PROGRAM MANAGEMENT ARTICLES
Overcoming the Fear of Finance in Executive MBA Programs: A Stepping Stone to Financial Mastery
Overcoming the Fear of Finance in Executive MBA Programs: A Stepping Stone to Financial Mastery by Rodney G. Alsup, D.B.A., CPA, CITPProfessor EmeritusFounder, GME News Digest Business schools must equip future leaders with financial literacy and confidence. The core challenge is bridging the gap between theory and practical application. Experiential learning, especially immersive business...
Cultivating Connections: Transforming Student Recruitment Through Relational Engagement
Cultivating Connections: Transforming Student Recruitment Through Relational Engagement by Rodney G. Alsup, D.B.A., CPA, CITPProfessor EmeritusFounder, GME News Digest In the world of student recruitment and enrollment, engagement strategies often fall short because of a reliance on transactional methods. This blog post advocates for a shift towards relational engagement, where personalized help...
Butts in Seats or Making a Difference?
Butts in Seats or Making a Difference? by Rodney G. Alsup, D.B.A., CPA, CITPProfessor EmeritusFounder, GME News Digest There is a need for graduate business programs to shift from a seat-filling approach to a student-centric, values-driven educational philosophy. Programs that focus on making a meaningful impact, aligning with students’ career goals, and addressing their individual needs...
Are You Using These Four Lead Capture Strategies to Grow Your Graduate Management Education (GME) Program?
Are You Using These Four Lead Capture Strategies to Grow Your Graduate Management Education (GME) Program? by Rodney G. Alsup, D.B.A., CPA, CITPProfessor EmeritusFounder, GME News Digest In today’s highly competitive academic setting, capturing the interest of potential applicants is crucial for growing your graduate program. However, it’s not sufficient to just capture their interest. You need...
10 Cost-Effective Ways to Attract Your Graduate Business Program’s Target Audience
10 Cost-Effective Ways to Attract Your Graduate Business Program’s Target Audience by Rodney G. Alsup, D.B.A., CPA, CITPProfessor EmeritusFounder, GME News Digest In the competitive field of Graduate Business Program Management, attracting your audience starts well before the first day in the classroom. It starts by pinpointing their knowledge gaps. The Attract stage aims to spark interest in...
ISSUES FOCUSED WHITE PAPERS
Moving from a Cohort-Based Online to a Flexible Evening(F2F)/Online Mix MBA Program
Creating a flexible F2F evening/online mix is not about creating a new program, but about creating a way for students to take existing courses from either the part-time program or the online program while pursuing their MBA. The key program players involved in achieving this goal are the faculty, program leaders and staff, instructional designers, technology consultants, teaching support groups,...
Engaging Working Professionals in Cocurricular Opportunities
Cocurricular opportunities are experiential learning opportunities that contribute to gaining skills and abilities that are part of the core competencies, and/or outcomes established by the institution and its governing bodies. Extracurricular experiences are opportunities that provide students the opportunity to engage with the institution and that connect students to others within the...
QUARTERLY NEWS AGGREGATION & ANALYSIS REPORTS ((GME) PROGRAM MANAGEMENT & CURRICULUM CHANGE REPORTS)
PLAY- VALIDATE – The Assumptions Behind Your Program
Let's Make a Difference, One Play at a TimeEvery graduate program runs on assumptions about its learners, faculty, employers, and alumni that get treated as settled fact instead of what they are: untested claims. VALIDATE is a four-step method — state the assumption, convert it into a falsifiable hypothesis, match the method to the stakes, and assign it to the right person — for finding out...
The DIY M.B.A.: How Four Dropouts Built Companies Without a Degree
Summary: The article explores how several successful entrepreneurs—college dropouts—have bypassed traditional MBA programs by learning directly through real-world leadership experiences in the C-suite. It highlights the value of hands-on management challenges and authentic communication styles, such as weekly unfiltered emails from leadership, that foster transparency and engagement. These...
UT Austin Launches 5-Year Engineering-Business Degree With McCombs B-School
Summary: The University of Texas at Austin is launching the Cockrell-McCombs B.S./M.S. Honors Program in fall 2027, enabling students to earn an engineering bachelor's degree and a specialized business master's degree in five years. By integrating technical engineering training with specialized business disciplines—such as analytics, finance, or marketing—the program prepares students for...
How to Talk to Grad Students and Postdocs About Career Paths They Cannot Predict
Summary: As labor markets rapidly evolve, graduate students and postdocs must navigate changing professional environments by strategically leveraging their advanced degrees and experiences. Contributors to career advice columns emphasize that early career professionals should avoid an all-or-nothing approach, actively build professional branding on platforms like LinkedIn, and articulate the...
Employers everywhere are using AI – but business schools aren’t preparing students for the shift
Summary: As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms routine corporate tasks like drafting correspondence and managing customer service, business schools face mounting pressure to bridge a critical curriculum gap. While many educational discussions focus narrowly on promoting responsible AI utilization, institutions frequently overlook structural changes required to prepare graduates for...
WEBINARS & COURSES
What Lies Beyond: The Future of Executive Education
Harvard Business Publishing Education Webinar "What Lies Beyond: The Future of Executive Education" Date: March 4, 2021 Executive Education has seen a year of forced experimentation and disruption. Professor Mohan Sawhney is a globally recognized scholar, teacher, and...
