Professional MBA (PMBA)

Professional MBA (PMBA)

PMBA 6100  Managerial Accounting  (2)  

applies the accounting models that support managerial decision-making in an advanced environment. Topics include cost behavior, cost-volume profit analysis, variable costing, differential (incremental) analysis, capital budgeting (with emphasis on the sources of accounting data), and interdivisional transfer pricing. Models are applied to service and merchandising as well as manufacturing environments.

PMBA 6110  Financial Accounting  (2)  

familiarizes students with key financial accounting concepts, methods and terminology and introduces the tools of financial statement analysis. The financial reporting roles of management, auditors and regulators are studied, and students learn how accounting policy choices can influence reported performance and financial position. Students develop knowledge and skills that allow them to read, interpret and analyze financial statements at a basic level and to discuss business issues in accounting terms.

PMBA 6120  Financl Statement Analys  (2)  

explores the principles and techniques for understanding and interpreting financial statements, including statement comparability, income measurement and disclosure, cash flow analysis, ratio analysis and the disaggregation of ratios, quality of earnings, account analysis, and footnote disclosures. The financial relationships of the accounting model are applied to published financial statements. Cases are used extensively.

PMBA 6200  Management Communication  (2)  

focuses on the different ways companies communicate with both internal and external constituencies, including employees, shareholders, regulators, the public, etc. The practical emphasis is on student exercises and includes informal individual briefings, formal group presentations, and media events during crisis situations. The course also uses video and print media extensively to illustrate good and poor communication efforts on the part of existing corporations over the past several years, including examples from the oil and chemical industries, the mining industry, the tobacco industry, the accounting/consulting industry, and the wine/beer industry.

PMBA 6210  Managing People  (2)  

PMBA 6220  Leadership  (2)  

introduces students to leadership in business organizations. Leading teams and leading during times of change are also covered. Students will study current business leaders and analyze their leadership practices. Team projects and presentations are used to illustrate team leadership. Current models of change are also discussed.

PMBA 6300  Financial Management I  (2)  

provides a rigorous introduction to the field of financial economics. The first section of the course develops an analytical understanding of the time value of money concept, and applies it through basic techniques for the valuation of stocks, bonds, and investment projects. Various capital budgeting rules are also discussed in this section. The second section focuses on capital markets including the statistical concepts of covariance and diversification and the capital asset pricing model. The third section introduces capital structure policy and discusses the impact of the different financing choices on risk and required return on firm's equity. This section also introduces the notion of weighted average cost of capital.

PMBA 6310  Financial Management II  (2)  

builds directly on the material covered in Financial Management I. The course focuses on the key policy decisions made in corporate finance and discusses their impact on firm and shareholder value. The course will include an in-depth analysis of firms' financing choices and capital structure and their role in capital budgeting decisions. The course also introduces the different discounted cash flow valuation techniques for the valuation of corporate cash flows. The last third of the course focuses on options, option pricing, and applications of option pricing in corporate finance including warrant and convertible bond valuation.

PMBA 6400  Microeconomics  (2)  

examines the key aspects of markets and economic behavior as they relate to managerial decision making. The basics of market supply and demand are developed with emphasis on applications to business decision making. The determinants and role of market structure are examined in relation to business competition, market concentration, and economic efficiency. Basic concepts of strategy include learning curves, returns to scale and scope, and pricing. Students are also introduced to game theoretic topics such as bidding in private versus common value auctions, and the differences between quantity, price, and location competition.

PMBA 6410  Macroeconomics  (2)  

introduces the theory of national income determination in relation to full employment, price stability, international trade, and economic growth. The emphasis is on macroeconomic issues for managerial decisions. Topics include the determination of interest rates, inflation, wage levels, real output growth, exchange rates, international trade patterns and how these variables impact business decision making.

PMBA 6500  Decision Models  (2)  

- examines the art of solving problems under uncertainty. Course topics include descriptive statistics, probability, sampling distributions, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing and simple and multiple regressions. Methods are applied to management problems drawn from marketing, finance, economics, organizational behavior, and operations management.

PMBA 6600  Strategy Formulation  (2)  

increases understanding of the functions and responsibilities of general management. It examines the problems that affect the character and success of an entire enterprise, whether an entrepreneurial venture or a multinational conglomerate.

PMBA 6800  Marketing Management  (2)  

analyzes the market-driven corporation with respect to the marketing mix (product, promotion, price and distribution strategy) as it applies to consumer and industrial goods and services in the private and public sectors. Emphasis is placed on the application of the marketing mix through real-world projects.

PMBA 6810  Global Marketing  (2)  

This course deals with the challenges of a firm’s international expansion efforts. The course is organized around four topics: 1) international marketing in the early stages of a firm’s expansion, including analysis and understanding of the business environmental factors (such as cultural, political, and legal issues) that affect marketing decisions; 2) the role of research for growth and for detecting opportunities across markets; 3) the dilemma of product/service adaptation vs. marketing program standardization for consumer/business markets across specific countries; and 4) how to plan, organize, and implement a global marketing program.

PMBA 7080  Cross-Cultural Managemnt  (2-4)  

considers how culture and cultural differences impact perceptions of the social and organizational environment, as well as how culture and cultural values are a major influence on ethics and ethical reasoning. It also explores the challenge of making ethical decisions in specific situations and what organizations can do in order to prevent misconduct.

PMBA 7090  Managing Global Enterprs  (2-4)  

focuses on the structure and processes of management, particularly those of a global organization, and simulates upper-level management activities of the global enterprise. Course objectives include developing an integrated understanding of strategic and operational decision-making in a global enterprise from a general management perspective.

PMBA 7160  Energy Risk Mgmt  (2)  

This course will cover a broad range of topics pertaining to financial risk management in the energy industry, using a combination of lectures and case studies to provide a rigorous yet thoroughly applied perspective on the topics covered. The focus will be on the energy risk exposure faced by corporations arising from the volatility of energy prices -- what it is; how it's assessed; whether it should be managed; and how it should be managed. Students will be introduced to the toolkit of energy financial risk management instruments – both standard tools such as forwards, futures, options and swaps and a variety of hybrids that built on them.

PMBA 7170  Energy Acct & Finance  (2)  

This course will cover the fundamentals of the upstream oil and natural gas exploration and production process (E&P or upstream) and the key financial decisions and metrics. The various operational steps and related financial decisions will be followed through to their ultimate impact to a public E&P company’s external financial statements. Students will be able to understand the immediate impact of various decisions on a company’s cash and non-cash financial performance which in turn lead to future financial and operational flexibility and success.

PMBA 7180  Energy & Env Economics  (2)  

In the past 50 years, the largest industries involved in the energy sector (oil, gas, and electric) have undergone profound changes and have had a large impact on the economy. Managers in the oil, natural gas, and electric industries have had to devise strategies to cope with changes in the marketplace and ever-changing governmental regulations. The energy industries feature a complex mix of regulation and market-driven incentives. Students in this class will learn to use fundamental tools of economics and finance to study the business and public policy issues involved in these energy markets from the exploration, production, distribution, and ultimate sale to consumers. Students will study a number of cases from each of these industries, critically analyzing positions and evidence and formulating recommendations by applying the economic concepts they have learned in the class.

PMBA 7190  Energy Invest. Banking  (2)  

PMBA 7300  Options  (2)  

This course is designed to help students become proficient in the inner workings of options and options markets; the valuations of options; and the applications of options. Specifically, the course will cover simple as well as complicated arbitrage and hedging strategies, and popular options pricing models such as the binomial-tree and the Black-Scholes-Merton models. Students will also practice the real-world applications of options techniques in the context of Monte Carlo simulations and back tests of trading strategies. This course should benefit students who are interested in derivatives trading, risk management, hedge funds, portfolio management, management consulting, executive compensation, commercial banking, investment banking, or any other field involving financial decision-making.

PMBA 7310  Cases In Finance  (2)  

Through case analysis, this course explores ways to value different types of business enterprises. The course emphasizes discounted cash flow methods of valuation, though other methods, such as the method of multiples, the venture capital method, and real options are also introduced. Students develop and practice valuation skills, such as financial forecasting, cash flow measurement, discount rate estimation and continuing value calculation. In addition, students work with a variety of corporate situations, such as LBO's, IPO's, spin-offs, and mergers, in which valuation plays a key role.

PMBA 7320  Portfolio Theory  (2)  

This course is concerned with the choice of investment strategies with differing risk/return characteristics in the presence of uncertainty. It begins with a rigorous development of the foundations of modern portfolio theory while critically examining the assumptions that lead to its conclusions. Students will learn how various market indexes are determined, explore the pros and cons of market efficiency, and learn some of the founding principles of behavioral finance. Students will create mean/variance efficient portfolios; discuss the challenges of doing so using historical data, and develop several tools to measure the risk-adjusted performance of a portfolio.

