After a decade or so of study, of listening to our students and corporate friends, we launched our new, fully online MBA program in Fall 2021. Our experience with COVID and with this new program has led us to fully rethink our MBA programs. Our new approach is captured in the phrase: MBA Your Way. It places the learner, the student, at the center of the experience and properly grants the student enormous flexibility in selecting how to earn the degree.
The easiest way to envision the change is to realize that there were previously three programs and, once a person engaged in one program (Online, Part-Time or Full Time), it was hard to take courses in the other programs. We are removing the artificial barriers between those programs. We are in the process of modifying the UConn course catalog and admissions materials to reflect this, but operationally it is effective now.
Course modality no longer matters. Accounting, taught face-to-face or online, daytime or nighttime, synchronous or asynchronous, is still accounting. Students must still have proper preparation, but how they prefer to learn is up to them.
Many of our students are adult learners who must blend work and study. They sometimes prefer face-to-face learning and sometimes need the flexibility of online or mixed mode delivery. We want them to be free to integrate their learning into their lives. Thus, we will often offer the same content in multiple formats.
It is also true that some content is well suited to a traditional 15-week semester with two classes each week. Other content is well suited to three-hour sessions on consecutive days. MBA Your Way is constructed to make offering such options easy and transparent.
We will be holding open sessions to discuss these changes and updating our website to communicate about them, including frequently asked questions. One question which has emerged already is: what about existing students in the current two-year, full-time MBA program? We will continue to offer the courses and opportunities that our existing students expect and need to complete their degrees. They will be fully served, while we re-shape the UConn MBA for maximum flexibility going forward.
Only a few days remain to register for the popular Negotiations Case Competition and management professor Nora Madjar expects this year’s event, like years past, will draw some of the brightest MBA and law students at UConn.Continue Reading
What started as a good-will gesture, helping low-income people get their tax refunds, turned into a transformative personal and professional experience for UConn accounting professor Leanne Adams.Continue Reading
Pam Lewis and her team at Connect-Us are fierce advocates for teenagers and young adults in Bridgeport, and the programs they run have been extremely successful.
Connect-Us accepts students and young adults, regardless of academic achievements, if they have a true desire to excel.
“Our programs reach young people in Bridgeport who do not have access to the same connections, resources, and opportunities as their peers who are growing up in other, more affluent areas of Fairfield County,” said Lewis, the founder and CEO.
“Through Connect-Us, young people in Bridgeport have new experiences with each other, with business professionals, and with adult volunteers,” she said. “They take new risks and learn skills that can be applied to their future, whether that’s going to college, entering the workforce, or any number of paths.”Continue Reading
With Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) exploding in growth and professional intrigue, the School of Business offered a financial conference to explore the business model, its advantages, and challenges.
Some 275 people participated in the UConn SPAC Conference, believed to be the first university-sponsored conference of its kind in the nation.Continue Reading
For every 300 kilograms of rich, flavorful coffee beans Rinjani Mountain Coffee growers pick on their farm in Indonesia, about 100 kilograms are unusable husks, suitable only for composting.
Or so co-owner Brett Tagrin thought.
That was before he saw the myriad opportunities to repurpose the waste byproducts dreamed up by resourceful students in the 2021 UConn International Business Case Challenge. Hosted by the School of Business for the eleventh year, the competition brought teams of undergrads from around the world to compete virtually by solving real-life business issues, and boosted their global expertise in the process.Continue Reading
The holiday season provides a good opportunity for busy executives and students, alike, to catch up on some of the best books of the year. We asked prominent Connecticut business leaders and members of our UConn faculty what business-focused book they would most highly recommend from 2021. Here are their selections: