Key Features of the Executive M.B.A. Program

The Executive Coaches & Class Advisor

Six professors and a class advisor are identified before each cohort begins. They meet before the class commences for planning purposes, lead the class during the two day kickoff session, and remain in contact throughout the entire program. 

Executive coaches are members of the faculty team and assist you throughout the program to facilitate learning new behavior for personal growth and professional advancement.  They help integrate the content and the experiences of each cohort and advise the students on conducting and completing each module's application project including the module six strategic management projects.

The class advisor attends all class sessions throughout the 23-month period and provides continuity throughout the program both academic and administrative. The class advisor assures that appropriate preparation and progress is maintained by meeting with individuals and learning teams as needed. 

Guest Speakers, Guests and Industry Experts

Within each module, senior business executives will be guests of the EMBA community. This feature in the EMBA program is designed to connect the rigor of the academic foundation with practice from industry leaders.  Students will be able to interact with thought leaders, experts and practitioners from a wide range of industries and backgrounds.  This will allow for greater depth of discussion and candor from the real world of business.

Learning Community

A great deal of executive-level learning takes place through discussions, projects, presentations, and sharing of experiences. To optimize the participants' diverse styles and learning needs, the class is treated as a learning community in which everyone collaborates to share and affirm new knowledge, learning, and critical thinking. Skills associated with active listening, management of differences, leadership styles, and learning preferences are developed. Members create and implement a collective vision of an effective learning community, interacting for the duration of the program and often continuing after EMBA graduation.

Learning Teams

Each class cohort forms into learning teams that meet on their own on a regular basis outside of the class to dialog, work on team assignments, share learning, and discuss other readings and topics relevant to them beyond the class requirements. Members of an effective learning team are committed to the development of one another's skills, knowledge, and executive leadership. Learning teams are an important part of the learning community. They provide resources for the cohort and each person throughout the 23-month EMBA experience and often continue to meet after graduation. 

Washington D.C. Session

The seminars in Washington D.C. emphasize governmental process and the range of the considerations and constraints that bear upon the decisions of policy makers.  Corporate executive  and future business leaders examine the working of the legislative, regulatory, judicial, and executive functions of government in order to understand more clearly how they, as managers, can build the critical public policy dimension into daily operations and corporate strategy.  The faculty of the D. C. Session are drawn from government, business, media, and academia. 

 

Effective Executive Workshop

Each Executive MBA class begins with a two day executive workshop. The workshop reviews the entire program and develops working relationships with faculty and other key resources. It presents basic information on management techniques and builds a learning team by developing a shared understanding of specific communications skills. While the privacy and individuality of the students are respected and valued, students are expected to be willing to examine and learn from their own behavior and the behavior of others in the class.

Business Applications and Strategic Management Project

One of the key requirements for graduation from the Executive MBA program is completion of a series of written projects culminating in a strategy formulation and implementation document written for the participant's organization. Participants will complete one project in each trimester. This integrated series of projects is expected to demonstrate the participant's mastery of program content and should reflect a capacity to craft and implement the strategy. Because the overall exercise is expected to be multi-functional and to have long-range implications for the organization's future position and image in the marketplace, participants should have access to organizational data such as marketing, manufacturing, financial and personnel records. The final strategy document must be data-based and include a summary of relevant literature and other reference materials.

Business Management Simulation

This session offers the students a learning experience in managing multiple firms in a live computer-simulated industry. The students learn firsthand the consequences of their individual and team decisions the implementation of their plans and the subsequent responses of the competing firms. At a more macro level, this highly interactive simulation highlights dynamics of evolution and development of industries and firms within it.  This commences during Module VI under the Strategy discipline.

Ethics & Business Law

The conduct of business must be grounded in the highest ethics and in full legal conformance. The session offers firsthand experience in issues of morality, ethics, law, and criminality. Although the theme of ethics is carried through all courses and activities of the program, the ethics session will provide a unique and special learning opportunity for the entire learning community.

Ipads

Each student and faculty member will be provided an Ipad for use throughout the entire program.  All content (available materials) will be provided on the ipad, including books, case studies, supporting materials, software, etc.  A brief overview and training will be provided at the executive workshop.  This will include basic operational practices, UNH library access, BB access, UNH student portal access and how to access UNH tech support in the event of any questions or breakdowns.

Black Board

Each participant and faculty team will be connected through this Internet portal, which enables sharing of assignments, Internet links, and chat rooms created by team or content area.