GME Perspectives: A Conversation with Rodney Alsup
BusinessCAS "GME Perspectives: A Conversation with Rodney Alsup" Date: March 2, 2021 As colleges look to rebound from the disruptions of the pandemic, how will business schools position themselves to evolve in order to meet the next round of challenges facing higher...
Academy Community Introduction
The MBA News Digest Academy Community is where you can contribute to the learning of your peers and where you can help them address the issues with which they are dealing. At the same time it's the place where you can share information and ask for help with any of the...
Academy Website Orientation
The value chain is the foundation on which the MBA News Digest Academy is built. And it’s the value chain activities that are used to organize the Academy website. This video provides you a high level tour of the website. You will see how the value chain activities...
Developments Affecting Online MBA Programs – Concurrent Session – OL MBA Conference 10032018
My purpose with this presentation was to discuss ten topics that will likely affect how Graduate Program Professionals will manage their programs going forward as of October 3, 2018. The topics included: #1: Exponential Change#2: Digital Strategy#3: Outsourcing#4:...
The Learner Journey: A Framework for Managing Your Graduate Program
Start Graduate Program Performance Measurement & Reporting the Smarter Way
Graduate Program Performance Measurement & Reporting Made Simple
PODCASTS
PLAY- VALIDATE – The Assumptions Behind Your Program
Let's Make a Difference, One Play at a TimeEvery graduate program runs on assumptions about its learners, faculty, employers, and alumni that get treated as settled fact instead of what they are: untested claims. VALIDATE is a four-step method — state the assumption, convert it into a falsifiable hypothesis, match the method to the stakes, and assign it to the right person — for finding out...
The DIY M.B.A.: How Four Dropouts Built Companies Without a Degree
Summary: The article explores how several successful entrepreneurs—college dropouts—have bypassed traditional MBA programs by learning directly through real-world leadership experiences in the C-suite. It highlights the value of hands-on management challenges and authentic communication styles, such as weekly unfiltered emails from leadership, that foster transparency and engagement. These...
UT Austin Launches 5-Year Engineering-Business Degree With McCombs B-School
Summary: The University of Texas at Austin is launching the Cockrell-McCombs B.S./M.S. Honors Program in fall 2027, enabling students to earn an engineering bachelor's degree and a specialized business master's degree in five years. By integrating technical engineering training with specialized business disciplines—such as analytics, finance, or marketing—the program prepares students for...
How to Talk to Grad Students and Postdocs About Career Paths They Cannot Predict
Summary: As labor markets rapidly evolve, graduate students and postdocs must navigate changing professional environments by strategically leveraging their advanced degrees and experiences. Contributors to career advice columns emphasize that early career professionals should avoid an all-or-nothing approach, actively build professional branding on platforms like LinkedIn, and articulate the...
Employers everywhere are using AI – but business schools aren’t preparing students for the shift
Summary: As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms routine corporate tasks like drafting correspondence and managing customer service, business schools face mounting pressure to bridge a critical curriculum gap. While many educational discussions focus narrowly on promoting responsible AI utilization, institutions frequently overlook structural changes required to prepare graduates for...
MBA NEWS DIGEST SUBSCRIBER & ACADEMY MEMBER TIPS
PLAY- VALIDATE – The Assumptions Behind Your Program
Let's Make a Difference, One Play at a TimeEvery graduate program runs on assumptions about its learners, faculty, employers, and alumni that get treated as settled fact instead of what they are: untested claims. VALIDATE is a four-step method — state the assumption, convert it into a falsifiable hypothesis, match the method to the stakes, and assign it to the right person — for finding out...
The DIY M.B.A.: How Four Dropouts Built Companies Without a Degree
Summary: The article explores how several successful entrepreneurs—college dropouts—have bypassed traditional MBA programs by learning directly through real-world leadership experiences in the C-suite. It highlights the value of hands-on management challenges and authentic communication styles, such as weekly unfiltered emails from leadership, that foster transparency and engagement. These...
UT Austin Launches 5-Year Engineering-Business Degree With McCombs B-School
Summary: The University of Texas at Austin is launching the Cockrell-McCombs B.S./M.S. Honors Program in fall 2027, enabling students to earn an engineering bachelor's degree and a specialized business master's degree in five years. By integrating technical engineering training with specialized business disciplines—such as analytics, finance, or marketing—the program prepares students for...
How to Talk to Grad Students and Postdocs About Career Paths They Cannot Predict
Summary: As labor markets rapidly evolve, graduate students and postdocs must navigate changing professional environments by strategically leveraging their advanced degrees and experiences. Contributors to career advice columns emphasize that early career professionals should avoid an all-or-nothing approach, actively build professional branding on platforms like LinkedIn, and articulate the...
Employers everywhere are using AI – but business schools aren’t preparing students for the shift
Summary: As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms routine corporate tasks like drafting correspondence and managing customer service, business schools face mounting pressure to bridge a critical curriculum gap. While many educational discussions focus narrowly on promoting responsible AI utilization, institutions frequently overlook structural changes required to prepare graduates for...