The Eli Broad College of Business has launched a new online Master of Science in Management, Strategy and Leadership geared toward professionals who want to work on their management and communication skills, a move college officials hope will bolster leadership capabilities for professionals.
The program aims to help students lead others, think strategically and manage human resources, and is geared toward enhancing the skills of mid-level company managers, said Robert Wiseman, Eli Broad legacy fellow of management and chairperson of the Department of Management.
Wiseman said the program is geared more toward those who work for-profit organizations.
“Some of the knowledge and the framework would apply to any organization, but all research is taken from for-profit businesses,” he said.
The new master’s degree is open for professionals with a bachelor’s degree of any field and who have a three-year supervisory managerial experience.
“It’s more difficult for people to appreciate what they are seeing and hearing without having practical experience,” Wiseman said.
The degree is the first complete online program provided by the College of Business, said Lucy Maillette, director of new academic initiatives of the Broad Business College. The program will be a 30-credit part-time program.
Professor of management John Hollenbeck, who designed the human resources course for the new program, said while online courses don’t have face-to-face interaction, they still are beneficial for students who cannot attend class regularly.
Students will have to complete 15 courses out of the 16 courses currently available. In the future, there will be 19 courses for students to choose from. Enrollment for the program started on Oct. 1. The program will have rolling admission and will start on Jan. 6, 2014.
“The whole idea behind the program is to meet the needs of professionals,” said Maillette, explaining that the new masters degree would provide an alternative to the broader Master of Business Administration.
Maillette said the new degree will combine theory and practice across the area of management allowing professionals to focus on very specific skills.
“A lot of times people find themselves in need for graduate degrees to expand their management,” Maillette said.
Wiseman said there will be two practical capstone projects. The first project is a organizational development exercise that students would need to do within their department at work. Students would work with their supervisors on a development plan for their department and then will report their progress to faculty.
The second capstone project will require students to interview the president of the organization they are working with to understand the main strategy of the company or organization.
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