Master of Business Administration, MBA

For additional information about graduate programs within the College of Business, please contact the Director of Graduate Programs, Jennifer Pettitt, at GradBiz@uah.edu.  Information about the application process may be found in the Admissions section of the Graduate catalog.  

Purpose

The Master of Business Administration (MBA) program is designed as a general management graduate degree, offering a unique management of technology theme. The educational emphasis of the program builds upon knowledge and skills in all of the business disciplines to prepare students for careers in organizations that face opportunities and challenges afforded by technological change. 

The MBA program was fashioned to be an interdisciplinary program in business for practicing administrators, primarily for early- and mid-career managers. The typical student aspires to managerial positions. The curriculum is designed to accommodate students from engineering, science, the liberal arts and other non-business backgrounds. Students in this program typically have five to fifteen years of full-time work experience. They aspire to upward career mobility or are seeking to change career paths.

The MBA program emphasizes the development of integrative systems thinking skills in order to build capable, creative managers able to face successfully both external challenges such as rapid technological change and increasing environmental complexities, and internal issues such as changing employee expectations and methods of increasing productivity.

The program orients students to the rigors of holistic thinking about technology-driven problems and opportunities, introduces students to concepts and tools from all the business disciplines to operate in a technological environment, and instills a commitment to teamwork. The curriculum provides instruction in financial reporting, analysis and markets; domestic and global economic environments of organizations; creation and distribution of goods and services; and human behavior in organizations. It provides advanced study in decision science and human aspects of organizational problem-solving. It provides education in managing technological innovations and processes, and integrating technology into the organization’s strategic objectives. It addresses such issues as analyzing problems through economic and financial frameworks, developing and using information systems, providing information on accounting costs, marketing, managing the development of technology, reducing new product development time, managing technical professionals, and integrating technology into the overall strategic objectives of the organization.