Enrollment rises, curriculum expands for EMBA Program

12/16/2016 - Kellogg’s Executive MBA program has experienced a surge of growth in the past several years, marked by rising enrollment, an innovative curriculum and a record-high number of women in one of its global partnerships.

Curricular Innovation

In 2016 alone, Kellogg rolled out several new courses within the EMBA program to reflect students’ evolving interests – particularly focused on global experience and entrepreneurship.

“One of the key success factors in the EMBA program is our ability to present courses that both impart knowledge, but also have applicability to working professionals – they want to be able to take what they’ve been exposed to over the weekend and apply it on Monday,” said Greg Hanifee, Associate Dean of Kellogg's Executive MBA Global Network. “To that end, we’re listening both to the students in terms of what they feel is needed to keep them ahead, and also to the faculty as it relates to what they’re researching.”

One of the newest offerings in the EMBA program is Growth Strategy Practicum, a capstone course taught by Linda Darragh that allows students to partner with early growth-stage companies facing a specific problem, whether it’s launching a new product or entering a new market. The class teaches students tools and techniques to translate these problems into opportunities of leading a business to the next level.

“For a working professional audience, relevancy and applicability have a high priority in their curriculum,” said Hanifee. “We feel our new courses focus on presenting cutting-edge concepts to our students that allow them to internalize and then apply.”

In addition to this course, Kellogg is also offering two hybrid elective courses, which will comprise a mixture of online and face-to-face learning. In International Finance with Sergio Rebelo and Strategic Brand Management with Alexander Chernev, students will complete a portion of the coursework prior to arriving on campus. These courses will deepen their global connectivity by having face-to-face instruction over three days in the student’s choice of Toronto or Dusseldorf.

The EMBA program has also expanded its global reach through emerging markets/experiential learning courses being offered in both India and Africa. TechVenture India, which will be taught by Mohan Sawhney during the Spring 2017 term, is an innovative experiential learning course that gives students an opportunity to dive deep into the intersection between technology and emerging markets and study in the most prominent Indian technology cluster in Bangalore.

Offered during the Winter 2017 term, Global Initiatives in Management (GIM) Social Impact, taught by Tasha Seitz, is designed to give students an introduction to the unique opportunities and challenges of designing and analyzing business models that create positive societal or environmental impact. Students will have the opportunity to look in-depth at the social challenges and market opportunities in East Africa, and the class will travel to Kigali, Rwanda and Nairobi, Kenya to conduct field research and interviews as well as meet leading social impact organizations.

Global Network

The EMBA program at Kellogg is also preparing to celebrate its 20th year of partnership with three of its five global partners in 2017: Kellogg-Recanati Graduate School of Business, Kellogg-Hong Kong University of Science and Technology School of Business and Management, and Kellogg-WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management.

These partnerships underscore Kellogg’s commitment to exposing students to a breadth of global business dynamics and to a diverse group of peers. The Kellogg-Schulich School of Business at York University program, for example, recently enrolled a class with a record 42 percent women.

“The success of the global network comes from a key leadership trait that we try to instill in all of our students that we also try to live by in our work – the ability to build trust,” said Hanifee. “That trust is exhibited amongst all the business schools involved and is core to how we work with each other. It’s also present in how we partner with our students in their learning journey, not simply a transactional relationship; and how the amazing faculty we work with understand the audience and deliver unparalleled education.”

Through these enhancements, Kellogg continues to provide its EMBA students with access to world-renowned professional faculty, an alumni network with more than 60,000 graduates worldwide and diverse global business experience.