Johns Hopkins University's Carey Business School plans to launch a full-time MBA program for graduate students in 2010.
The Carey Business School, which was established last year after the School of Professional Students in Business and Education became two separate departments, currently offers most of its MBA programs on a part-time basis.
"The only full-time MBA program right now is the MBA/MPH degree which is in conjunction with the Bloomberg School of Public Health," said Patrick Ercolano, the Communication Associate for the Carey Business School.
This will change in the near future. The new MBA program, which is set to be implemented by Hopkins in fall 2010 and will be accepting students in the spring 2010, promises to be groundbreaking and unique.
"The new MBA program will be unlike any that currently exists in the world. It will be a two-year full-time residency program designed to grow ethically [aware] entrepreneurial managers to thrive in a complex global economy," Phil Phan, professor and Vice Dean of the Carey Business School, wrote in an e-mail.
"The name for the program is the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Global MBA," Ercolano said.
Currently there is a large variety of MBA degrees at Hopkins. According to the Carey Business School Web site, Hopkins awards part-time MBAs in Life Sciences, Organization Development, Medical Services Management, MBA/ MSN Nursing, MBA/MA in Government, MBA/MA in Communication and MBA/MS in Biotechnology.
Hopkins has historically offered business programs part-time.
"For the past century, Hopkins has been offering business education to part-time students," Ercolano said.
"Business degrees at Hopkins have been largely pursued by people who are already professionals," Ercolano said. "Those professionals don't have time for a full-time education."
The new full-time degree is aimed at a different group. In addition to teaching students traditional MBA courses like marketing and advertising, professors at the Carey Business School will also emphasize the effects of science, technology and other branches of academics on business. One of the most important aspects of the Global MBA program is its focus on many interdisciplinary areas.
"The core MBA knowledge will still be in the program. It is still an MBA, but it will be delivered by multidisciplinary teaching teams consisting of world renowned researchers, and practiced faculty with deep experience," Phan wrote.
The new MBA curriculum will be rigorous, but ultimately worthwhile to those pursuing a career in business. In the first year of the Global MBA residency, students will learn the basics of business.
"Students will take six-year-long modules designed around the growth cycle of the first year (emergence, growth, maturity, renewal and change, managing across boundaries, technology commercialization) into which business tools, concepts and skills will be delivered in a multidisciplinary fashion, according to the managerial tasks facing leaders such as acquiring and managing money, acquiring and managing people, acting ethically, managing conflict, managing risk and so forth," Phan wrote.
In the next year, students are expected to study certain business sectors and incorporate the tools they learned the first year into their studies.
"Students have the opportunity to specialize in high-demand industry verticals, such as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, information and communications technology, finance and banking and health care," Phan wrote. "They combine these verticals with deep knowledge in marketing, finance, corporate venture or human resources."
Furthermore, during their residency, students will spend time working with real world businesspeople to find solutions to economic problems.
"The formal curriculum is fused to a number of required extracurricular activities, such as the Carey International Humane Project, which will partner small teams with students from public health, nursing, medicine, engineering and so on, for short overseas assignments where Hopkins has humanitarian projects around the world," Phan wrote.
The key goal behind Hopkins's Global MBA program is to produce businesspeople who are going to be actively engaging the world.
"The end result is an MBA who can manage and thrive in uncertainty, find opportunity in crisis, is supremely confident of their technical skills in a functional discipline and has deep insight into one or more 21st century industries," Phan wrote.
Hopkins's MBA program will be competing with the top ten MBA programs in the country and expects to be highly selective. Phan anticipates an entering class of 80 students with a stream of 160 students per year, after its inaugural class.
"Especially in this time, with all the challenges confronting the world - problems about the environment, health and wealth - the idea behind the new Hopkins MBA program is to create an individual with business skills to address problems around the world," Ercolano said. "That's what the word 'Global' in our MBA degree is about."
