MBA Course Curriculum

Online MBA Core Courses

MBA 6315 Accounting for Executives (3 credits)

Critical analysis and application of accounting principles, and building on those principles to maximize value creation. Bridging accounting and financial disciplines with strategic focus of an organization, and understanding the external forces impacting that particular organization.

MBA 6320 Descriptive Analytics (3 credits)

Business analytics can be subcategorized into three primary fields of study. These fields include descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. Descriptive analytics serves as a foundation to all other forms of analytics. The primary goal of this course is to provide students with the skills to effectively summarize, visualize, and manage data within software environments that are commonly used in various business contexts. In this course, topics include, but are not limited to, measures of central location, measures of dispersion, discrete and continuous probability distributions, hypothesis tests, as well as data visualization. In addition, students are introduced to predictive and prescriptive analytics topics for business applications.

MBA 6335 Managerial Finance (3 credits)

Managerial Finance is an integrated application of accounting and economic principles to the financial functions of business. The course covers financial analysis, basic investing concepts, risk and return, time value of money, capital structure, and capital budgeting.

MBA 6340 Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management (3 credits)

A strategic and analytical approach to complex behavioral problems involving interactions among individuals, groups and organizational structure. Includes an exploration of the design and implementation of management practices as a basis for aligning human resource practices to support and advance strategy implementation and control for the organization.

MBA 6350 Strategic Marketing (3 credits)

MBA 6350 focuses on understanding basic marketing principles, exploring the linkages between marketing strategy and tactics, and learning strategic issues in marketing. Students analyze situations and develop strategic marketing recommendations by exploring the complex, dynamic environment in which all marketing activities take place. Students understand, apply, evaluate, and analyze information and situations through the marketing lens.

MBA 6360 Strategic Use of Information Systems (3 credits)

Provides a broad view of information systems by integrating organizational and technical perspectives. Focuses on the multitude of current information systems types, associated issues, and impacts on individuals, organizations, and business in general. This course provides students with an introduction to information systems, oriented toward fundamental principles and concepts rather than technical aspects of information systems.

MBA 6370 Operations Management (3 credits)

Covers many of the key concepts and tools of operations management and will apply these to many of the issues faced by firms today.

MBA 6380 Strategy (3 credits)

Students are asked to view organizations from the perspective of the top management team. In particular, the course will address approaches to assessing the organization, analyzing its context, and setting an effective overall direction for it.

MBA 6912 Applied Business Experience (CAPSM) (1-3 credits)

Students will apply their course material from the MBA program to a consulting or simulated business experience. Students will define a business problem to address, assess the organization and its context, and suggest solutions and an action plan for implementing the solution.

Professional MBA Core Courses

MBA 6315 Accounting for Executives (3 credits)

Critical analysis and application of accounting principles, and building on those principles to maximize value creation. Bridging accounting and financial disciplines with strategic focus of an organization, and understanding the external forces impacting that particular organization.

MBA 6320 Descriptive Analytics (3 credits)

Business analytics can be subcategorized into three primary fields of study. These fields include descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. Descriptive analytics serves as a foundation to all other forms of analytics. The primary goal of this course is to provide students with the skills to effectively summarize, visualize, and manage data within software environments that are commonly used in various business contexts. In this course, topics include, but are not limited to, measures of central location, measures of dispersion, discrete and continuous probability distributions, hypothesis tests, as well as data visualization. In addition, students are introduced to predictive and prescriptive analytics topics for business applications.

MBA 6335 Managerial Finance (3 credits)

Managerial Finance is an integrated application of accounting and economic principles to the financial functions of business. The course covers financial analysis, basic investing concepts, risk and return, time value of money, capital structure, and capital budgeting.

MBA 6340 Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management (3 credits)

A strategic and analytical approach to complex behavioral problems involving interactions among individuals, groups and organizational structure. Includes an exploration of the design and implementation of management practices as a basis for aligning human resource practices to support and advance strategy implementation and control for the organization.

