This Elite B-School Ranked Its MBA Students’ 10 Favorite Courses

A top 10 list of most bid-on courses by full-time MBA students at the Ross School of Business this year shows that students favor a broad array of interdisciplinary subjects, ranging from environmental policy to the psychology of startup teams and big-data analytics.

The Michigan Ross Full-Time MBA curriculum takes students through a series of core courses in the first year, including the signature MAP (Multidisciplinary Action Projects) course. In their second year, students are able to choose electives that meet their academic and career goals and interests.

Advanced Big Data Analytics is among the top ten. Taught by Professor Sanjeev Kumar, the course teaches students how to apply machine learning algorithms to various big-data sources in a business context. By the end of this course, students gain a better understanding of processes, methodologies, and tools used to transform the large amount of business data available into useful information and support business decision making by applying ML algorithms.

Professor Mike Barger’s Business Leadership in Changing Times is often called the “CEO’s course.” In it, students are challenged to navigate complex leadership crises that executives from some of the world’s most recognizable companies have faced, right in front of those very execs.  During simulated press conferences, students reenact crises by role-playing members of different stakeholder groups while the executives are watching.

One of the surprises in the top ten? The Business of Biology, an  interdisciplinary graduate course that explores the intersections between science, technology, commerce, and social policy as they come together to advance or retract progress toward more personalized health care. Through a variety of faculty, speakers, panelists, and hands-on research experience, Professor David Canter provides a framework to enhance the understanding of the complex scientific and socioeconomic trends, opportunities and challenges that are taking place in the rapidly evolving fields of personalized medicine, molecular diagnostics, and targeted therapeutics.

Electives, such as the ones on the list, illustrate the strength of Michigan Ross, which has 10 graduate business specialties ranked in the top 10 by U.S. News & World Report — and is the only school to rank in every one of the magazine’s 13 specialization categories.

Illinois Gies partners with Google to expand educational access to learners around the world

The University of Illinois’ Gies College of Business has announced a partnership with Google to prepare learners in the Google Career Certificate programs with critical business skills like leadership, teamwork, and strategic thinking.

Starting immediately, anyone who completes any of the Google Career Certificates, bundled with the Professional Success Skills Certificate from Gies College of Business, will receive a dual badge of completion from Google and Gies Business. It is the first time Google has partnered with any business school to offer such a dual certificate.

The Gies components of this badge are asynchronous courses designed and delivered by top faculty at the college – the same faculty who teach in the school’s highly regarded undergraduate and graduate programs including their fully online MBA (iMBA), master’s in management (iMSM), and master’s in accounting (iMSA) programs.

“We’re excited to be partnering with Google to expand educational access to learners around the world. Gies College of Business and Google share a common mission to make a life-changing education flexible, affordable, and powerful,” says Gies Associate Dean Brooke Elliott, who oversees the strategy of the college’s online programs. “This partnership will enable learners to develop real, tangible knowledge and durable, transferable skills so they can achieve their personal and professional goals.”

New rules needed for modern information tech, historian Yuval Noah Harari tells Cambridge Judge 

Society needs new rules for modern information technology that now undermines trust and civility while fulfilling the ancient “dream of tyrants and dictators” for sweeping surveillance, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari told a webinar at Cambridge Judge Business School.

There is always a ‘period of chaos’ when new information technology emerges and before new rules or institutions of trust emerge, he said.

The webinar titled Adapting to Change in an Accelerating World was a discussion between Yuval Noah Harari and Jonathan Haidt of New York University’s Stern School of Business. It was organised by Cambridge Judge MBA students Gilad Weil, Aaron D’Souza and Tim Belitza (all MBA 2020) as the final interview in this year’s Leading Lights series led by MBA students, and co-ordinated by the Business School’s Alumni & External Engagement team.

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