Courses

This course is an introduction to the basic concepts, tools, and analytical techniques that are applied in data-driven business decision-making. Students will learn to explore data with graphs, charts, and summary tables. They will explore topics including probability and probability distributions, confidence intervals, and hypothesis testing. Applications of linear regressions and multiple regression using Excel is the final topic in the course.

The core objective for the course is to help students understand the value of data-driven decision-making as managers.

This course exposes graduate management students to the challenges of management decision-making in a complex global context. It highlights ethics, social responsibility, and sustainability as described in the School of Business’s mission.

Developmental competency areas include critical thinking, creative problem-solving, emotional intelligence, multiple perspectives, global mindset, change management, practice-oriented research, and managerial communications.

This course presents a comprehensive introduction to financial accounting concepts, generally accepted accounting principles, and the accounting framework. The course begins with an orientation to the basic financial statements that provide information to external parties for decision-making. It also covers the accounting information system used to record the transactions reflected in those statements.

An emphasis is placed on proper recording as well as financial statement preparation and analysis. Income statements, balance sheets, retained earnings statements, and the statement of cash flows are also discussed.

This course is designed to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to exercise leadership in today’s global organizations. Students will gain the tools needed to lead organizational members to attain individual, team, and organizational goals.

Topics include working and leading across cultures, building and maintaining effective teams, understanding leader characteristics and behaviors, exercising leadership and influence, empowering and motivating others, managing diversity, creating effective organizational structures, and leading change. Course readings and highly interactive activities (case studies and exercises) are used to enhance students’ leadership skills.

This course provides students with a business orientation to analytics in organizations. It provides a comprehensive understanding of the organizational context, information systems infrastructure, and management applications that drive and support business analytics.

The objectives of this course are to ensure that students are able to:

• identify ways to improve strategic positioning through deploying technologies and associated organizational changes
• understand technological infrastructure components such as hardware, software, cloud, database, and networking technologies
• identify core business function areas and key performance metrics for analytics applications
• plan for and manage the acquisition and maintenance of the information resources

In addition, students will also learn how to improve security, lower risks, and deal with issues such as information privacy and ethics. The course utilizes business cases and hands-on exercises for exploring, analyzing, and visualizing business data, developing actionable solutions to business problems, and communicating key results to stakeholders.

This course provides the fundamental marketing principles and practices underlying a successful business enterprise. Students will learn the tools, concepts, analytical frameworks, and skills for making marketing decisions and designing marketing programs.

The course covers the processes and activities involved in effective marketing, as well as the strategic implications of being market-driven. A fundamental goal of the course is to improve students’ critical-thinking and decision-making skills by requiring students to make and defend marketing decisions in the context of realistic, case-oriented, and simulation-based problem situations.

Topics include: segmentation, targeting, positioning, competitive strategy, strategic planning, forecasting, product development, pricing, promotion, and distribution.

Operations management involves the efficient use of resources to create goods or services that satisfy the needs of customers and clients. In both the profit and nonprofit sectors, successful management requires economically rational decisions regarding the design and operation of processes that transform such resources into goods or services.

This course develops students’ abilities to identify and structure operating problems and to identify appropriate techniques for resolving them. Topics covered include: operations strategy, process analysis, location selection, capacity management and utilization, inventory management, quality management/assurance, and project and supply chain management.

This course is an introduction to the basic concepts, principles, and analytical techniques of financial management with a goal of helping the student understand financial markets and financial decisions. Topics covered in this course include: the time-value of money, valuation of corporate securities, valuation of corporate investments, market efficiency, risk and return, capital structure, and corporate governance. The student will also learn how to make simple financial decisions and recognize international differences in corporate governance.

This course utilizes analysis tools from strategic management, economics, finance, operations, marketing, and management in an integrative approach to strategic decision-making. The course introduces students to the tools used to assess industry competitive factors, industry environments, and external environments, which include economic, legal-political, technological, socio-cultural, and natural environment forces. The objectives of the course are to assess the impact of these factors on organizational competitiveness and long-term success, as well as to develop and grow critical-thinking skills.

