Online Master of Business Administration Program Guide

Data analysis is rapidly becoming a required skill set for today’s managers in competitive environments. As a decision-maker in business, you are likely to be asked to conduct your own analysis of data or to interpret a report that has been derived by others. In this course, you will have the opportunity to learn how to summarize, visualize, and manage data within software environments that are commonly used in business today. Additionally, techniques that help decision-makers reduce risk and identify opportunities that would provide an individual or a company with a competitive advantage will be reviewed.

This course will provide students with a strategic and analytical approach to complex behavioral problems within organizations. In addition, the design and implementation of management practices for aligning human resource practices and the strategic intent of the organization will be reviewed and discussed.

Introduction to financial reporting concepts and application of fundamental accounting principles is the main emphasis of this course. The curriculum also relates accounting and financial disciplines to the strategic focus of an organization utilizing valuation and managerial accounting concepts.

This course provides an overview of the tools and techniques of financial decision-making. The primary learning objectives of the course include knowing what information is necessary for a manager to make effective financial decisions, understanding the corporation’s role in the financial system including how firms are funded and how the securities used for funding are valued, and how financial information should be analyzed and interpreted in order to make effective and informed business decisions.

This course provides an overview of the tools and techniques of financial decision-making. The primary learning objectives of the course include knowing what information is necessary for a manager to make effective financial decisions, understanding the corporation’s role in the financial system including how firms are funded and how the securities used for funding are valued, and how financial information should be analyzed and interpreted in order to make effective and informed business decisions.

Information systems have always been a critical component of the successful operation and management of organizations. Today, modern information systems are pervasive, and knowledge of how they integrate into businesses to enhance strategies and processes is essential for all positions and functional areas. Advances in digital technologies have resulted in the development of information systems that are radically transforming the nature of managerial work, the structure of organizations, and the way firms operate and compete in the marketplace. Managers must, therefore, have a solid understanding of information technology, its organizational role, and strategic implications. Regardless of your profession or position, you have little choice but to accept and assume responsibility for the innovative and effective use of information technology to enhance your organization's performance. This course is designed to provide the fundamentals necessary to begin this process.

This course explores the strategic management of waiting lines, capacity planning, quality control, inventory planning, and supply chain management. Selected case analysis, problem solving, and decision making tools are used to examine core operations areas in both manufacturing and service settings.

Students bring together lessons from all their prior course work to analyze the firm and its industry, and to formulate and implement strategy. In this course, you will be asked to take the perspective of executives who have overall responsibility for an organization. Concepts discussed include strategy formulation at the corporate and business levels, interrelationships between firms and their environments; corporate governance and strategy implementation issues.

In this course, students will work in teams and apply course material to complete simulated business experience. In this simulation, the teams each run a fictitious firm. They will define a business problem to address, assess the organization and its context, suggest solutions, and deliver an action plan for implementing the solution. Teams compete with one another in a dynamic industry environment. This provides an opportunity to apply many of the concepts learned throughout the program.

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.

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

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.

Some refer to analytics as the new science of winning. It refers to a commitment by top management to the extensive use of data, statistical and quantitative analysis, explanatory and predictive models and fact-based management to drive decisions and actions. This course provides an introduction to analytics and covers spreadsheet modeling for decision-making. It employs techniques from the classical disciplines of statistics and operations research, as well as more recently developed methodologies: data mining, executive information systems, digital dashboards, and online analytical processing. You will be expected to master, at an introductory level, techniques that are at the heart of the competitive posture of many successful organizations.

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

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.

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 will also engage students in practical projects associated with innovation and entrepreneurship within companies.

In this class students will learn how to use common tools and techniques to generate, validate and assess new venture ideas. The class will be principally practical focusing on ideation efforts and will engage students in a process of screening, validating and building new business concepts. Students in this class will 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 will also be acquired.

Students will focus on detailed planning and validation of new ventures. This class will use 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 will learn key aspects of venture planning and will acquire skills in business planning, market research and investment due diligence presentations and processes.

This analytics course is designed for today's business leaders 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.

The ability to effectively manage the tension between stability and change in organizational contexts is a key competency for today’s competitive business leader. This course is designed to equip students with the foundation of theoretical knowledge and skills necessary to achieve competence in this area. Toward this end, this course integrates three types of learning: (1) didactic (theories and concepts from primary sources, articles, and lecture material); (2) critical thinking and analysis (applying theory to organizational cases); and (3) experiential (applying theory to a real organizational simulation; initiating a change leadership development project). Critical thinking and experiential learning are emphasized through hands-on activities, exercises, discussions and cases that will help you to build familiarity with key concepts. We hope you will grow as you study and learn about transformation and change in organizations.

This course provides a broad overview of business ethics. Ethical decision making concepts and frameworks are introduced so that students have fundamental tools to use when dealing with ethical dilemmas. Because such tools are only useful when employed by the user, barriers to ethical decision making are also addressed. Ethical considerations related to a number of specific business topics and functions are analyzed, and organizational business ethics in actual practice is examined. Case studies based on real-world situations are utilized in order for you to practice application of the central ideas of the course.

This course provides a review of concepts, problems, and applications of financial decision making, with an emphasis on equity, fixed income, and derivative and foreign exchange as related to financial markets and institutions.

An overview of portfolio management and investment performance, as well as equity valuation, market efficiency and behavioral issues will be presented in this course. Also, developing risk and return based on portfolio theory and asset pricing models are addressed.

This course covers topics related to a deeper understanding of corporate finance, including capital structure, dividend policy, long-term and short-term financing, and risk management. An overview of how 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, is also provided.

This course focuses on how the U.S. health services system is organized, the internal and external forces on the system, as well as how system services are delivered and financed.

This course provides an overview of the financial administration concepts and tools essential in sustaining viability of various health care organizations, including financial statement analysis, time value of money, cost analysis, budgeting, portfolio theory, asset pricing models, valuation methods, and cost of capital.

This course delves into the relationship between the legal and health care systems, including the roles and rights of key stakeholders of the U.S. health care system.

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.

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 the 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.

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, it is important to understand and appreciate the techniques and concepts used for successful project management. It combines technical skills with behavioral approaches as well. This course will cover issues related to successful project management and will provide 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 behavioral skills necessary to successfully launch, lead, and realize benefits from projects.

Project Management I is focused on the core project management processes. This is a pure project management class and a deep dive into the fundamentals that comprise the project management body.

Project Management II is focused on strategic project management. This class allows project managers to apply project management skills and hone skills in select topic areas, such as agile project management.

Change and Risk Management teaches you how to become a master at implementing your projects. The topics of change and risk are taught in-depth to enable you to master two of the most common causes of project failures.

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

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.

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.