In 2019, leaders in the Executive Education Area at the Naveen Jindal School of Management revamped its Global Leadership MBA program to maximize flexibility and convenience for its students. They moved the program completely online, reduced tuition, offered more professional certificates and restructured the admissions process.

These changes proved so popular and beneficial to students that its leaders looked for ways to make the Jindal School’s Executive Education programs even more flexible and convenient. As a result, they consolidated the various corporate training programs offered by the Jindal School into these professional areas: Online Global Leadership programs, Organizational Behavior, Coaching and Consulting (OBCC) programs, Project Management programs, Supply Chain programs and Healthcare Leadership and Management programs.

MBAs, master’s degrees, academic certificates and professional certificates are offered in all these professional areas. One new concentration — Global Marketing — expands Executive Education’s palette of educational offerings into a new professional area.

“Some of our programs, OBCC for example, focus primarily on leadership and the business of people,” said Rhonda Bush, assistant dean in the Executive Education Area and director of the Online Global Leadership MBA program.

“We also have the online global leadership programs which focus on some of the strategic, business and quantitative skills that we see through the MBAs, the master’s degrees and some of the certificates that we offer.”

Bush also said that many of the courses from each professional area can be shared across areas.

“This increases our students’ networking opportunities,” she said. “It also makes their educational experience at the Jindal school much stronger, since it allows them to have shared experiences across professional areas with larger groups and larger discussions. It collectively brings up all our programs to a whole new level

We are … retooling our programs to match what they need – John Barden

While many of the Executive Education offerings are being consolidated, others — specifically, healthcare leadership and management — are more specialized and better served by maintaining some separation.

“Many physicians like to be with other physicians, so we have the Alliance for Physician Leadership hybrid programs for them,” said John Barden, dean of Executive Education. “Then you have the hospital administrators, along with some physicians, who like to mix together. For them we have the Healthcare Leadership and Management (for professionals) hybrid programs.”

A new program — an Online EMBA with an Emphasis on Healthcare Organization Leadership — caters to healthcare leaders who need a strictly online offering to learn the skills necessary to advance into the C-suite.

We are listening to industry representatives and are retooling our programs to match what they need,” Barden said. “Many executives find that upskilling with a certificate from the Jindal School in as few as two semesters can get them a promotion. And with those promotions come raises. Then they realize that they can use the same credits they already earned through their certificate programs and are already well on their way to obtaining a master’s degree or an MBA.”

Along those lines, Bush said, many students start in the Executive MBA and master’s programs and are earning one or more certificates to complement their degrees along the way.

“Our students can earn one or more certificates part-way through their programs and have that documentation as they continue to finish their degree,” she said. “At the end, they have the certificates and the degree without any additional cost or time. They leverage their degrees with the additional training learned through the certificates, allowing them to make the most of their academic experience here at UT Dallas.”