PMBA 7340  Corporate Risk Managemnt  (2)  

PMBA 7400  Negotiations  (2)  

explores the behavioral processes and phenomena which are inherent in virtually all types of negotiations. Emphasis is on systematic preparation of a negotiating strategy. In-class negotiation exercises and extensive debriefings are used by participants to test and evaluate their strategies and tactics.

PMBA 7410  Managing Innovation  (2)  

This course focuses on how firms innovate and on how they strategically manage and capture value from innovation. Technological innovations are among the most important drivers of success in many industries. For firms to gain competitive advantage in the face of technological change, they not only need a superior technology but also a superior strategy. In this course, students will gain a set of powerful analytical frameworks that are critical for formulating and implementing technology strategy as an integral part of business strategy.

PMBA 7420  Change Management  (2)  

examines the key aspects of leading a successful organizational change. The course analyzes both successful and unsuccessful change management efforts. The course will build a framework for leading a successful organizational change.

PMBA 7430  Entrepreneurship  (2)  

conveys skills and modes of analysis that will be used directly in initiating or acquiring, managing, and harvesting a new venture. Concepts are also applicable to venturing within an existing corporation. Students will be expected to apply tools and theories learned in functional area core courses and additional knowledge gained from this class to the analysis of cases, a venture feasibility analysis process, and the formulation of a business plan.

PMBA 7440  Performance Management  (2)  

PMBA 7450  Global Strategy  (2)  

- is designed to measure how well students can integrate and use the knowledge and skills gained from core PMBA courses. The course is based on a management simulation in which teams of students compete against each other for business success within an industry while utilizing “real-world” decision making, strategy formulation, problem-solving, and competitive challenges. Teams must analyze the economic conditions of the simulated environment, insure smooth production, and understand their products relative to their customers, use accounting data to evaluate results and make decisions, finance operations, determine research and development targets, market products, manage employees and the team and respond to the competition.

PMBA 7460  Topics in Marketing  (2)  

PMBA 7470  Corporate Strategy  (2)  

This course is designed to provide students with practice-oriented, nuanced, in- depth knowledge of the various aspects of the corporate strategy of the firm. “Corporate strategy” means managing the firm’s scope – in other words, managing a corporation as a portfolio of businesses: What business units should the company have in order to maximize the shareholders’ value? How should it acquire new lines of business? How should it divest the units it no longer wants? What should be the extent of the units’ autonomy?The two primary objectives in this class are first to improve students’ understanding of what makes a portfolio of businesses under a single corporate umbrella more or less valuable and second, to develop and hone the decision- making tools for properly structuring and executing acquisitions and alliances under different business situations.

PMBA 7490  Strategic HR Management  (2)  

PMBA 7560  Intro to Electricity Markets  (2)  

The number of players in power markets, competing interests, and evolving regulatory policy gives electricity markets a unique niche in the world of commodity trading. The unique physical characteristics of its product, coupled with the nature of its delivery (and associated constraints,) have created opportunities for trading shops and major corporations to rise and fall in a little more than a decade. As this market (slowly) matures, and regulation continues to improve market transparency and efficiency, it will be a bumpy ride. To better understand where these markets are going and where they have been, we shall first obtain a historical perspective. With a concrete understanding of the market evolution, we will then investigate what variables (both physical and political) influence market prices on a long term, day ahead, and real time basis. We will also study the infamous market failures, and how regulators have responded to eliminate opportunities for indiscretion. The course will conclude with a brief look at several recent regulatory enactments to more closely align the interests of all market participants and stakeholders (and perhaps make the invisible hand seem more human!) This course will include market simulation exercises which will give students the opportunity to experience Power Marketing from the perspectives of a pure-marketer, independent power producer, and regulated utility.

PMBA 7700  Legal Enviro of Business  (2)  

introduces the basic concepts of contracts, labor laws, discrimination, torts, partnership, corporations, securities, and bankruptcy and gives students an understanding of the relationships between parties in a typical business setting. Tax consequences relative to various entities used in business transactions are also examined.

PMBA 7920  Independent Study  (0-4)  

PMBA 7990  PMBA Internship  (1-3)