Online MBA curriculum can transform your career with education in business strategy, financial management, leadership excellence

Boise State University’s Online Master of Business Administration provides the framework for you to cultivate the necessary skills to be an effective and ethical leader who affects positive change in your direct reports, organizations and communities.

The MBA curriculum gives you solid business foundations to build on your experience by adding a breadth of learning in business and management. The master’s degree prepares you for strategic business leadership and collaborative decision-making.

The Boise State Online MBA is not just academic theory and vague ideas. With an emphasis on practical application, the courses prepare you for real-world leadership with hands-on assignments that always tie back to your day job. The teaching is relevant and equips you to make immediate, positive changes in your organization and career.

Once you choose between eight Online MBA specialization options — general, business analytics, construction management, cyber, finance, healthcare leadership, management or marketing — you will take 37 credits of required courses and 12 credits of electives based on an emphasis area to round out the MBA curriculum.

You can also complete the Online MBA in as few as 12 months, applying what you learn to your career as you learn with the asynchronous format. Other advantages include six start dates per year, no GMAT/GRE requirement, electronic textbooks and materials included and a strategic business analysis for the final capstone course.

Required Courses in MBA Curriculum

The ten required courses in the Online MBA curriculum give you long-term value by teaching you to be a better manager to have a longer-lasting impact. Those courses are:

BUSMBA 500 Introduction and Business Foundations: An initial foundation or refresher in basic financial accounting, microeconomics, statistics and spreadsheets. This course also includes an introduction to the online learning environment, learning management system and Boise State academic policies and resources.

BUSMBA 501 Design Thinking and Strategic Management: Examine collaborative innovation processes. This course also includes a first exposure to creating functional, business-level and corporate-level strategies.

BUSMBA 505 Marketing Strategy: Focus on revenue-generating opportunities with special attention to evaluating market opportunities for new products or services. This course also examines methods to segment markets, target customers and position products or services in the marketplace and considers managerial decisions of product, price, promotion, and distribution.

BUSMBA 510 People and Organizations: An emphasis on integrated manager-employee relations in an organization, which includes human resources planning, employee recruitment, selection, performance appraisal, discipline, coaching, compensatio, and termination issues. This course also focuses on collaboration, group dynamics, motivation, leadership, problem-solving, negotiation, and self-management.

BUSMBA 515 Corporate Finance: An examination of the three major decisions in corporate finance affecting value of the firm — investment, financing, and cash distribution. This course also includes the methods used to measure corporate value and evaluate financial performance and a financial modeling project in an industry sector of your choosing.

BUSMBA 520 Global Economics: Policy and Trade: A review of how economies work, the differences between economic systems, factors that influence international trade, exchange rates, labor economics and government policies related to trade. This course also includes an application project in an industry sector of your choosing.

BUSMBA 525 Managerial Accounting: An examination of various cost-based accounting concepts and practices, emphasizing the challenges involved in using them to evaluate past performance and plan future deployment of firm resources.

BUSMBA 545 Business Law and Ethics: An introduction for managers to major legal and ethical issues in the business environment, including reasoning, the legal system, government regulation of business, torts, contracts, product liability, intellectual property, business organizations, agency and employment law. This course also includes a project in the industry sector of your choosing.

BUSMBA 550 Operations and Supply Chain Management: An introduction to product and service movement within the firm and between the firm and its partners up and down the supply chain, focusing on logistics management, supplier relationships and creating operational excellence within the firm. This course also includes an operations modeling project in an industry sector of your choosing.

BUSMBA 555 Integrated Capstone: An integration of previous coursework via the development of a business plan for a publicly traded organization, providing recommendations for strategic decisions and associated implications for the organization. This course rounds out the requirements of the Online MBA curriculum.

Learn More About the Online MBA at Boise State

With a thorough curriculum, you can prepare for leadership throughout your career. Are you ready to learn more about the Online Master of Business Administration?

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Video Transcript

Brian O’Morrow, MBA Senior Director, Online MBA: We’ve really designed each and every class around the needs of the online learner. The MBA isn’t a degree about the paper that you get. It’s about the education and the way that you can use that. And so that’s what we focus on. All of our faculty in the online program teach essentially the same classes in our live face-to-face MBA programs. The faculty are very engaged and active in the classes, and they also are interested in what you’re going to do with the education that they’re giving you.

Ally Daniels, MBA Director and Advisor, Online MBA: We have a very high-quality MBA program that is, well reputable and AACSB accredited.

O’Morrow: We’re really a very practical, focused MBA program. We don’t want you to learn theory that you can stand up and write a Ph.D. thesis about. We want you to learn something that you can use on the job.

Daniels: And I think the flexibility of the program is really important. We have seven-week sessions and really you can do a lot in that timeframe, but also you can get through that if you are not a supply chain expert or not a finance expert. That’s okay. You can get through, you can learn a lot, and you’re onto the next class before you know it. So that’s the beauty of the program. If you need to stop and take a break, that is built into the program. That flexibility. The program can be completed in as little as 12 months.

O’Morrow: If you make a promise to put in the work and do the time that you need, we will provide the support. So that you can get through the program and you’ll be proud of yourself and your family will be proud of you too.