An MBA, outside the box - Charlotte Business Journal:

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"The average age of students in our executivse MBA program isabout 40, and they can be a cynical bunchj if we only offer them theorgy and equations," says Bill Berry, director of the executived MBA program at the McColl School of Business at . More than 40 studentsw are enrolled in its executive MBA and the evening MBA programhas 161. "We are not a theoreticalp shop," says Dan Fogel, dean of Charlotte program for 's Babcock School of Management, wherer 170 students are enrolledr in its eveningMBA program. "We help peoplwe practice, so relevance is something we worrhy about allthe time.
" Area business schools take a variety of stepsd to make their offerings such as the use of case studies and the inputy of advisory boards composed of corporate But administrators must balance "contemporary practices with tried-and-true principlews that enable you to analyze anything that comews up in the future," Fogel "These don't change, and while applications and content have to be we want to stay away from fads," he "We'll conduct lots of researc h before we'll change our base I don't apologize for using case studies that are 20 yearas old, for they are classic examplex of these principles.
" Among them, Fogelo explains, are accounting rulesw and analysis of financial statements. The basicx of building a business -- developing a marketin g position, implementing it and defending its marketspace -- don'tt change. has its own take on givingy students hands-on experience to put business principlesinto action. In the Student-Managesd Investment Fund class, classmates manage several hundred thousand dollars ofthe university'sd endowment from an actual trading floor on campus. "Thisw is real money that belonga tothe university," says Ron director of graduate programs at UNC Charlotte's Belk College of Business.
He says the class often outperforms the There are about 300 students inthe school's full-timd and part-time MBA programs. There's a number of more traditional routes business schools take to keep theidrdegrees relevant. One way Queens maintains its "pragmatic Berry says, is by hiring faculty with industry experience and by encouraging teachers to maintain consulting Other colleges dothe "Consulting keeps our faculty fresh and createw additional linkages to the people who send students to our Fogel says. Robert Spear, director of the MBA prograjm at , agrees with this approach.
"Byu working in the industry, our faculty memberss stay in touchwith reality, and they keep a good fingefr on the pulse of what is relevant and what is Pfeiffer has more than 500 students in its evening and online programs at its Charlotte Discussing case studies -- eightf to 12-page analyses of real-world business challenge s -- is a common teaching tool. "Case studies provider a much better appreciation for the richness of a situation than an abstraction created through computerized Berry says. "They are a way of teaching outside the AtWake Forest, Fogel says, faculty members are encouragee to write those studies themselves.
"Our basis is research, and that keepsd you fresh, inquisitive and questioning. A good university generatesa knowledge anddisseminates it." Administrators also listen to theitr advisory boards and survey graduatees on the usefulness of course offerings. But too, is not just an academic and administrators use the feedback to tweakthe "It's an ongoing process," Spear At Queens, Berry has movedx courses in business strategy and finance to an earliert point in the two-year programn and added a short courses on the history of business. "Wre never teach the same curricula two yearws ina row. It creates an administrativre nightmare, but it is pedagogicallyt useful.
If you teach people to get out ofthe box, you need to get out of it During a discussion of UNC Charlotte'zs MBA curriculum at an advisory boards meeting last year, members told Veith they wanted more emphasias on effective communications and critical decision-making skills. They also wanted more time spentr on businessethics -- not in a single but integrated into every course in the program and supplemented by outside And although international business is a required board members thought it, too, was a subjecgt that needed to be woven into all courses, whether management or finance. Local colleges also look at what othert schoolsare doing.
Veith says the University of Californiq at Berkeley has added a requirement that students must demonstrate writing competencew to graduate and provides assistance to helpstudentx improve. Although UNC Charlotte hasn't made writing skillw a requirement, it does offerr writing workshops and seminarxs forMBA students. Sometimes the respons to industry needs can be totallynew programs. The Belk Collegr will debut a MBA concentration this fall in sportas marketingand management. In addition to the MBA concentration in real estatde financeand development, it will also offer a graduate certificatd in the subject.
The universityu has also gone beyond the MBA to respondd to the needs of the bankinv industry by offeringa master's in math Pfeiffer takes their response a step further, offering customizedr MBA programs for companies that enrol a minimum of 20 students. Classes are often held at the firm's location.