Heller MBA Curriculum

MANAGING ORGANIZATIONS with a social mission, whether in the non-profit, public or for-profit sector, requires many skills -- mobilizing people from diverse backgrounds, delivering quality services while using resources efficiently, achieving organizational financial health and accountability, understanding the political, economic and policy forces that shape the world, evaluating and continuously improving an organization's performance, and developing a vision into a reality.

Through required and elective courses, students master the working knowledge needed to meet the practical challenges they will face when managing for a social mission.

• Finance and Accounting Series

  Acquire financial skills through a rigorous sequence of courses in accounting and finance.

• Organizational and Operations Management

  Analyze case studies and build management foundations from strategic planning to marketing, from human resource management to leadership, organizational behavior, and more.

• Social Justice

  Develop a vision for social change and learn to analyze research and policies that form the basis for that change. Expand your knowledge with a frameworks course on social policy and one on social justice; learn to analyze, evaluate and advocate for sound knowledge-based social policies.

• Managing the Triple Bottom Line

  Learn program evaluation methods to assess social outcomes that may be difficult to quantify. Organizations need to think about and be judged by their performance in three spheres—financial, environmental, and social. In recent years, more and more companies have been thinking about the triple bottom line and there is increasing pressure for them to do so. Students will also learn to apply methods of participatory management to engage stakeholders -- staff, community, even clients -- to meet desired social outcomes and provide quality human services.

• Concentrations

  Acquire a broad understanding of nonprofit management from one of several concentrations.

• Practical Experience

  Learn about real-life practices and problems through class projects with external organizations, case studies, and the Team Consulting Project.

• Team Consulting Project

  Complete your degree with a semester-long project working in a team with other students to address a current management challenge confronting a mission-based organization in the non-profit, for-profit, or public sector.

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