• The MBA+ Degree
• Letter from the Associate Dean
• Focus on Leadership and Innovation
• Leadership Immersion
• Cohorts
• Fast Facts

LEADERSHIP IMMERSION

Imagine you’re the CFO of a major multinational corporation. Your board of directors has given you and the other members of the management team a weekend to craft the structure of your $1 billion company’s six year strategy.

Go.

That’s the premise—and the promise—of the Leadership Immersion course, developed as part of the MBA + revision launched in 2004. The objective of the course, in which MBA + students spend two days role-playing key management positions in a fictional corporation, is to test drive key management competencies and technical knowledge gathered over the first half of the MBA + program. It’s a breathless experience, described by students as “a wild ride,” “hugely intense,” and “one of the most important experiences of my program.” Teams of eight students, each assuming a top management role, struggle, cajole, argue, persuade, and collaborate for two full days as they compete to make the decisions that will put their company on top at the end of the weekend.

Director of MBA + Programs and Leadership Immersion instructor Carolyn McKnight, Ph.D., describes the business simulation as a midway checkpoint in a student’s MBA + education. At the start of the MBA + program, students complete a “360-degree” evaluation to asses their managerial competence and determine their educational goals. In addition to assessing technical competencies, the Leadership Immersion gives students an opportunity to evaluate their performance in terms of their originally stated managerial goals. “It’s a reminder of just how easy it is to slip back into old habits even when we enter an experience intending to practice new leadership competencies,” remarked McKnight. “The overlay of business stressors can take us out of our game. The Leadership Immersion course makes students aware of reverting to old behaviors and guides them in developing crucial leadership competencies.”

Run by McKnight and four faculty facilitators who monitor each team and provide individual evaluation to students, the Leadership Immersion emphasizes real-time feedback for students. The weekend course culminates in presentations from each student group outlining their plans and strategies to a board consisting of School of Business Administration (SBA) Deans and local business executives. Feedback from current business professionals is invaluable for MBA + students.

This is your opportunity to take all that coursework out for a test drive. How well do you use your marketing sills? How strategic is your thinking? Do you really understand ethics as it relates to business? How well developed is your number crunching technique? How are your teamwork skills? If there are weaknesses that need a tune-up, you’ll find out during this course. You’ll also learn how to utilize your strengths and identify your opportunities for improvement, so that you are well prepared to address your whole self when developing your career plan.