Rick Upton's SCU MBA Concentrations

Rick Upton’s SCU MBA Concentrations

Introduction

Sometimes people ask me “How did you fulfill the requirements for four MBA concentrations at Santa Clara University, and not take any extra classes?”. For the answers to this and other potential questions, here are the following:

Courses
Advice

Another page on this site lists all of the courses I’ve taken in the Santa Clara University MBA program, when I’ve taken them, and who taught them.

Courses

Here are the courses I took to fulfill the requirements for four MBA concentrations at Santa Clara University. Note that the requirements for each concentration may change from year to year. I started the MBA program in the fall of 2000. On February 25, 2009, SCU’s MBA curriculum shows that the E-Commerce, Information Systems, and Operations concentrations are no longer offered. The E-Commerce and Information Systems concentrations were phased out when the Master of Science in Information Systems program was phased in.

Legend:

EC:

IS:

MT:

OP:

E-Commerce

Information Systems

Managing Technology and Innovation

Operations

Required for concentration

Elective for concentration

“Bonus” elective: elective needed for another concentration, and applicable but not needed for the labeled concentration since I had already met the requirements for the concentration.

Course*	Title	EC	IS	MT	OP
IDIS 612	Management of the High Technology Firm Seminar	E	E	R	E
MKTG 592	Seminar in E-Business	R
MGMT 524	Managing Innovation and Technology	E		R	E
OMIS 360	Seminar in Manufacturing Management			E	R
OMIS 366	Database Management Systems	E	E
OMIS 368	Software Process Management		E	E
OMIS 378	Information Systems Management for E-Commerce	B	E	B
OMIS 384	Supply Chain Management				E

* Course may have changed or been dropped since I took the course.

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Advice

I do not advocate that anyone should select their courses solely on the basis of fulfilling a large number of concentrations. For me, there were more than enough classes offered in Santa Clara University’s MBA program that interested me, including all of the courses above. So while fulfilling the requirements for a particular concentration did not solely drive my selection of courses, it did help to make decisions when all other factors were equal. I would think that MBA graduates would be better off taking courses in subjects that interest them rather than taking courses that bore them to fulfill a concentration.

You may find it very difficult to get the classes you want when you need them. By stretching out my MBA journey to five years, I was able to mostly skip summer sessions when electives are sparse, and thus I had more options during the other quarters.

Many electives are only offered once per year, and some are not even offered within a school year. Check the SCU MBA web site for past schedules and with the MBA office to get a sense as to when electives are most likely to be offered.

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