Campus Visits

Click here to plan your trip to campus. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out at questromadmissions@bu.edu.

Day of the Week: Wednesday

Time: 6:30pm – 9:15pm

Taught By: Dr. Mohammed Soltaniehha

Description: Every company is a “data company,” possessing vast quantities of data from operations, customers, products, and transactions. With big data comes significant challenges requiring specific infrastructure and skills. The analytics process, including deploying and using big data tools, is essential for organizations to improve efficiency, drive new revenue streams, and gain a competitive edge. This course addresses these challenges, discusses methods to overcome them, and common pitfalls in implementation and unnecessary analysis. Data analytics involves exploring, discovering, interpreting, and communicating meaningful patterns, whereas big data analytics focuses on analyzing data on a larger scale, where a single computer cannot process it timely. Distributed computation, the foundation of big data analytics, involves a network of computers processing data segments. This course teaches students to perform statistical data analysis of large datasets using distributed computation and introduces machine learning techniques and libraries that handle big data.

Day of the Week: Tuesday

Time: 6:30pm – 9:15pm

Taught By: Dr. Fang Wan

Description: This course aims to sharpen students’ ability to conduct quantitative analyses of business problems. The primary focus is on problem formulation and analysis — identifying the key components of a decision problem, structuring it, translating it into a graphical chart, and then building the appropriate mathematical and spreadsheet models. These models are used to generate valuable qualitative and quantitative managerial insights. Students will be introduced to data management and decision tools such as Formula Diagrams, Linear Optimization, and Error Detection methodologies, as well as to Parametric Sensitivity Analyses. While each business problem is distinctive, a disciplined approach to problem solving can be incredibly useful across many career contexts. The concepts and exercises in this course will sharpen the student’s professional ability to structure a messy problem and do some disciplined analysis on it. Developing these modeling skills requires the opportunity to brainstorm, reflect, and practice it on a wide variety of problems. Hence, the course includes intensive team-centered workshop sessions where all students get hands-on practice working with a group of peers to frame various problems in appropriate analytical terms, develop a solution approach, and critically reflect on the results. Examples will be drawn from Strategy, Operations, Technology Management, Marketing, and Finance to expose students to the broad applications of the concepts and tools learned in this class. Many of the up- to-the-minute Excel techniques covered in the course are now considered standard in industry, and developing a good understanding of them will deepen the student’s ability to identify opportunities in which spreadsheet analytics can be used to improve performance, drive value, and support important decisions. Finally, students will learn the latest technologies for effectively linking spreadsheets to relational databases, and to manage reliably large scale spreadsheet development projects.

Day of the Week: Wednesday

Time: 6:30pm – 9:15pm

Taught By: Larry Strauss

Description: Operations & Supply Chain Management is the core value generator in most companies – regardless of whether the company is delivering a product or providing a service. Having a basic understanding of how firms think about and configure their Supply Chain and how their Supply Chain supports the company’s broader business strategy – including the interaction between OSCM and Finance, Marketing, Information Systems, and Product Development – is critical for every manager who aspires to manage, diagnose problems, and/or improve a business. This course provides an introduction to the fundamental concepts of Operations & Supply Chain Management (“OSCM”), how businesses configure their Supply Chains to create and deliver value effectively and efficiently, and how various OSCM components interact with one another and other parts of the business.

Day of the Week: Wednesday

Time: 6:30pm – 9:15pm

Taught By: Peter Howard

Description: A digital strategy is an organization’s roadmap for leveraging digital technologies – including artificial intelligence, cloud computing, data analytics, and emerging platforms – to innovate business models, enhance products and services, streamline operations, and foster meaningful interactions with customers, suppliers, and strategic partners. For business leaders, developing and executing a robust digital strategy is essential not only for competitiveness but also for resilience in a rapidly evolving market environment. This course equips students with practical tools and frameworks to effectively design, implement, and communicate digital strategies within complex organizations. Students will explore critical management practices such as agile project management, effective change management in digital transformations, strategic use of AI and data analytics, cybersecurity considerations, and financial modeling to evaluate digital investments. Through interactive case studies, simulations, and exercises, students will apply these concepts in practical contexts. Industry experts will provide insights into current challenges and opportunities, sharing real-world experiences and best practices. Instead of a traditional final exam, student teams will work collaboratively on projects to conceptualize, develop, present, and secure stakeholder support for their own comprehensive digital strategy initiatives.