MBA 6350 Strategic Marketing (3 credits)

MBA 6350 focuses on understanding basic marketing principles, exploring the linkages between marketing strategy and tactics, and learning strategic issues in marketing. Students analyze situations and develop strategic marketing recommendations by exploring the complex, dynamic environment in which all marketing activities take place. Students understand, apply, evaluate, and analyze information and situations through the marketing lens.

MBA 6360 Strategic Use of Information Systems (3 credits)

Provides a broad view of information systems by integrating organizational and technical perspectives. Focuses on the multitude of current information systems types, associated issues, and impacts on individuals, organizations, and business in general. This course provides students with an introduction to information systems, oriented toward fundamental principles and concepts rather than technical aspects of information systems.

MBA 6370 Operations Management (3 credits)

Covers many of the key concepts and tools of operations management and will apply these to many of the issues faced by firms today.

MBA 6380 Strategy (3 credits)

Students are asked to view organizations from the perspective of the top management team. In particular, the course will address approaches to assessing the organization, analyzing its context, and setting an effective overall direction for it.

MBA 6912 Applied Business Experience (CAPSM) (1-3 credits)

Students will apply their course material from the MBA program to a consulting or simulated business experience. Students will define a business problem to address, assess the organization and its context, and suggest solutions and an action plan for implementing the solution.

Finance Concentration

MBA 6345 Financial Markets and Institutions (3 credits)

Introduces macroeconomic issues and concepts that a manager has to understand and adapt to. An overview is provided of the structure and functioning of financial markets. Also addressed: how to frame economic issues within the rest of the external environment.

MBA 6355 Investments (3 credits)

Covers the principles used by investors to identify and evaluate various investment alternatives in forming investment portfolios. The topics include sources of investment information, relationship between investment risks and returns, portfolio theory, portfolio performance evaluation, analysis and valuation of securities (the main focus is on common stocks), and investor and market behavior.

MBA 6365 Advanced Corporate Finance (3 credits)

The course provides students with a deeper understanding of corporate finance. Specifically, we explore and discuss the following topics: capital structure, dividend policy, both long-term and short-term financing, risk management at the firm level, and some special topics. The course provides students with the skills necessary for a career in financial management. This course combines real-world examples from the Wall Street Journal and recent academic articles with the financial management strategies outlined in the text. In short, students will be able to address key company specific questions about the firm’s strategy and ability to fund its operations, while at the same time managing and incorporating risk management to maximize shareholder wealth.

Health Care Concentration

IHS 5200 Foundations of Leadership in Healthcare (3 credits)

This course includes the examination of the core leadership competencies required to serve in contemporary healthcare organizations. Explores key concepts in understanding organizational culture(s) and the skills required to build and sustain effective teams.

IHS 5201 Quality, Safety & Service in Healthcare Leadership (3 credits)

This course examines the issues related to the leader’s role in developing and executing quality, safety, and service and the interdependence of these strategies on outcomes in healthcare.

IHS 5202 Financial Innovation and Growth Strategies in Healthcare (3 credits)

This course examines the basic financial management skills and accounting processes unique to the healthcare delivery system and the responsibilities of managers and leaders in applying them. In addition, this course will explore the specifics of revenue-generating strategies through growth and innovation in healthcare.

Executive Management Concentration

MBA 6560 Analytics for Executives (3 credits)

This analytics course is designed for today’s business executive seeking competitive advantage through leveraging analytics across the organization. Students will adopt the executive’s vantage point as they address progressing an organization through analytics maturity as well as making the most effective investments in people, data, systems, and organizational structure. Planning the analytics project lifecycle, developing a data-driven culture, personnel management, and opportunity identification will be addressed. Students will prepare to harness analytics from the executive point of view within the context of application from corporate to non-profit organizations.

MBA 6425 Leadership and Change Management (3 credits)

Addresses topics related to effective leadership with respect to organizational change processes. The goal of the course is to provide students with a constructive and reflective sense of the challenges posed by organizational change, as well as tools and approaches for coping with (and adapting to) the ongoing pressures that inspire the need for change.

