Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the Student Link for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• QST FE 850: Private Equity: Leveraged Buyouts
  Private Equity (PE) is a major force in the capital markets, acquiring household names such as Dell, Toys R Us, Neilson, Nieman Marcus, and many more. This course exposes students to, and de-mystifies, the PE world. The focus is centered on LBOs and their position in the alternative asset class. Students learn about the activities of PE firms including formation, fundraising, investing (deal structure, terms, due diligence, governance) and exiting. We also discuss how other industry sectors serve or are affected by PE and who the players are. This is a capstone course that integrates marketing, strategy and finance to further the understanding of business evaluation. Case study and class participation are the primary modes of learning. Course offered jointly with undergraduate course SMG FE 450.
• QST FE 854: Entrepreneurial Finance
  The focus of FE854 is on the development of financial and business skills to identify, evaluate, start and manage new ventures. A comprehensive understanding of finance is an essential ingredient in the "recipe" for business success. No longer can the assumptions underlying financial projections be treated as "black boxes." In many cases, the answer is less important than the analytical process used to calculate it. Readings for the course will primarily be in the form of case studies, and will be supplemented by guest speakers, presentations, and readings from academia and industry.
• QST FE 870: Analysis and Management of Financial Risk
  This course introduces the analysis and management of risk in the context of financial institutions. The objective of the course is to provide a conceptual framework for thinking about financial risk, covering both theoretical background and practical implementation
• QST FE 898: Directed Study: Finance
  Graduate-level directed study in Finance. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.
• QST FE 899: Directed Study: Finance
  Graduate-level directed study in Finance. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.
• QST FE 918: Doctoral Seminar in Finance
  This doctoral course, is designed to provide students with an introduction to financial economics. This lecture-based course will cover no arbitrage conditions, preferences and risk aversion, portfolio selection, the capital asset pricing model, asset pricing and dynamic asset pricing. In addition to lectures, this class will include readings and assignments. Open to MBA students with faculty member's permission. Must have strong quantitative background and several courses in finance or economics.
• QST FE 920: Advanced Capital Markets
  This course provides a comprehensive and in-depth treatment of modern asset pricing theories. Extensive use is made of continuous time stochastic processes, stochastic calculus and optimal control. In particular, martingale methods are employed to address the following topics: (i) optimal consumption- portfolio policies and (ii) asset pricing in general equilibrium models. Advances involving non-separable preferences, incomplete information and agent diversity will be discussed.
• QST FE 990: Current Topics Seminar
  For PhD students in the Finance department. Registered by permission only.
• QST FE 998: Directed Study: Finance
  PhD-level directed study in Finance. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.
• QST FE 999: Directed Study: Finance
  PhD-level directed study in Finance. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.
• QST HM 703: Health Sector Issues and Opportunities
  This course provides a dynamic introduction to the health sector, beginning with the burden and distribution of disease and current patterns of expenditures. While the emphasis will be on the American system, a global context will be developed. The basic elements of insurance and payment, service delivery, and life sciences products will be described, and put in the context of the unique economic structure of the sector. The intense challenges of the sector will be explored, as well as both the ethical issues presented and the opportunities that emerge. Public policy and technological and practice development as drivers of change will be addressed throughout.
• QST HM 710: Health Service Delivery: Strategies, Solutions and Execution
  The overarching theme of this course is health care organizational transformation. The course will provide knowledge and skills needed to develop and implement high performing health care systems capable of delivering accessible, high quality, efficient services. It will draw upon relevant information from disciplinary areas of study including strategy, operations, marketing, finance, law, human resources, quality improvement, and information technology.
• QST HM 717: Drugs, Devices and Diagnostics: New Challenges, Strategies and Execution
  This course will examine issues and opportunities in life sciences focused on the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical devices sectors and the life sciences service industry supporting these sectors, through the eyes of the CEO. The course will investigate who manages these companies and what are the strategies that are used to build successful enterprises. Students will be introduced to individuals and institutions at every stage of the development cycle from idea generation and start-up fundraising to manufacturing, commercialization and global expansion. We will specifically look at key elements of strategy and the execution by examining companies, that have either succeeded or failed, by discussing the pros and cons of different approaches and teasing out the lessons one can derive from leaders in the field and case studies examining their approaches.
