Curriculum Detail

Business Fundamentals: Core MBA Classes
Here you get the well-rounded foundation a manager needs. You take the core business classes as part of a cohort of 30 to 40 other MBA students. Each cohort is composed of a mix of career specializations to mirror a cross-functional team within an organization.

Brand and Product Management Specialization
Together with others students at the Center, you immerse yourself in the study of brand and product management and develop in-depth expertise. The classes are designed especially for brand and product management students and build in a coherent fashion over two years.

Electives
You can use your electives to delve deeper into brand and product management issues, or to focus elsewhere in the business school. (You can even take courses from other programs at the University of Wisconsin.)

Year 1, Semester 1

Financial Accounting:
This course emphasizes the preparation, analysis, and use of financial statement information for management decisions. It provides an understanding of accounting measurement and reporting to help students develop the skills to critically analyze and interpret accounting data. Students in the course examine current and emerging financial accounting theory and techniques used to measure and report financial information to investors, creditors, and other external users.
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Financial Management:
Both theory and practice are emphasized in this introduction to financial management of firms and investment decision-making. Topics covered include the financial environment and securities markets, financial statements and analysis, working capital management and capital budgeting, cost of capital, dividend policy, asset valuation, investments, decision making under uncertainty and selected topics such as mergers, options, futures.
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Marketing Management:
This first of many marketing courses examines the key elements that comprise a firm’s marketing program. The students learn how product, pricing, distribution channel, and promotions decisions are interrelated in both product and service settings. The course includes evaluation of the process and framework for analyzing marketing problems and making marketing decisions.
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Brand Management Strategy:
This is an important course for future brand and product managers. It provides a thorough understanding of the connection between branding successes and failures and culture. It also examines the intellectual skills and tools needed to effectively leverage cultural trends into the brand’s overall strategy. Students explore the use of consumer-based branding to build and sustain a brand.
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Data Analysis & Decision Making:
Students in this course advance their analytical and decision-making skills by developing practical spreadsheet models to evaluate business situations. The class includes topics in probability, statistics, and constrained optimization. It provides a framework for extracting data to identify and quantify relationships and develop a spreadsheet model to evaluate risk and justify a decision.
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Managerial Communications:
This course focuses on strategic aspects of communication goals for managers and practice in skills needed to carry out writing and speaking objectives. This course is also serves as a companion to the Integrated Company Analysis project.
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Year 1, Semester 2

Operations Management:
This course emphasizes the coordination of resources to improve cost, quality, and customer service in both manufacturing and service organizations. It examines the issues surrounding the design, operation, and management of a multi-location, multi-product-production and distribution system. Students learn to recognize opportunities for supply chain collaboration and ways to justify them financially.
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Economics for Managers:
This course equips students to analyze both opportunities and risks in a complex economic environment, helping them evaluate frameworks for the firm and for the global economy. It demonstrates how economic logic offers powerful and elegant insights into business decision-making. The class focuses on both individual decision-makers – people, firms, industries – and the economic system of a nation in a global setting.
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Managing Behavior in Organizations:
Examines the effective management of behavior in organizations. Focuses on the application of theories of leadership and work motivation. Includes critical conceptual and analytical assessment of these theories. Emphasizes the management of work performance, managerial skill building, and enabling followers.
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Ethics, Integrity, and Society:
This class is designed to prepare students for dealing with ethical challenges in the world outside academia. Focus is on the role of personal values in all types of decision making, from personal to professional. Each week a different speaker is brought in to speak on ethical decision making in industries such as globalization, human resources, and marketing.
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Marketing Communications:
Decision-making in the management of promotions. An evaluation of promotional mix, communications theories, advertising and promotional management and strategy development.
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Marketing Research:
This class is an overview of the marketing research process from a methodological perspective, designed to provide a foundation for effective business decision-making. The key objectives include: understanding different stages of the marketing research process; becoming familiar with research terminology and methodology; developing analytical skills for effective marketing research; and appreciating how marketing research impacts business decisions.
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Electives:
Students can choose from a rich selection of courses from the University’s strong departments in finance, entrepreneurship, marketing research, and organizational  behavior.
Examples of electives at the School of Business:

Students at the Center can also select courses in other schools at the University of Wisconsin, such as Engineering, Journalism, Human Ecology, Health and many more.
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Year 2, Semester 1

Business Strategy:
This course takes an integrative approach to strategic management, including strategy formulation/implementation at business unit and corporate levels. Cases, discussion, lecture, and simulation are used to communicate concepts. The class emphasizes development of tools for analysis of companies and industries and application of knowledge to business problems.
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Consumer Behavior:
Students in the course gain a more sophisticated understanding of consumers in order to develop, evaluate, and implement effective marketing strategies. The objectives include: understanding consumption-related behaviors; creating programs to influence those behaviors; and evaluating the span and degree of programs’ influence on behavior.
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Emerging Issues in New Product Development:
The goal of this course is to examine emerging issues in new product development (NPD).  The traditional paradigm by which NPD has normally been taught and practiced is being challenged by a number of important new developments.  This course explores these developments and contemplates their implications.  Illustrations and examples encompass consumer packaged goods, agribusiness, entertainment, B2B, international, financial, biotechnology, health care, high tech, and many other industries; contexts range from garage startups to Fortune 100 corporations.
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Electives:
Students can choose from a rich selection of courses from the University’s strong departments in finance, entrepreneurship, marketing research, and organizational  behavior.
Examples of electives at the School of Business:

Students at the Center can also select courses in other schools at the University of Wisconsin, such as Engineering, Journalism, Human Ecology, Health and many more.
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Year 2, Semester 2

Marketing Channels:
The focus of this course is on how institutions can effectively and efficiently transmit anything of value from its point of conception (services) or production (goods) to its points of usage (business-to-business or business-to-consumer). It includes analysis of marketing channels using a framework for consumer product sales, business-to-business sales, and sales of services.
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Developing Breakthrough New Products:
This class brings the nature, theory, and practice of new product development to life.
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Design Thinking for Business:
Innovation has become an important basis of competitive advantage in today's economy. The stronger the innovation competency a company has, the stronger their overall ability to compete and prosper. Design Thinking looks to bring these fundamental concepts to future corporate leaders. The class will collaborate and partner with one chosen organization in the social or environmental sector. Students will be guided through the essential parts of the process: how to develop a plan and execute it towards a solution that makes sense and is actionable.  During the course of the semester, students will jointly compile a "strategy and implementation plan" to be delivered to the client organization.
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Electives:
Students can choose from a rich selection of courses from the University’s strong departments in finance, entrepreneurship, marketing research, and organizational  behavior.
Examples of electives at the School of Business:

Students at the Center can also select courses in other schools at the University of Wisconsin, such as Engineering, Journalism, Human Ecology, Health and many more.
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