Accounting

All organizations rely on accounting information to make decisions. Accounting courses emphasize the analysis of accounting information for strategic operating, financial, and tax decisions. In addition to foundation accounting courses, offerings include financial statement analysis, strategic cost analysis, and taxes and business strategy.

Career opportunities for individuals with accounting skills include professional accounting positions in audit, tax, information systems, and consulting, as well as corporate positions as controllers or financial analysts. The M.B.A. program is not designed for those who seek CPA licensure. M.B.A. students who seek CPA certification must carefully choose their electives, and normally will need to take additional courses to meet the educational requirements to be eligible to sit for the Uniform CPA examination.

Entrepreneurship & Emerging Enterprises

The EEE Program offers a unique M.B.A. concentration that combines themes that are critical for sustainable competitive advantage in any modern industry: entrepreneurial management, innovation, and global leadership. The entrepreneurial process is applied in a variety of organizational contexts. The courses in the concentration are designed to reflect a logical flow. Students first take a core course that establishes a strong entrepreneurial foundation, including what entrepreneurial management is, how to think about entrepreneurship, and the implications of entrepreneurial thinking and acting for a student’s approach to venture opportunities. This is followed by two elective EEE courses. The concentration ends with a capstone experience completed during the final semester, where students integrate all of their M.B.A. learning and apply it to the actual creation and implementation of an entrepreneurial concept.

The entrepreneurship concentration is intended as a comprehensive student experience. Accordingly, the program incorporates a number of pedagogical innovations and extracurricular initiatives. In addition to lectures, elective courses will expose students to presentations from entrepreneurs, participation in a novel creativity program, field consulting with existing small businesses, work in local business incubators, hands-on case studies, work with small businesses in completing an entrepreneurial audit, consulting to entrepreneurial family businesses, and the conceptualization and implementation of a new business idea together with a complete business plan and a pitch to a source of venture financing. Students are invited to enter business plans in the Panasci Business Plan Competition, an annual campus-wide competition with more than $40,000 in awards for winners, and other on-campus entrepreneurship competitions. Student initiated ventures can also operate in the Couri Entrepreneurial Hatchery. Each student in the program can be assigned to a successful entrepreneur, who will serve as a mentor. The D’Aniello Entrepreneurial Internship provides students with hands-on experience in an entrepreneurial venture.

Finance

The study and understanding of finance is an integral component of decision-making in all areas of business. Finance is a global, dynamic and exciting discipline. It offers a unique blend of theory and practical applications. Students studying finance should have excellent knowledge of economics and accounting, be able to use quantitative tools, and be willing to function in a world full of challenges and uncertainty. Thus they become members of a profession that can be both intellectually and professionally rewarding. Offerings include courses in financial management, investments, securities markets, international financial management, distress investing, portfolio management, real estate finance, fixed income securities, financial modeling, financial planning, and financial institutions.

The department is also responsible for the offering of statistics courses in the Whitman School. In today’s information age, knowledge of managerial statistics is useful in virtually every functional area of management. The concepts and tools of statistics are used to extract useful information from data to facilitate effective managerial decisions. For example, statistical techniques are used to design marketing studies, sample production units and customers, forecast business and economic conditions, formulate decision models that incorporate risk considerations, model the volatilities in stock returns, and monitor and control performance in a wide variety of managerial processes. The modern manager must be familiar with the assumptions underlying various statistical techniques and should be able to judge their appropriateness in a variety of situations. In addition, he or she should be able to perform selected analyses to voluminous data sets using available computer programs and interpret results in a valid and meaningful way. Courses in managerial statistics prepare students to be both producers and consumers of statistical analyses.

Management

To be successful, organizations must be able to compete in complex and global business environments, and managers must be able to lead within diverse and dynamic workplaces. The Management Department at Whitman offers courses on how organizations, employees, and managers can succeed in meeting today’s business challenges. The Management Department is composed of two areas: management and business law. The faculty members of the Management Department teach courses and conduct research in the areas of strategy, organizational theory, business law, organizational behavior, ethics, leadership, and human resources. The rapidly changing business environment and the growing complexity of organizations, coupled with increased competitive pressures across industries and countries, has made courses from this department important for many careers. The faculty of the Management Department strive to provide the highest-quality classroom experience and have won several teaching awards.

Marketing

The Marketing Department houses two MBA concentrations: Marketing Management and Supply Chain Management. All students of the department are expected to appreciate the interrelatedness of the perspectives of consumers, intermediaries (e.g. retailers, distributors), and suppliers ( e.g. 3PL’s, OEMs, other product or service providers).

The marketing curriculum is flexible and can accommodate interdisciplinary interests. Students can pick and choose from a wide menu of elective courses to build expertise in traditional areas of marketing (product management, marketing communication, and marketing research) and in channel and supply chain management.

Real Estate

The real estate track focuses on the development of a skill set and knowledge base to excel in the increasingly competitive landscape of the real estate industry. Curriculum and practical experiences are designed to help you learn to analyze and understand local tax laws, zoning regulations, school districts, contracts, utilities, transportation and much more. An understanding of real estate fundamentals and the capacity to put that knowledge to work in a changing commercial environment is an emphasis of the program. We prepare you to critically examine real estate financial information from diverse and conflicting sources.