The courses and schedule outlined below are required of all Texas Evening MBA students. Because this is a lockstep, cohort-based program, all courses are pre-arranged and sequenced to ensure a well-rounded and challenging broad management curriculum. The 48 credit hours of coursework contain the most popular courses demanded of and preferred by MBA students and employers.

*Note: The McCombs MBA Programs Committee reserves the right to make modifications to the curriculum and seminars.

Austin Intensive Seminars

The Austin Intensive is a week-long in-residence program held at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center in August before the beginning of each fall semester. The programming provides additional instruction on key business fundamentals (year 1) and provides supplemental training in important skills areas such as team building, oral and written presentation techniques and advocacy (years 2 and 3). The Austin Intensive is a compulsory part of your degree plan, as a result, attendance and participation in all scheduled events is mandatory.

First Year

Fall Semester

• Statistics and Decision Analysis
  Objective: To enable an understanding of the extraction of information from data and how decisions are made with imperfect information. To develop and motivate fundamental statistical principles and methods, and to illustrate their proper application to a wide variety of business problems.
  
  Course Description: Basic concepts of methods of data and decision analysis are introduced. These include statistical control and random processes, probability and statistical inference, regression analysis, decision making under uncertainty, and risky decision making. A study of descriptive statistics, probability distributions, sampling distributions, estimation, hypothesis testing, statistical control and random walks.
• Managing People and Leading Organizations
  Objective: To develop effective managerial skills and the ability to lead organizations through change.
  
  Course Description: Through a sequence of readings, lectures, cases and experiential exercises, students will be introduced to frameworks from the social sciences that are useful for understanding organizational processes and learn how to apply these frameworks to particular situations. This course is designed to sharpen students' ability to diagnose and solve a broad range of organizational problems from the perspective of an organizational consultant.

Spring Semester

• Managerial Economics 
  Objective: To analyze the economic constraints and forces determining the profitability and viability of the firm.
  
  Course Description: A study of many of the microeconomic and macroeconomic variables that arise in our economy which can benefit or hinder business decisions. Provides an understanding of the economic forces, both domestic and international, that influence management decisions and corporate performance. Topics include interest rates, economic policy, business cycles, input demand and supply, market structure, and externalities.
  
• Financial Accounting 
  Objective: To develop a sophisticated and coherent approach to the use of financial accounting information.
  
  Course Description: An examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the information produced in financial reports as well as the pressures faced by management and auditors as they prepare financial statements and the impact of accounting information on strategic decisions.

Summer Semester

• Marketing Management
  Objective: To build an understanding of the key elements of marketing and distribution.
  
  Course Description: An examination of the marketing function and how it relates to value creation, strategic corporate management, and marketing decisions. Both theory and cases are used to develop a managerial perspective of marketing and to link marketing strategy to financial value.
• Operations Management
  Objective: To provide a process-oriented understanding of operations.
  
  Course Description: An examination of processes that transform inputs into finished goods and services, process improvement, total quality management, product and process development, and supply chain management; the relation of operations strategy to product and service design and to business strategy.
  

Second Year

Fall Semester

• Financial Management 
  Objective: To examine the role of financial management in creating value and to present the analytic framework used in the study of finance.
  
  Course Description: A study of the basic concepts of valuation theory and efficient markets. An examination of capital budgeting; cost of capital; capital structure and dividend policy; agency theory; issues of corporate control and governance; the workings of the debt and equity markets; and the options perspective of debt and equity.
  
• Strategic Management 
  Objective: To develop a strategic management orientation by learning new skills and by synthesizing knowledge obtained through prior course and work experience.
  
  Course Description: A study of the role of the general manager in: articulating organizational objectives; formulating and implementing organizational strategies; motivating and managing strategic change.
  

Spring Semester

• Directed Studies in Global Management 
  In addition to a seminar in comparative international management, students attend a group study tour. Prior to the trip, students learn about the history, culture, politics, and economics of a particular country or region of the world. The trip involves company visits as well as visiting cultural sites. Students have the opportunity to meet with local business leaders, government officials and academic experts in the region. The international trip is a course and, as such, attendance and participation in all scheduled events is mandatory. (see additional information at the bottom of this page)
  
• Corporate Finance/Financial Markets 
  Objective: To examine the major investment vehicles popular today throughout the world, and to extend the discussion of basic corporate financial management decision-making process begun the Financial Management course.
  
