CURRENT NEWS

The new working MBA

Starting this fall, students enrolling in Lehigh’s MBA program must have at least two years of work experience, under a new requirement approved recently by the faculty of the College of Business and Economics.

Kathleen A. Trexler, associate dean and director of the MBA program, said the new requirement will provide Lehigh’s 330 MBA students a richer education while making the program more competitive nationally and internationally.

"Virtually all of the MBA programs in the top 20 schools require a significant amount of work experience as part of their admissions criteria," says Trexler. "And the success of our new integrated MBA model hinges on the fact that students with real work experience can help enrich the classroom experience for each other."

Recent changes have made the MBA program integrated and interactive by immersing students in the real-world atmosphere of a dynamic and competitive corporate environment, says Trexler. Students gain an improved business perspective by working on industry projects with corporate sponsors and with professors who have backgrounds in teaching, research and consulting.

"We want each student to be able to fully participate in the shared learning experience, as well as glean from the experiences of fellow students," Trexler says. "We think the best way to achieve this is to be certain that every student in the program come to Lehigh with significant professional experience."

Lehigh’s current MBA students average nine years of professional experience.

The decision will not affect students already enrolled in the MBA program, but it terminates the five-year arts-MBA and engineering-MBA programs, and it closes the MBA program to Presidential Scholars, who earn a fifth year of tuition-free education at Lehigh.

The change is necessary for the Lehigh MBA program, which was recently ranked by the Gourman Report among the top 50 programs in the world, to continue to compete on a global level, Trexler says.

"Continuous change and continuous improvement will be the hallmarks of the 21st century," Trexler says. "Lehigh’s MBA program is committed to providing the professional environment necessary to prepare our students to manage change across functions, across industries and across borders."

--Linda Harbrecht