Changes Ahead for Wharton School’s MBA Program

草莓圣代

Changes Ahead for Wharton School’s MBA Program
Posted by Clear Admit on September 24, 2010, at 2:00 pm
The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania has overhauled its MBA curriculum and will implement the changes next fall for the Class of 2013 pending a November faculty vote, PoetsandQuants reported earlier this week.
According to Wharton Dean Thomas Robertson, the new curriculum grew out of a year of work and review by the faculty and will be based around what he calls his “three pillars,” driving innovation, making the school more international and creating a culture that is a force for good, P&Q reports. “If I am going to have a legacy here, it’s going to be around those three pillars,” he told P&Q. “They are a major part of differentiation for Wharton.”
To this end, Robertson has created three new positions at the school, vice deans for innovation, international business and social impact. Karl Ulrich, vice dean of innovation, has been charged with imbuing a culture of innovation into everything Wharton does, including technology and the MBA program itself.
As for international business, with 40 percent of its MBA students and one-third of the faculty from countries outside of the United States, Robertson thinks Wharton is already well on its way, he told P&Q. Each learning team of six students will have two or three international students, and this year the school will be running week-long modular courses in eight countries, including China and India.
In talking about the third pillar, making Wharton a “force for good,” Robertson quoted University of Pennsylvania founder Benjamin Franklin and Wharton School founder Joseph Wharton, who both professed to value social welfare as highly or
more highly than wealth. “In social impact, we’re trying to ask where are we going to put our stake? We do so many things, but they tend to fall below the radar screen because each of them is small,” he told P&Q.