MBA 6525 Ethics in Leadership (3 credits)

Provides students with an introduction to key concepts related to business ethics, placing a special emphasis on issues that arise in the global environment. Important decision-making frameworks are introduced, and the strengths and weaknesses of these frameworks are are discussed. Cases based on real-world situations are employed so that students can practice applying ethical frameworks in their own decision-making processes.

Business Analytics Concentration

MBA 6390 Predictive Analytics (3 credits)

Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of statistical and machine learning techniques and applications within business environments. The primary goal of this course is to discover and apply relationships found within historic datasets in order to make predictions about the future or otherwise unknown events. In this hands-on course, students are introduced to concepts related to constructing, testing, and applying predictive models in various business settings. From this perspective, students utilize software tools in order to conduct an analysis of continuous, classification, and clustering models.

MBA 6395 Business Intelligence (3 credits)

This course provides a broad overview of business intelligence and data management including database fundamentals, business intelligence approaches, data management/data governance strategies, data mining and other business/data analytics techniques. Our primary emphasis will be on the managerial perspective, focusing on how you can design, implement and leverage business intelligence systems and strategies in a management role.

MBA 6325 Prescriptive Analytics (3 credits)

Prescriptive analytics includes a variety of topics related to decision-making within the context of business problems and applications. The primary goal of this course is to develop a model of a business scenario within a software environment. Students employ mathematical techniques that support or automate a course of action that should be taken by decision-makers. In this hands-on course, students are introduced to concepts related to constructing, testing, and applying prescriptive models and techniques that are common in business settings. From this perspective, students utilize software tools in order to apply a variety of decision-making techniques, including optimization and simulation.

Operations & Supply Chain Management Concentration

MGT 5021 Management of Lean Six Sigma Programs (3 credits)

Organizations are under increasing pressure to be better, faster, and cheaper. This pressure has driven many organizations to adopt process improvement methodologies, like Lean Six Sigma, to increase quality and decrease costs. This course is designed to equip students with the foundation of theoretical knowledge and skills necessary to manage Lean Six Sigma programs. The course integrates basic learning (through readings and lectures) with real world examples. After completing this course, students should understand how to effectively manage and navigate a process improvement program.

MGT 5023 Supply Chain Risk Management (3 credits)

Properly addressing risks and facing possible disruptions are of primary importance to supply chain management. With the wake of high consequence disruptive events, risk identification and disruption response activities have become ever more critical. The objective of the course is to provide an overview of key supply chain risk areas, particularly with the proliferation of outsourcing, use of information technology and global logistics. Equally important is how companies are managing the preparation, mitigation and response strategies to major disruptive events. Topics covered include science of catastrophes, vulnerability and threat assessments, resources and capabilities identification/integration, basic crisis management, contingency planning, disaster recovery, and business continuity in supply chain settings.

MGT 5025 Project Management (3 credits)

Projects are major undertakings that have a defined lifetime and a specific outcome, undertaken with limited resources. As such, they require a unique approach to management and administration, and it is important to understand and appreciate the techniques and concepts used for successful project management in business organizations. Strategically managing projects combines technical skills with behavioral approaches as well. This course covers issues related to successful project management in business organizations and provides an opportunity for students to learn and apply tools and concepts of project management. This course guides students through the fundamental project management tools and managerial behavior skills necessary to successfully launch, lead, and realize benefits from projects.

Accounting Concentration

ACCT 5010 Intermediate Accounting Concepts (3 credits)

This course studies the conceptual framework of accounting, disclosure standards for general purpose financial statements, and measurement standards for cash, receivables, inventories, tangible and intangible operating assets, investments, liabilities, and associated revenues and expenses, including application of compound interest techniques. Measurement and reporting standards for contingencies, stockholders’ equity, and special problems associated with revenue recognition are also studied.

