Aspiring executives and midcareer business people in central Indiana will have an exciting new MBA option, as American National University brings its unique, community-focused Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree program to the $$Indianapolis Campus.
On Tuesday, Jan. 27, the campus held an official kickoff event for the program, which offered information and networking opportunities to prospective students and other community representatives.
“Our kickoff event provided the local business and education community a detailed look at this highly-acclaimed program, pioneered at our flagship campus in Virginia,” said campus director James Abraham. “This combines our central Indiana connections with the academic resources of an esteemed MBA program.”
Known for hands-on, career focused educational programs in business, information technology, and health care, American National University brings this approach to the MBA program by having students work with local businesses and community organizations on real-world projects, putting theory into practical use. The program is also unique in that it is a hybrid program, with students participating in courses both on campus and online.
“Graduate students often ask how they will know when they have mastered an MBA program’s theories and concepts,” said Annette Chamberlin, Ph.D., vice president of academic affairs for American National University, who participated in the event. “At American National University, students know from day one of their program of study how each class’s material impacts the real world.”
“Working with real-life cases during the whole course period has a number of advantages,” said Fang Zhang, a student in the MBA program at the Roanoke Valley Campus. “One of the things I have noticed is that when you can apply subjects discussed during the lectures directly into practice, it is much easier to really understand the theory.”
Local business organizations have also benefited from partnering with the College’s MBA students. Juliann Poff, senior global sales executive for Qualtrax, Inc., and herself a graduate of the MBA program, knew the benefits firsthand. She enlisted the help of the MBA program in analyzing potential new markets for her company, a leading provider of compliance management software. “With the information that we were able to garner from this project, we affirmed our entrance into the testing lab market,” Juliann explained. “We had success with forensic laboratories and wanted to expand to other testing laboratories. Since this project, we are having much success.”
For more information about the MBA program at American National University, please visit http://www.national-college.edu/programs/master-business-administration/.
Prospective students, MBA program graduates, faculty, and staff came together during the MBA program kickoff at the $$Indianapolis Campus to share information and network.
