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The core curriculum, required for all MBA-GM students, focuses on business analysis and leadership skills, analytical tools and grounding in key emerging business areas.

Core Course Descriptions

Includes:

  • Foundations: Mandatory one-week course for all incoming students, including the part-tiime evening program, covering key aspects of leadership, team building, motivation, ethics, cross-cultural communication, self-assessment and opportunities to explore career management and job search strategies. During Foundations Week, students join learning groups that interact on-and off-campus. This enhances teamwork and provides a living global experience in which you interact with students from all over the world.
  • Foundational global courses: Emphasis on business analysis and leadership skills, tools for macro-environmental analysis and grounding in important emerging business areas.
  • Thunderbird Global Experience: Two-week courses at international locations during which you meet business leaders of international organizations. You also have the opportunity to examine and discuss management problems through a local and global perspective.
  • Global Enterprise: Preparatory course on intra-entrepreneurship, innovation and global citizenship -- key drivers in a competitive global society that relies on innovation for marketplace success.
  • Global Business Plan/Integrative Experience: An experience that allows you to use the functional knowledge and skills you've learned to develop viable business plans. If you choose not to complete a business plan, you may complete a capstone course that integrates the functional areas of business.

The complete core course list includes:

  • Foundations
  • International Political Economy
  • Fundamentals of Accounting
  • Financial Accounting & External Reporting
  • Managerial Decision-making
  • Fundamentals of Finance
  • Financial Management
  • Global Financial Management
  • International Economics
  • Data Analysis
  • Global Operations Management
  • Managing Projects
  • Competing Through People
  • Competing Through Strategy
  • Global Marketing
  • Regional Business Environment: Asia, Europe, Latin America or North America
  • Cross-Cultural Communication
  • Global Negotiations (Traditional Program only)
  • Global Strategy
  • Global Leadership

In the Accelerated Program, the accounting, finance, data analysis, Competing Through People and Competing Through Strategy courses are provided in a compressed format. The remaining courses are the same in both programs.