New MBA at UVU

The Woodbury School of Business is now accepting applications to the new full-time Masters of Business Administration program.

After years of preparation, the school has organized a three semester graduate program for students looking for a daytime program.

For Jillian Milne, senior studying graphic design, the new MBA came right in time. Milne wants to start her own business designing textiles and wallpapers and she has been looking for a program to suit her needs.

“I’m really interested in getting an MBA, but it’s not an easy choice for me because of my two-year-old,” Milne said. “UVU’s new, fast program has its appeals.”

For students like Milne, who have roots in the community and moving cross-country for graduate school isn’t a viable option, UVU’s new program is a welcome addition.

“There was a need that our current program didn’t meet,” Trish Northcutt, MBA director at the Woodbury Business School, said.

Though there has been an MBA program at UVU for nearly 20 years, beginning with a program through Utah State University, then UVU’s “professional part-time program,” which provided graduate students currently employed full time, with the opportunity to gain their degree through evening classes twice a week for the last three years.

But a full-time program has been a part of the plan from the beginning.

“We pride ourselves in listening to student input and providing an MBA program that works with students’ needs for flexibility, quality and affordability,” Northcutt said. “The new full-time offering meets those needs and is a competitive, accredited program.”

Woodbury Business has worked to design a program that gives students the education they could find at competitive business schools around the country in half the time.

An advantage that the designers are playing on is the business and economic climate of Utah. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation named Utah the best-performing state in the 2013 Enterprising States report, making Utah the place to be for starting and keeping a business.

“We’re connected to some of the finest businesses in the country right here in Utah,” Norman Wright, dean of the Woodbury School of Business, said. “Our goal is to put our MBA students in direct contact with those businesses through directed consulting projects, mentoring programs and networking activities that pave the way to improving their career trajectory.”

The program is designed to give its students a unique education provided by a staff of successful businessmen and women.

“We kind of stole them away from their careers for awhile,” Northcutt said. “We’re dedicated to providing our students with a competitive and well-rounded education.”

The new program stands apart from its predecessor with the implementation of an international element. Every graduate group will spend the second semester of the three-semester program working on a project for an international company and will have the opportunity to present the project to the foreign business.

The first international trip is planned for spring 2015 in Germany.  Woodbury Business understands the advantages international work gives to students and wanted to provide them with those advantages.

Creators of the program urge students interested in graduate school to attend a dinner planned for December 5 to ask questions.

“Students think graduate school is just an extension of their undergrad experience,” Northcutt said. “But it’s much more rigorous.”

Even with the program only being three semesters, it will be no less challenging, but it’s designed purposefully.  Everything from the curriculum to the tuition is designed around one theme.

“An MBA shouldn’t break you,” Patricia Monsoor, Woodbury School of Business’s communication specialist, “it should make you.”

The directors of the program are accepting applications through February 1.