MBA 720 – Collaboration was created to give students skills necessary to compete in the global economy. As businesses become more and more complex, being able to collaborate across departments, companies, and cultures is a critical competency. MBA 720 embeds three skills critical to effective collaboration: leading people and teams, values-based decision-making, and project management.
Leading people examines leadership styles, conflict-negotiation tactics and effective decision-making in teams. Project Management introduces effective tools to manage and monitor projects in highly complicated and high-pressure work environments. Value-based decision-making covers how to identify and manage stakeholder relationships and how to navigate the complexities of ethical dilemmas in a global business environment.
Students have the opportunity to apply their learning in a real-time consulting challenge. Student groups meet with a business client to learn about a challenge they are facing in the realm of collaboration, research this challenge and present solutions to the client at the end of the semester. This gives students the opportunity to apply what they’re learning in the real world, to get a feel for consulting work, and to network with local professionals. This semester we had the pleasure of working with Bank of America, which challenged students not only with knowledge of the banking industry but also to expand their knowledge on how large multinationals operate.
My expectation for this course is that students will learn tools to increase their collaboration competencies. 
My goal is to finish the semester with students who are better equipped to work across boundaries and are able to work with stakeholders to collaborate in pursuit of mutual value.
– Tammy Maclean, PhD, Director of the Center for Executive Education and Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship