With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/740454
S P E C I A L F E A T U R E Pushing the Boundaries MBA and Executive Education programs in B.C. offer participants real-world learning and exposure to a global business community A master of business administration (MBA) degree comes with many rewards. Not only does it equip students with the knowledge and credentials needed to work throughout British Columbia, it opens the door to securing employment abroad as well. Furthermore, it sets students up for a lifetime career success by giving graduates an edge over other job applicants. These advantages are becoming increasingly important in today's demanding and competitive job market. If you've ever thought about pursuing a MBA, there perhaps is no better time with many schools offering full-time, part-time or online options to earn the coveted credential. MBA programs typically focus on advanced and specialized study covering topics such as business, management, finance and accounting; but how they go about doing that isn't always the same. "We do things differently," says Dr. Deborah Hurst, dean of the Faculty of Business at Athabasca University (AU). "We've been at online education longer than anyone else in the world. In many ways, we invented online education." In 1994, Athabasca University logged on with the world's first fully interactive online Executive Master of Business Administration ( MBA) program. The AU online MBA is Canada's largest executive MBA program, and has earned a place among the top MBAs in the world. "We've got about 900 students in our program and we've really stayed at the leading edge of what is possible, in terms of connecting people and ideas through peer collaboration and learning, in a way that no one else has been able to match," says Hurst. "One of the real keys for us is linking theory to practice. So it's not just that we want people to learn theories and have that in their toolkit," explains Hurst. "We want [our students] on a week-by-week and course-by-course basis to be doing the things they are learning about, back in their workplace. That gives every student a tremendous return on their investment." As students get to the end of the program, they can participate in one of AU's elective in-residence courses. This allows students to choose an area of interest, see when it's offered, where it's offered and how it fits into their schedule. Within an eight-week course only five days of it are face-to-face. Students can choose from locations in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Halifax. "We also offer [in-residence elective courses] in places like the Silicon Valley," says Hurst. "We teach a course on innovation and design right in the Silicon Valley. We have a course on international legal risk management where we take students to Washington D.C. We also have courses in places like Singapore, Brazil and M B A / E X E C U T I V E E D U C A T I O N (Left and right) UBC's Sauder School of Business executive education pro- grams are annually ranked among the world's best by the Financial Times