  Course Description: Investments is the study of financial assets and pricing. Includes an examination of the pricing and the use of equity securities, fixed income securities, and options. Additional investment topics covered include: modern portfolio theory; the capital asset pricing model; the relationship between the economy and financial securities; the functioning of markets; asset allocation; measuring returns; and mutual funds. Corporate Finance topics include: an overview of financial management in the global marketplace; comparisons of financial and real investments; valuing real assets and real options; valuation with taxation; the role of financial leverage; optimal capital structure; bondholder-stockholder conflicts; stockholder-owner conflicts; evaluating financial distress; optimal debt management; managerial incentives and compensation arrangements; value-based management and information management; corporate control and restructuring: mergers, acquisitions, takeovers, spinoffs and sell offs; corporate governance issues; and the role of institutional activism.

Summer Semester

• Information Technology Management 
  Objective: To provide a business perspective on how to improve and manage critical business process using IT and how to estimate and realize the associated business value.
  
  Course Description: Today, IT permeates every aspect of a company's operations, creating unparalleled opportunities for driving the customer experience, understanding, analyzing and improving business processes, delivering financially validated savings, driving bottom-line improvements and achieving competitive advantage through business process excellence. The focus of this course is how firms achieve operational and strategic business excellence through business process management (BPM), business process improvement (BPI) and business process reengineering (BPR) supported by information technology (IT).
  
• Art and Science of Negotiation 
  Objective: To create an understanding of the theory and processes of negotiation as it is practiced in a variety of settings.
  
  Course Description: The course is designed to be relevant to the broad spectrum of negotiation problems that are faced by the manager and professional. The course will allow the participants to develop a broad array of negotiation skills experientially and to understand negotiations in useful analytical frameworks. Considerable emphasis will be placed on simulations, role playing and cases.

Third Year

Fall Semester

• Advanced Marketing Management 
  Objective: To provide an overview of the components and considerations involved in marketing communications strategy decisions.
  
  Course Description: Students will participate in a competitive marketing simulation designed to focus on strategic marketing issues.
  
• Legal Environment of Business 
  Objective: To provide an understanding of significant legal constraints that affect the management decision-making process.
  
  Course Description: A study of selected internal legal constraints imposed on business by contractual relationships, by external legal constraints, by actual and potential liabilities, by statutes governing the sale and purchase of goods, and by rights and duties imposed in debtor-creditor relationships. The study of the various means and procedures for resolving legal disputes in business matters.

Spring Semester

• Managerial Accounting and Financial Statement Analysis 
  Objective: To examine cost accounting systems, decision support systems, and management control systems in order to develop skill in and understanding of the use of internal accounting data by management. To understand a company's history, current position and future financial prospects.
  
  Course Description: An investigation of the construction and strategic use of cost accounting systems including activity-based costing; decision support systems, including relevant costs and capital budgeting; management control systems, including planning and budgeting systems. Specific topics in Financial Statement Analysis include: analyzing the firm's industry and economic environment; analyzing the firm's recent financial performance; analyzing the firm's accounting methods and evaluating the quality of financial reporting; forecasting the firm's future financial performance and independently estimating the value of a firm.
  
• Business Ethics 
  Objective: To examine the social and ethical responsibility of business.
  
  Course Description: A study of the appropriate roles of business in society; the roles of government and regulation in monitoring business; and the ethical responsibilities of managers.
• Capstone Integrative
  The academic goal of the Capstone Integrative is to develop the skills necessary for creating a new venture, with a focus on market validation, business model development, financing and communicating through written and verbal presentation formats. At the end of this course, you will be able to evaluate business opportunities as both an entrepreneur and an investor, within start-ups and established companies. This course will call on the core skills you have built as MBA candidates and will enable you to integrate horizontally the vertical skills you have developed in your other coursework.

*Additional Information on the Global Trip: During the second year, students will travel internationally as part of the Directed Studies in Global Management course. Prior to the trip, students learn about the history, culture, politics and economics of a particular country or region of the world. The trip involves company visits as well as visits to cultural sites. Students have the opportunity to meet with local business leaders, government officials and academic experts in the region. Destinations will be discussed during the Austin Intensive. Students are strongly advised to clear up any issues that might impact travel, e.g. passport and/or visa issues as early as possible.

The Texas Evening MBA program office makes the arrangements and financial deposits for the international trips based on 100% attendance. Should a student be scheduled for a particular trip and then cancel, that student will be responsible for any costs incurred on his or her behalf. Students are responsible for making their own travel arrangements to and from the designated city of the trip. Should you have any issues that could impact your ability to travel, please immediately consult with the program office.

The international trip is a course and, as such, attendance and participation in all scheduled events is mandatory.