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UT changes focus of MBA program
By JOHN PETRIMOULX
© St. Petersburg Times, TAMPA -- With an eye toward boosting its MBA enrollment, the University of Tampa has unveiled a retooled MBA program. The changes, which place more emphasis on leadership and personal development, include the addition of an accelerated full-time day program and an entrepreneurship concentration. The redesign, contemplated for some time but begun in earnest last year, has been a complex undertaking, requiring countless faculty meetings, studies, focus groups and alumni input, said Joe McCann, dean of the University of Tampa Business School. The inspiration for the change, however, was more simple. "John O'Neil is a former AT&T executive who wrote a book called the Paradox of Success," McCann said. "In it, he asked the question: 'How is it that we are doing so well, but we feel so crappy?' " McCann said the reason for the paradox is that traditionally business has ignored important ingredients that make people feel successful. UT's new MBA uses a more holistic approach to address formerly ignored areas of students' lives. "People are running hard," McCann said. "They want some assistance, and I think they feel our concern for them as leaders. We tell them 'we will work with you' and you see the heads nodding approval." Marketing analyst Brian Blust, 23, said the personal touch appealed to him. After undergraduate studies at the University of Florida, he said he was looking for a smaller school. "I came for a couple of visits and one of the professors remembered me from the first time," he said. "He came over to talk to me; I liked that." The personal focus begins early in the program, McCann said, when students spend several nights and weekends over a five-week period in a "high performance leadership" workshop. UT faculty members from a number of disciplines team up to work with students on nutrition, physical wellness and relationship management. The outcome is a personal action plan for each student, McCann said. "It's a serious personal assessment," McCann said. "It has to be if we really want to provide tools and skills for the mind, body and spirit." The school is also building a database that will collect information for students according to the needs identified in their personal action plans. To ensure follow-through on personal action plans, students pair up with a faculty or alumni mentor for the program. The mentoring arrangement is a product of close ties to the community, McCann said. "We pride ourselves on our connectedness (to the community)," he said. McCann said 700 outside resources are available for mentoring and the final project, which involves a course in project management followed by a team project to provide a strategic assessment for an actual business. The up-front workshops, final project and personal planning and mentoring are built around a core curriculum, which provides the training more typically associated with a business degree, said Graduate Programs Director Mary Prescott. The core courses not only feature new content but a single unifying concept, McCann said. "The value creation model that each (function of the) business must create value overlays the whole of the core sequence," he said. Students begin course work with either a traditional series of basic business courses or a self-paced online version, depending on experience and need, Prescott said. They continue with a new core sequence of 12 seven-week modules on a variety of advanced topics, such as building business models and research methods, leading strategic change and using information systems and technology. To complete the requirements of their degrees, students take courses in a concentration, such as accounting or entrepreneurship, which is new this year. UT offers full-time and part-time tracks during the day and at night. Karen Dorn, 44, plans to take more than two years of night classes to complete her degree while continuing to manage a nuclear pharmacy, which dispenses radioactive products used in diagnosis. "I work weekends, so I don't want classes then," Dorn said. The flexibility of scheduling along with positive word-of-mouth sold her on UT's program, she said. While the new MBA is up and running, some features, such as the information database, are still being developed. "We accomplished this project in less than a year's time," McCann said. "And it will take another year to implement it." This year, more than 150 new students began UT's MBA program, pushing enrollment to near 400, one of the largest in the Southeast.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
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