Take your career to the executive level and beyond

Our Executive MBA gives you a rigorous but rewarding graduate experience to elevate your leadership capabilities. Taught by the Terry College of Business faculty and industry leaders, our cutting-edge curriculum is completed in 18 months and delivered through weekend instruction, online learning technology, 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.

Executive MBA Curriculum

Benefits of Our Approach

You will interact with the best of the best – other executives dedicated to advancing their businesses 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 same program together — and a personally assigned professional executive coach.
  • A blend of theory, practice, and examples pertinent to real-world business problems.
  • Online learning blended with traditional learning for flexibility and convenience.

Curriculum — Core Courses, Electives and Certifications

The Executive MBA core curriculum emphasizes strategic thinking and business results for the next step in your career. Students then select an elective to focus on an area relevant to their role or industry. You will complete 51 credit hours comprised of 17 courses.

Time Commitments

Our intensive program will integrate with your busy professional life. You will:

  • Complete the curriculum in 18 months.
  • Participate in:
    • Two weeklong residencies at the University of Georgia Athens campus. 
    • 21 weekend sessions at the Terry Executive Education Center in Atlanta.
    • A 7-9 day international residency.
    • Courses delivered by a mix of classroom instruction and online learning tools.

Certificates

The Executive MBA Program offers certificates in Change Management, Workforce Diversity, and a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt.

Change Management

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 take the Change Management elective course and 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 take the Lean Six Sigma elective course and pass an online certification exam to earn the Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certificate.

Workforce Diversity

Offered in the fall and spring, students can enroll in this eight-week non-credit online course to develop a management capability that will provide participants with the professional, social and cultural knowledge to successfully lead their diverse teams and navigate the future. 


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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Legal and Regulatory Issues

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.

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.

Human Resources for Business Leaders

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.