience as a signature element of a Georgetown McDonough business education.