• QST HM 801: Bench-to-Bedside: Translating Biomedical Innovation from the Laboratory to the Marketplace
  The subject of the course is the translation of medical technologies into new products and services for the healthcare system. The course begins with a rigorous study of university research commercialization including intellectual property, licensing and planning, creating, funding and building new entrepreneurial ventures. Concepts and tools are presented for assessing new technologies and their potential to be the basis for commercialization. Cross- disciplinary teams of students will be formed which will evaluate translational research projects currently being developed at Boston University and other local academic research institutions, to develop a go-to-market strategy. There will be a case studies and guest lecturers to discuss examples of both success and failure in technology commercialization.
• QST HM 817: Advances in Digital Health
  Digital technologies are fundamentally transforming the health sector. Health information technology now permeate every segment of the health value chain, starting with the search for health information, to improving patient outcomes, to improving health. In this course students explore the evolving digital health landscape through a mix of case studies, practitioner talks, individual papers and team projects. Students will enhance their digital health requirements and systems selection toolbox. They will develop competence in current digital health technology standards, gain a deeper understanding of the strategic drivers of digital health through the eyes of the healthcare CIO and CMIO, the operational challenges from the perspective of the end user and the healthcare providers, and challenges of incorporating digital health technologies into existing workflows.
• QST HM 820: Strategy, Economics, and Policy in the Health Sector
  This course studies the strategic and economic issues facing insurers, providers, and life-sciences companies in the healthcare sector. The course will adapt tools from health economics, strategy, and finance to understand the problems faced by these firms. The course will also examine the problems faced by regulators, who must craft policies that shape the healthcare sector: which hospital mergers to allow; what procedures health insurers must cover; how public programs ought to reimburse life-sciences companies; how quality of care is measured and rewarded; and so on.
• QST HM 833: Health Sector Marketing
  This course provides an in-depth understanding of health sector marketing in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors for both products and services (hospital, ACOs, payers, life sciences, pharma and biotech, medical devices, medical software, and so on). The course explores how the tools of marketing (e.g., consumer behavior, pricing, promotion, channels, branding, communication, segmentation, etc.) can be employed in the rapidly changing health sector with particular attention to changing organizational structures, financing, technologies, market demands, laws, channels of distribution, on-line and mobile applications, and regulations which require new approaches to marketing. Topics to be addressed include marketing to physicians, DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) Marketing, new product development particularly for pharmaceuticals and medical devices, adoption of medical and service innovations, typical decision making units in the health sector, traditional as well as social media, and social marketing. The course will have you keep in mind always while making marketing decisions that medicine, in the purest sense, is a profession with an intellectual discipline, a tradition of service, and an ethical code of conduct, and that service to the patient, as individuals and in the aggregate, is foremost in marketing decision making.
• QST HM 840: Health Sector Consulting
  This is an applied consulting project course that aims to develop reflexive practitioners who can elicit client requirements, translate requirements into a problem statement and develop actionable solutions that meet client needs. The course uses a mix of case studies, individual memos and team project deliverables to systematically apply skills developed over the course of the MBA to solve real-world health sector problems. Students work on the consulting assignment in teams of up to four students based on having a shared interest in a prospective consulting project. These projects are curated in partnership with sponsor organizations to be executable within the framework of an academic semester. Projects in the past have ranged from improving the departmental revenue cycle within an academic medical center, developing an international pricing strategy for the introduction of a new product by a pharmaceutical company, to improving safety culture at a large hospital. These projects all have active involvement of the project sponsors who provide access to their organizations and provide ongoing feedback over the lifecycle of the consulting engagement.
• QST HM 848: Driving Health Sector Innovation
  This course examines an array of compelling opportunities for innovation, incremental and disruptive, across products and services, created within existing organizations or by starting new businesses. It bridges design and implementation, examining the unique and complex array of elements that make successful innovation in the health sector so difficult, and developing the skills and knowledge needed to effectively address those challenges. The course provides a conceptual framework, and then emphasizes hands-on engagement, concrete exercises, written cases, and in-class speakers who are engaged in real-world innovation initiatives. Students will have the opportunity to focus on areas of particular interest and relevance to current or future work. They will leave better equipped to drive or support the viable, value-creating innovation so desperately needed in the health sector.
• QST HM 898: Directed Study: Health Care Management
  Graduate-level directed study in Health Care Management. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Center website.

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