For some time, management experts such as Tom Peters in The Wow Project have been predicting that “white collar” work will become more and more project based. This trend is clear in many professions and industries including accounting, architecture, construction, consulting, implementation of mergers and acquisitions, law, new product introduction, etc. Individuals and managers in “operational” positions are being challenged to do more, i.e., take on and manage a project to drive innovation in the organization.

The course will cover tools and techniques necessary for successful management and completion of projects. Students will learn about project management concepts, challenges, needs identification, proposed solutions, risk assessment/management, project planning, scheduling, project control techniques, project team management, communication, change management responsibilities, documentation, and web-based project management software. In addition, project management as a possible career path will be discussed.

The course explores different facets of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and various perspectives in an objective manner enabling students to gain a broader and deeper understanding of the topic.

The approach taken is to build a foundation of knowledge of CSR, then discuss how CSR is applied in different arenas of the business world, the workplace, the marketplace, the community, and the ecological environment.

Based on this, we examine the essential components of CSR management in terms of specific responsibilities and best practices and apply them in a real-world experience by helping a client. Social responsibility topics include: community involvement and development, environment, human rights, fair operating practices, labor practices, and consumer issues.

This course will cover the what, why, and how of major digital marketing approaches, including search engine optimization, search and display ads, social media, and online listening/monitoring. The course will also cover the key performance indicators and basic tools used to evaluate the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns, including Google Analytics and online experiments.

This course provides a quantitative and qualitative approach to understanding and harnessing tools in digital marketing analytics to meet business objectives. The course is designed to get students to think like a digital-marketing professional, and to give students experience with industry-relevant, hands-on assignments and exercises.

The business landscape of the twenty-first century is evolving to encompass a rapidly expanding segment of consumers concerned with their impact on the global quality of life. This awakening breed of new consumers has created the need for a new marketing paradigm: “sustainable marketing.”

This course defines the role of sustainable marketing and its key objectives. It also examines segmentation strategies and marketing activities to produce opportunities for Green products, services, and socially positive brands. Major topic areas covered within this course include:

• Sustainable marketing segmentation
• Sustainability-driven consumptions trends
• Eco-innovation strategies for products and services
• The sustainable marketing mix
• Competing for emerging green markets
• Sustainable consumer behavior
• Socially positive branding

The course is designed to develop understanding, techniques, and skills necessary to analyze annual reports and 10-K filings of business entities, and develop critical assessment of their financial conditions. The course provides thorough understanding of the U.S. accounting standards, and nuances of their use in practice. Students learn different analytical techniques and complete a major project based on concepts and methods studied in the course.

The goal of this course is to cultivate students’ capability to structure and present a rigorous analysis that supports a recommendation to make a capital investment.

Across the sectors of the economy, investors must understand complex and evolving markets and regulations, available funding sources, and business models to fully evaluate risks and opportunities and make smart capital investment decisions.

Students will work as interdisciplinary teams to apply corporate and project finance skills, capital budgeting and asset valuation, and risk analysis in order to propose, analyze, and defend a capital investment opportunity. The class project will be structured as a consulting engagement. By the end of the semester, students will understand how to model the capital structures commonly used to fund projects; apply the capital budgeting and risk analysis techniques that professionals use to make investment decisions; apply basic project management principles and tools to the completion of complex analysis; and present and defend a recommendation to make a capital investment.

This course serves as an introduction and overview of database management systems from a managerial perspective. The learning objectives will be to acquire a comprehensive understanding of the basic concepts of database design, as well as develop practical skills for utilizing databases to their fullest extent. Correct database design will be emphasized both as a theoretical foundation and a practical necessity.

The following topics are the focus of the course:

• High-level and general database concepts and design
• Designing, creating, and manipulating an individual relational database
• Interpreting and applying client database needs
• Discussion and application of the best practices of User Interface Design to database applications
• New developments and trends in databases