The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has approved a new doctoral program that will be offered this fall for the first time at the Naveen Jindal School of Management. The Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) program will be geared toward senior managers and executives who want to learn advanced research methodologies that can help them better solve thorny, real-world business problems — which could give them an edge in their career trajectories.

The DBA degree will also provide graduates with the credentials needed to pursue positions in academia such as clinical professor or adjunct professor.

Dr. Amit Mehra, professor of information systems at the Jindal School, said that the idea for offering this type of doctoral degree versus others in the nation that are more focused on professional development is to fill a niche in the higher-education marketplace.

“What differentiates our DBA program from others offered around the U.S. is that ours will be taught by faculty members who are very oriented toward quantitative research,” Mehra said. “We are very comfortable with data analytics and optimization — those kinds of hard skills. Nowadays, the use of these methods and skills in business decision-making has been increasing and people are seeing a lot of value in these methods.”

Dr. Vijay Mookerjee, Charles and Nancy Davidson Chair and Professor of Information Systems at the Jindal School, said the DBA degree differs from the Jindal School’s PhD programs in that the former is more applied while the latter is more theoretical.

“In research, we often plot a graph with two dimensions between relevance and rigor,” said Mookerjee, who is also the Jindal School’s PhD Area Coordinator in the Information Systems academic area. “I believe that a good research problem at an advanced level should have both these dimensions. I would still say that PhD students also have the responsibility to add something to the theory of the problem they are studying.”

Mookerjee said that the DBA students will learn the cutting-edge knowledge that they need to solve complex practical problems that they face in a globally competitive environment.

Housed in the Executive Education area of the Jindal School, the part-time doctoral degree program will require candidates to undertake 36 hours of core courses, 9 hours of electives and 27 dissertation hours. The core and elective courses are expected to take two years to complete. Students will be expected to take two courses per semester. Before each summer semester, prior to the dissertation phase, students will conduct research projects to get geared up for their dissertation year. Each of the two research projects will be taken in the two summer semesters. The third year will be devoted to completing the dissertation. One or more faculty will guide the candidate in preparing and writing the dissertation.

John Barden, clinical professor in accounting and associate dean of Executive Education, said the DBA degree is a valuable addition to the Jindal School’s academic lineup.

“This is a great opportunity to make a real difference that will advance management education and practice,” he said. “It’s exciting to think that we will be bringing in new students this coming fall who are also decision makers for their companies. We will be equipping them to solve previously unsolvable problems while gaining insights into what companies are dealing with these days. That exchange of information is the lifeblood of management education.”