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UCA, UALR Redesign Their MBA Programs

4 min read

Two central Arkansas universities have redesigned their MBA programs recently in an effort to better meet the needs of students and employers and to set themselves apart from other schools.

The College of Business at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway has redesigned its 30-hour program, moving to a core curriculum of seven classes and three elective courses that allow UCA to offer areas of concentration in finance and health care administration. The school plans to add a concentration in management of information systems in the future.

In addition, UCA students now have the choice of obtaining their Master of Business Administration degrees entirely online or mixing online and traditional face-to-face courses.

The changes in the program, which took effect this fall, were made for two reasons, said Michael Hargis, dean of the UCA College of Business and an associate professor of management.

“One is to work better with the employer organizations in the state,” he said. “And then the second side of it is, students need to be able to specialize now. The generalist model of MBA programs doesn’t work as well as it used to.

“There are some specific business skill sets that every student needs: finance and management and marketing. And that’s what the seven core classes do. But what our electives allow us to do is really play to the strengths of our economy and try to prepare students for specific industry tracks.”

Fields where job growth is expected include finance, health care and information management.

UCA worked with companies such as Acxiom, Hewlett-Packard and Dillard’s to determine employer needs.

The move to online accessibility was made to accommodate the needs of MBA students, many of whom are already working full time. Students “can choose to take a class in the format that fits their needs the best,” Hargis said.

UCA has offered online classes for a number of years, but the MBA is the first fully online degree in the College of Business, he said.

So far, Hargis said, students are taking advantage of both options — online and traditional format. Tuition and fees for in-state students for the entire program are about $10,000; the price of books and other study materials vary by course.

The university has seen “significant growth” in its MBA program, which currently has 72 students.

One of those students is Brian Suyat, 44, of Mayflower. Suyat is a lean operations consultant for the Kimberly-Clark Corp. in Conway. His background is in mechanical engineering and he’s pursuing an MBA because he wants “to get into more the strategic business part of our corporation, so part of it is just career advancement.”

Suyat began work on the degree in fall 2011 and is scheduled to finish up at the end of the current semester.

He praises the MBA program at UCA, saying “it’s a really great program for the cost,” which is being borne by his company. In addition, the program attracts a mix of people who are in or have been in business and students just of out school, “so you get a good mix of conversation in the class.”

UALR’s Weekend MBA

The College of Business at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, meanwhile, will be offering a new degree come January: a weekend MBA with a health care focus.

The class will meet one Saturday a month from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with the remainder of the class completed online. The cost of the class is $25,000, which includes tuition and fees, all course materials, graduation regalia and meals on class days, according to Sonya Premeaux, associate dean of graduate studies at the UALR College of Business.

Premeaux said the school made the move for several reasons.

“One, we see people looking for a more convenient way to get their degree,” she said. “And they could do just the straight-up online program, but many of those recognize the value of the face-to-face class time. That’s why we came up with the hybrid approach, where they’ll get both face-to-face and online.”

As for the health care focus, “we have seen an influx of people from health care in our traditional program. We’ve had people who want to do the program but just can’t handle the evening classes.”

The entire MBA program at UALR underwent a complete review and redesign, with the new program going into place in fall 2013, Premeaux said. As did UCA, UALR consulted with central Arkansas business leaders about the new program.

“It’s very different from any other program in the state and most programs in the country,” she said. n

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