ACCT 5020 Advanced Accounting Concepts I (3 credits)

This course studies advanced accounting topics in the following areas: Managerial Accounting, Cost Accounting, Taxation and Accounting Information Systems.

ACCT 5030 Advanced Accounting Concepts II (3 credits)

This course studies advanced accounting topics in the following areas: Auditing, Forensic Accounting and Fraud Examination, Advanced Financial Accounting and Governmental/Not-for-Profit Accounting.

Project Management Concentration

PM 6100 Project Management I (3 credits)

This course is the first part for the Project Management course sequence. Students learn the skills, tools, and strategies required to meet the needs of managing complex projects. The topics in the course include initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing projects as well as project integration management, scope management, time management, cost management, human resource management, communications management, and risk management.

PM 6200 Project Management II (3 credits)

This course is the second part of the Project Management course sequence. In this class, students learn the skills, tools, and strategies required to meet the needs of managing complex projects. The topics in the course include initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing projects as well as project integration management, scope management, time management, cost management, human resource management, communications management, and risk management.

PM 6500 Change and Risk Management (3 credits)

This course is an investigation of both risk and change management as it relates to project management. The topics in the course include initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing projects. The concepts of project risk and change management are presented, and students have opportunities to develop risk and change management plans.

Strategic Selling & Sales Leadership Concentration

MBA 6300 Building and Developing Customer Relationships (3 credits)

The course addresses topics related to building and developing effective relationships at the customer interface. The goal is to help students develop and practice skills in the areas of interpersonal communications, negotiations, creating value and product solutions, presentation, asking questions, active listening, determining customer needs, and identifying & qualifying prospects. Role-plays and interactive exercises are employed in order to help students apply the knowledge to real-world situations. Cases are also employed on certain topics such as ethics and negotiation.

MBA 6400 Sales Leadership (3 credits)

The course gives students a complete picture of the scientific principles and issues revolving around the management of a field sales force regionally and internationally. Accordingly, the course deals with discussing the sales function and its relationship with a firm’s marketing program, crafting a sales strategy, and setting sales objectives. It also focuses on performing important decisions such as recruiting, hiring, training, compensating salespeople, and implementing a sales program. Cases based on real-world situations and a sales management simulation are employed so that students practice applying tools and frameworks in their own decision-making processes.

MBA 6500 Sales Analytics (3 credits)

The course focuses on building hard/quantitative skills sales professionals need in order to make decisions both inside their firm and at the customer interface. Specifically, the course builds skills in the areas of strategic account identification/selection, calculating customer-centric metrics such as customer lifetime value (CLV), customer risk analysis, customer acquisition and retention metrics, sales forecasting and opportunity management, performance analysis, sales resource allocation, and analyzing and evaluating sales territories. Students use datasets and software to make decisions about important problems sales professionals face in their work. Cases based on real-world situations are also employed so that students practice the application of theoretical knowledge.

Business Venturing & Entrepreneurship Concentration

MGT 5070 Managing Innovation and Corporate Entrepreneurship (3 credits)

This course focuses on how large organizations manage innovation, technology commercialization and entrepreneurship. Key activities and processes are explored in the class, including innovation management, research and development, technology commercialization, corporate entrepreneurship, incubation, corporate venturing and corporate venture capital. The class also engages students in practical projects associated with innovation and entrepreneurship within companies.

MGT 5071 Ideation, Concept Development and Business Models (3 credits)

In this class students learn how to use common tools and techniques to generate, validate and assess new venture ideas. The class is principally practical focusing on ideation efforts and engages students in a process of screening, validating and building new business concepts. Students in this class learn how to use the business model canvas and other lean launch techniques to validate their business models. Critical skills, such as, pitching and selling concepts are acquired.

MGT 5072 New Venture Creation (3 credits)

Students focus on detailed planning and validation of new ventures. This class uses a business planning format to engage student teams in industrial analysis, market research, sales and marketing planning, operations and financial planning for a new venture concept. Students learn key aspects of venture planning and acquire skills in business planning, market research and investment due diligence presentations and processes.