After receiving a $10M gift from the family of the late William Connell (’63), Harvard Business School has announced that it will begin funding a three-year overhaul of its MBA curriculum, introducing, among other things, new second-year electives and case studies. While details have yet to be made public, a statement from the school claims that the changes will “provide MBA candidates with an expanded array of learning opportunities, offering them more engagement in practice and promoting greater integration between the two years of the program.”
In 2009–2010, the school eliminated its required, first-year “Negotiations” course, instead expanding “Leadership and Corporate Accountability,” formerly a half-course, to a full semester. The school also began integrating longer case studies taught by multiple professors and, in 2011, introduced Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development (known as Field courses). Bloomberg Businessweek reports that the changes to the second-year electives—following on the heels of these previous additions to the school’s required coursework—will “work in concert with the Field curriculum.”