The Skinner School of Business
The Skinner School of Business (SSB) includes the Department of Business Administration and the Department of Information Technology. The Skinner School of Business (SSB) offers undergraduate and graduate programs in business and information technology. The Department of Business Administration offers the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree with concentrations in accounting, community development, information technology, E-commerce, digital multimedia communication, music business, marketing and management. The Department of Information Technology offers the Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Information Technology with concentrations in digital graphic design and multimedia, web development, and specialized computing for traditional students. The Skinner School of Business also offers nontraditional baccalaureate and master's degree programs in management, business administration, and information technology for working adult students. Graduate business programs are offered leading to the following degrees: Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master of Science in Management (MSM), and Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) .
A major goal of the school is to enable students to develop strong competencies in their chosen career fields, thereby preparing them to make positive contributions to their professions and society. Programs focus on fulfilling the mission of the University by developing business and technology leaders and managers who understand and appreciate Christ's call to servanthood as the foundation of effective leadership and management.
General Description
The graduate programs are innovatively designed based on the lifestyle and needs of today's highly mobile graduate business students. The curriculum requires few prerequisites and has an integrated, applications-based qualitative and quantitative focus. The curriculum promotes a learning environment where students use an integrated systems approach to hone organizational management and leadership skills and techniques. This approach encourages students to view problems from many perspectives and to identify comprehensive business solutions that incorporate key issues such as strategic planning, globalization, and market and product development within the scope of legal environments and business ethics. Students are also challenged to consider critical issues such as normal organizational constraints of human, operational, and financial capital in their decision making processes. Finally, students learn to apply implementation skills including visionary leadership, effective communication, team-building, and change management to an increasingly diverse workforce.
The delivery system is unique as well. The curriculum is modularized, concentrated, and designed specifically for working adults and recent business graduates who desire to incorporate their diverse academic and experiential backgrounds into their learning process.
The MBA Program, composed of 36 semester hours, takes approximately 22 months to complete. Note that the program is also available in a 13-month *accelerated format*. The MSM Program is composed of 30 semester hours and takes approximately 18 months to complete. Program courses are designed to strategically build on one another. Each cohort group will move through the program one course at a time, in a lock-step fashion. Classes meet one night each week in four-hour sessions.
Students are a part of a cohort group who will attend all the courses together, forming an important, cohesive support group. Classes are taught seminar/discussion style. The graduate faculty is committed to instructional strategies and assessment methods that allow for maximum synthesis, exploration, and analysis by the students at a graduate level of depth and complexity.
The aim is to extend the students’ knowledge and intellectual maturity and to equip the student with specialized skills and a sense of creative independence that will allow the student to provide effective leadership in any organization. Competency-based evaluation methods, application-based projects, learning contracts, and other individualized instructional techniques are used wherever appropriate.
* If a student in the accelerated program falls below a 3.0 GPA and is placed on academic probation, the student will automatically be moved to a regular MBA cohort. They will take one course at a time for the remainder of their program. This will extend the time it will take to graduate.