The Evening & Weekend MBA Program will revise its core curriculum in fall 2014 to better support students' busy schedules and improve learning, according to Jon Kaplan, the program's executive director, who led the charge for the changes.
Approved by Haas faculty in May, the changes include extending the core curriculum from two semesters to three semesters to enable students to better learn and absorb coursework. In addition, three courses are being added to the program's core curriculum: Data and Decisions; Problem Framing, Problem Solving (PFPS); and a new Applied Innovation course.
Data and Decisions (Statistics) was previously a prerequisite course for the program that students could fulfill in several different ways, resulting in a lack of consistent knowledge among students. The course is already required in the Haas School's other two MBA programs.
PFPS was previously a required course but not part of the core curriculum of the Evening & Weekend MBA Program.
A new Applied Innovation course is being created to serve as the program's experiential learning requirement established as part of the school's Berkeley Innovative Leader Development (BILD) curriculum. The course would require students to work on teams applying concepts learned from Leadership Communications and PFPS to real-life projects.