The Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University has revamped the curriculum for its two-year MBA program. According to an article on the school’s news bulletin, Johnson began reevaluating its curriculum in 2011 and gathered an extensive amount of data over the subsequent two years from more than 1,000 alumni who attended the school during the previous 12 class years.
“We are committed to being one of the top business schools in the world, and that means refining our curriculum to speak to a complex business environment,” commented Johnson’s associate dean for MBA programs, Vishal Gaur. The new curriculum, which is now available for the Class of 2016, focuses on three main components: critical thinking, leadership skills, and decision analysis. Business education requires continuous improvement, as well as big jumps,” Gaur added. “As we implement the new Johnson curriculum, we are also thinking of the next educational innovations that will leverage the strengths of Cornell’s two campuses.”
The revised curriculum includes such courses as “The Art of Innovation: A Design Thinking Immersion” and “Making Design Thinking Work,” which the school claims will equip students to become “future innovators.” The new class “Core Leadership Skills for a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) World” will be led by a retired U.S. Army General, and for the “FinTech Trek and Hackathon” course, students will travel to Cornell Tech in New York City to learn about problem solving in the financial industry and to take part in a 24-hour hackathon, during which they will develop a new financial service or product.