Take your career to the executive level and beyond
Our Executive MBA gives you a rigorous but rewarding experience to elevate your leadership capabilities. Taught by the Terry College of Business faculty and industry leaders, our curriculum is completed in 18 months and delivered through weekend (Friday and Saturday) instruction, distance learning, on-site residencies and an international trip. In addition to earning an MBA degree, students expand their professional networks and achieve their career goals by working with our dedicated career management team and an executive leadership coach. The quality of the University of Georgia EMBA was recognized by Fortune as a No. 6 U.S.-based public program.
Throughout the Executive MBA program, faculty will weave important topics into every course. With a primary focus on leadership development, students will learn how to approach complex business challenges with a mindset focused on leading through change and motivating their workforce toward a common goal. Trending business topics including artificial intelligence, technology, and current events will be incorporated throughout the program’s curriculum. Students will be encouraged to bring their depth and breadth of experience into classroom discussions to highlight the challenges that leaders are facing in today’s business environment, and the program will teach students how to identify opportunities for solutions, optimization, and innovation.
Benefits of Our Approach
You will interact with the best of the best from research and industry experienced faculty, as well as classmates who are dedicated to advancing their business success and their careers. The EMBA curriculum gives you access to:
- Experienced and highly qualified professors who are leaders in their field.
- A cohort model — all students go through the program together.
- A team approach which results in optimal learning outcomes based on theory, practice, and insights into real-world business challenges and opportunities.
- Courses delivered by a mix of traditional classroom instruction and online learning for flexibility and convenience.
Time Commitments
Our comprehensive program will integrate with your busy professional life and is completed in 18 months.
You will participate in:
- Two week-long (4 weekdays) residencies at the University of Georgia Athens campus.
- 21 weekend (Friday & Saturday) sessions at the Terry Executive Education Center in Atlanta.
- A 7 to 9 day international residency.
Curriculum — Core Courses, Electives and Certificates
The Executive MBA curriculum emphasizes strategic thinking and achieving optimal business results. To complement the core curriculum, students will select an elective to focus on an area relevant to their role or industry. The program consists of 51 credit hours comprised of 17 courses.
Certificates
The Executive MBA Program offers certificates in Workforce Diversity, Leading Change, and a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt.
Workforce Diversity
Companies want leaders who are prepared to lead a diverse workforce. This non-academic certificate will provide you with the skills to develop a “management capability” for leveraging diversity in your coursework as well as improve business performance throughout your career. Offered every fall and spring through the Terry College of Business Office of Diversity Relations.
Leading Change
Companies with a change-ready culture paired with leaders prepared to design, implement, and institutionalize organizational change are positioned to thrive. To earn this certificate, students will participate in optional virtual programming and complete pass an online certification exam.
Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
Lean Six Sigma is a data-driven methodology used to increase operational efficiencies and enhance customer experiences. Students will participate in optional virtual programming and pass an online certification exam to earn the Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certificate.
Courses
Organizational Behavior & Leadership
Focuses on the development of fundamental leadership skills, such as self-awareness, strategic thinking, creating a motivating environment, empowerment and delegation, managing change, and team processing. A key objective is to provide participants with a full evaluation of their current leadership style and potential and, by interacting one-on-one with a personal leadership coach, to develop an individualized action plan for improving and broadening leadership capability.
Strategic Management
Combines elements of traditional corporate strategy with principles of large-scale organizational change to produce an overview of strategic management as an organic process for adapting the firm to its changing environment. Topics of study include practical issues related to mental frameworks and human behavior, environmental and competitor analysis, and change implementation.
Analytical Tools for Decision Making
Enhances the analytical skills of business managers who must make decisions based on quantitative data, in particular in environments characterized by significant uncertainty. Topics of study include sampling, estimation and inference, regression, simulation, decision analysis, and constrained optimization.
Financial Accounting and Reporting
Addresses the basic concepts that underlie the preparation and use of accounting information utilized in the preparation of financial statements for shareholders and other external users. Topics of study include concepts of accounting (such as cash vs. accrual), the format and content of financial statements, and interpretation of corporate annual reports.
Marketing Management
Explores the foundation of strategic and tactical decision-making in marketing through intelligence gathering, environmental analysis, positioning of market offerings, and market segmentation. Topics of study include marketing management thinking, analyzing customers and competition, positioning strategy, product development, relationship logistics, and integrated marketing communications.
Managerial Finance
Considers the responsibilities, concerns, and methods of analysis employed by corporate financial managers, and the role of financial markets and institutions in the modern economy. Topics of study include capital structure, dividend policy, asset evaluation, capital budgeting, risk analysis, and portfolio theory.
Legal and Regulatory Environment of Business
Creates an enhanced level of awareness of many legal issues that directly impact the way leaders conduct business. The course is designed to develop an understanding of legal and regulatory topics to gain an appreciation for the role of effective business/government relationships. Topics of study include legal institutions, contracts, public law, employees, and international law.
Negotiations
Focuses on processes for negotiating and resolving practical and ethical conflicts encountered in business environments. Emphasis is placed on achieving outcomes that are based on legitimate data, satisfy all parties’ interests, and include realistic and operational commitments. The role of effective communication in building the desired relationship is also stressed.
Operations Management
Examines how operational processes can be designed and managed to ensure that goods are produced and services delivered in a timely manner with the cost and quality characteristics required by customers. Emphasis is placed on effective decision-making to determine how people, facilities, inventories, and information can be managed to create and maintain a competitive advantage for the firm. Topics of study include process analysis, operations planning and control, total quality management, and operations strategy.
Information Technology and Strategy
Explores the strategic use of information technology to support organizational goals and increase organizational performance. Provides an executive’s guide to information technology and network computing, as well as models for identifying strategic opportunities. Addresses issues important in creating and implementing an information strategy.
Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation
Examination of the new venture process from idea generation to startup to harvest. Emphasis is placed on the generation of a complete business plan for a new product or service. Topics include entrepreneurial leadership and infrastructure, assessment of viability, business plan development and presentation, and entrepreneurial finance.
Leading Evolving Organizations
This course takes students through the stages of an organization’s existence and its corresponding leadership needs, plus looks at specific situations such as leading in crisis. The course will focus on identifying and building leadership skills and enabling students to match organizational life stage to leadership style, facilitating appropriate career choices.
Economic Analysis for Business Leaders
Introduces the basic tools of microeconomics and macroeconomics to analyze management decisions and competitive strategies of firms in a market economy. Microeconomic concepts of supply and demand, production, cost, and market structure are combined with macroeconomic issues related to fiscal and monetary policy to form a solid understanding of the relationship between the structure and performance of the business firm and the economic environment in which it operates.
Human Resources Management
Focuses on the principles and techniques of Human Resource Management for business leaders, taking a practical view that integrates the contributions of the behavioral sciences with the technical aspects of implementing the HR function in the “real world.” Topics of study include recruiting and selection, performance management, training and development, organizational design and workforce planning.
Executive Capstone
This course will begin with a quick review of overarching topics in Strategic Management followed by the completion of a business simulation.