Joint mba degree

Professional degree, law school partnership among new offerings for LSU MBA program

With hundreds of MBA programs across the nation to choose from, it's no small achievement to be named among the top 50, yet that's where Louisiana State University's E.J. Ourso College of Business Administration ranks according to the December 2000 issue of The Academy of Management Journal.

The publication, which based its research on a U.S. News and World Report survey that ranked the top 50 public and private MBA programs across the country, lists LSU's MBA program at No. 47.

That's a pretty lofty status for a program in transition.

Tom Clark, dean of the business school, last year brought in Dr. David Shields from Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management, to guide LSU's MBA program into the top 20 public programs nationally. Since Shields' arrival, the university has implemented several changes that officials expect will carry the James C. Flores MBA Programs into a new stratosphere.

Among the changes was the discontinuation of a part-time MBA program, which, in turn, has been replaced with a new professional MBA. The program's first students will start this summer.

Another change--and the newest to take effect--is a partnership with the Paul M. Hebert Law Center to offer a program that will allow students who complete it to graduate with both a law school degree and an MBA degree.

Shields said the program would allow students to complete the dual degree curriculum in four years vs. the typical five years to complete the two degrees separately.

"They'll be able to use the hours from one side to count toward the specializations," he said. "Basically, the courses count twice."

LSU will become one of a handful of universities to offer such a dual degree program. Under the plan, students will declare a specialization and pursue concentrated study in that area from both the law and business schools.

"Students will have to get into both schools independently," Shields said. "Sometimes they will take people that we won't take and vice versa."

Another facet of LSU's MBA program is the executive MBA, which takes an eclectic selection of candidates for an 18-month period of study. Doctors, pharmacists, attorneys, engineers and managers in various other industries have all graduated from the program, which will graduate its eighth class in May.

Ed Winston, a reliability engineer for Motiva Enterprises, attended LSU as an undergraduate. After discovering the executive MBA program through acquaintances, he enrolled.

"It takes a lot of dedication and time," Winston said. "There's a lot of team work, projects and presentations. It's all about working together."

Kathy Bosworth, an assistant in the college of business, said students in the program become the favorites of business school professors because of their enthusiasm.

"There's a difference between going to college as a regular student and an adult," Bosworth said. "The professors say they're the most fun to teach because they're like sponges. They want to learn more."

The cost for the 18-month program, about $30,000, virtually assures the students enrolled are looking to learn, although it is still less than MBA programs at universities such as Tulane, Rice and Michigan that range from $50,000 to $100,000.

At LSU, more than 80 percent of the companies represented in the 17-member spring 2001 class pick up the tab for their employees, which includes tuition, books and a trip to Europe, among other things.

"Sometimes people think cheaper means bad," Shields said. "That's not always the case."

Mike Rivault, a marketing manager with SunCom, said the exposure to people in other industries and fields has made his pursuit of an MBA valuable experience.

"It enables you to make better decisions because of the breadth of knowledge," he said. "You have the breadth of how your job correlates to theirs."

Chris Spencer, a communications manager for Bank One, echoed that.

"We've benefited not just from the materials, but the experiences in industries we don't work in," Spencer said. "We're learning more about ourselves.