Day of the Week: Thursday

Time: 6:30pm – 9:15pm

Taught By: Dr. Conti Rena

Description: 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.

Day of the Week: Wednesday

Time: 6:30pm – 9:15pm

Taught By: Dr. Greg Stoller

Description: The course is a comprehensive introduction to the entrepreneurial process from idea generation through venture launch and later growth. Initial lectures and case studies focus on idea generation and concept feasibility along with the skills, competencies and perspectives entrepreneurs must develop to manage the organization through each phase of development. Later lectures and cases emphasize the issues faced by entrepreneurs in scaling innovative enterprises; use of strategic alliances, attracting funding and managing investors, managing growth expansion and choosing among exit options.

Day of the Week: Thursday

Time: 6:30pm – 9:15pm

Taught By: Brian Regan

Description: The objective of this course is to introduce the students to the theory and practice of corporate finance, and to provide the students with a set of analytical tools necessary to answer the most important questions related to firms’ valuation and investment decision making first under certainty and then under uncertainty. The course can be divided into the following three building blocks: valuation, investment decisions, and the relation between risk and return.

Day of the Week: Tuesday

Time: 6:30pm – 9:15pm

Taught By: Catherine Gill

Description: The purpose of this course is to teach students about the distinctive challenges of managing high-performing organizations in the nonprofit sector. The course will cover a broad range of topics and it is intended to be a gateway course to the sector and to potential electives and pathways of future learning. The two major projects in the semester (one is individual, one in a team) offer students the chance to choose an area of interest to explore in depth. Other assignments challenge students to identify and analyze key indicators of nonprofit performance and to communicate effectively about those issues to selected stakeholders. A strong grounding in nonprofit accounting and financial management is extremely valuable and so we devote considerable attention to those topics. The course also addresses nonprofit marketing, evaluation, fundraising and revenue generation, growth strategy, impact investing, and the confluence of charity and commerce. The course is oriented to practice and will engage experts in the field.

Day of the Week: Tuesday

Time: 6:30pm – 9:15pm

Taught By: Dr. Anita Carson

Description: 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.

Day of the Week: Wednesday

Time: 6:30pm – 9:15pm

Taught By: Ned Rimer

Description: 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.

Day of the Week: Thursday

Time: 6:30pm – 9:15pm

Taught By: Remi Trudel

Description: Globalization, increasing transparency in business operations and the prevalence of social media have forever changed the way stakeholders view and interact with organizations. Societal and business imperatives are not only often considered compatible; they can be increasingly viewed as one and the same. People today often communicate, organize and engage based on mutual interests, and, generally, place greater trust in organizations and individuals that work for a better world. Marketing has often been referred to as the “science of sales.” Whether you are selling a product, an intervention or an idea, it can be a powerful tool for advancing social change in today’s dynamic environment. The strategic integration of a relevant social purpose into a product, business or nonprofit organization through brand-building citizenship activities can drive consumer and donor recall, consideration, acquisition, retention and propensity to recommend. However, these efforts do not usually constitute a “silver bullet” and may not be the best solution to a business problem or societal need at all. In the worst cases, ill-conceived citizenship marketing strategies can result in damaging consequences. Practitioners must be pragmatic when engaging in marketing social change. Understanding how to apply best practice, identify opportunities, address challenges, engage stakeholders and innovate strategically are essential skills in this rapidly evolving sector. The purpose of this course is to provide students with an in-depth understanding of how marketing principles can be applied to create both short-term and lasting social change. Students will explore dimensions of the modern landscapes of brand, corporate and nonprofit “citizenship” and how they relate to marketing. Areas of study include: cause-related marketing and cause branding; nonprofit branding and social movements, as well as corporate social responsibility and shared value creation.

Day of the Week: Tuesday

Time: 6:30pm – 9:15pm

Taught By: Christopher Carter

Description: Gain the skills and know-how to manage up and across your organization, passing the normal organizational tests along the way from technical expert to cross-functional integrator to directing the future course of your organization. This is strategy implementation for the middle manager who needs to 1) size-up the situation and 2) determine how to gain the power needed to achieve their objectives. One of the qualitative factors that will be explored in great detail is personal style choice vis a vis different stakeholders and organizational politics and the resultant perceptions of you and your programs. Students will study both successful and less-successful managers through cases and readings, honing their own, personal managerial style.