Second Year Course List
This page presents information on the second year course list for the Smeal MBA Program.
Second Year Course List
Course offerings may vary from year to year.
| Course Name | Course Title | Overview |
| BA 505 | Negotiations | Many of the important things that managers do require the agreement of others: making deals with suppliers and customers, acquiring capital from investors, forming joint ventures, resolving labor disputes, hiring new people, to name just a few. Getting agreement requires addressing the other parties' interests while at the same time advancing your own. It's about negotiation. This course teaches a systematic approach to negotiating. The principle topics we will cover are negotiation analysis, creating value, claiming value, negotiating in teams, preparing a strategy, handling conflict, multi-party bargaining and repeated negotiations. |
| BA 597C | Strategic Leadership Seminar | This course presents a CEO’s perspective on the key opportunities and challenges faced by business leaders as they seek to adapt themselves and their organizations to the evolving business environment. Course content is based on extensive research and first hand consulting experience working with senior leaders from major corporations worldwide, including companies like 3M, Fujitsu, IBM, British Airways, Motorola, Samsung, BP Amoco, and many others. The lessons learned from those benchmark companies and the evolving models of management they are helping to create, will form the backbone of a series of discussions on 21st century organizational forms and the new leadership competencies required to direct them. This course provides an excellent overview of the leadership development challenges faced by you as you resume a corporate career. |
| BA 597E | Business and The Environment | This course will provide a greater context to understand how marketing strategies can or cannot be used to address key issues. By understanding key environmental issues and how marketing relates to them, you will have a better understanding how to apply skills learned to issues of Corporate Social Responsibility. |
| BA 597K | Business Government and International Economics | You'll learn to understand and anticipate macroeconomic events. The course will cover the institutional focus of policy makers (ex., government leaders, central bankers) and the way they see the global economy and their nation’s place in it. The class synthesizes institutional, historical, and theoretical perspectives to study issues such as Federal Reserve policy, European economic integration, and the causes and consequences of business cycles and financial panics. Class discussion and activities revolve around cases and data from real life episodes culled from various countries or regions including the EU, Asian, South and Central America, and the U.S. The class format is part case study, part lecture, and always a lot of discussion. |
| ACCTG 560 | Accounting & Business Analysis | This course prepares you to effectively extract and utilize the information in financial statements. The relation between the financial statement representation and the underlying business activities is emphasized. Specific topics to be addressed include revenue recognition practices, obligation measurement, and the impact of organizational form on accounting measures of performance. |
| BLAW 597B | Business Law for Innovation and Competition | This course will teach you the basic nature of IP rights, as well as the process for obtaining and enforcing them. You will be prepared to more accurately value IP and manage it in the context of both small and large business ventures. The course will also teach you to better appreciate when professional legal counsel is necessary, and how to manage those interactions more cost effectively. |
| ENTR 502 | Starting & Managing A Small Business | If you are planning at some time to start or join a young company, help spin-out a company from a major corporation or enter the private equity sector, take this course. You will learn all the key phases of a start-up from opportunity identification, company formation, planning, raising different rounds of finance, recruiting and building a team, developing and executing a sales strategy, and finally creating an exit strategy for investors. The course provides you with knowledge and experience to increase the likelihood of success whether as a principal in a small company, a new business unit in a corporation, or a manager of risk investments. |
| ENTR 503 | Garber Venture Capital Practicum | You will gain practical experience in equity investments in small and start-up firms. You'll become exposed to the decision making process in actual deal participation using the Garber Venture Fund coupled with relationships with external investment groups. This course exposes you to many complex business issues typical of the real world. At the end of the course, you decide whether to make an investment from the fund and on what terms. |
| ENTR 504 | Business Planning Immersion | You will learn the key elements required in a compelling business plan and you'll have an opportunity to write a business plan. The course will enable you to construct business plans that present the key points in a direct, clear, and appealing way. Five issues are addressed in detail including understanding the target audience, writing a powerful executive summary, key considerations in staffing and building a startup, planning key functional activities, and presenting financial information. You will hone your skills by writing and reviewing business plans. |
| ENTR 571 | Applying Entrepreneurship Across Corporate Boundaries | This course is the Capstone course within the Portfolio. It emphasizes innovation and the management of the entrepreneurial function as strategic tools. It examines in detail the commonalities and differences between entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and enterpriseurs. The latter term describes a new breed of managers that create innovative business models transcending conventional corporate boundaries eroded by Information Technology, Deregulation, and Globalization. Four cases are analyzed: a biotech start-up, a large infrastructure start-up, a counter-cultural new corporate division, and a "green field" virtual company scenario. |
| ENTR 597A | Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship | In this course, you will explore "innovation" and "entrepreneurship" from the perspective of creativity. Specifically you will study the determinants of creativity at the individual, group, organizational, and inter-organizational levels of analyses. You will gain both practical and theoretical insights from the course. Topics that will be covered include: deframing, metaphors, dialectical inquiry, path creation, and bisociation. As a part of the course requirements, students, in groups, will track the genesis of novelty. From this effort, you will put together a collection of short narratives chronicling successes and failures that entrepreneurs and firms encounter as they attempt to shape creative processes. |
| FIN 550 | Financial Analysis & Valuation | This course will help you develop skills in financial analysis and working capital management. You will also be able to forecast financial needs in a variety of economic circumstances. Finally, you will be able to use your knowledge of financial statements to value securities using a variety of methodologies. |
| FIN 563 | Financial Management Simulation & Corporate Visitation Immersion | You will be organized into competing teams and be responsible for making all decisions relating to managing a simulated firm. The simulation will emphasize finance, but will be explicitly cross functional so that teams must make decisions about operational, marketing, and management issues. Using financial measures of performance, teams will be judged on how well they manage the firm. The second part of the immersion experience is an interaction with corporate financial officers either on-campus or through an off-campus visit. |
| FIN 571 | Strategic Financial Management | This course is designed to be a practical, comprehensive lesson in corporate finance and strategy. It draws together the various topics in managerial finance and presents a unified, integrated view of the overall subject areas. You will deal with case applications and consider recent empirical and theoretical findings in the field. The topics covered include capital expenditure analysis, capital structure and dividend policies, corporate structure and restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, insider trading, and international corporate finance. Integrated throughout the course will be issues of managerial compensation and potential management-shareholder conflicts. |
| FIN 577 | Financial Engineering & Corporate Strategy | You'll gain an understanding of how innovative financial strategies can be used to enhance real opportunities of the firm. You will learn how basic derivative instruments can be used to re-engineer exposures to risk so as to create value and promote the firm’s strategic objectives. Practical perspectives in a variety of investment and financing settings are provided. |
| FIN 581 | Fundamentals of Financial Markets | This course provides you with an understanding of the operation and structure of money and bond markets, and the concepts and techniques used in evaluating and managing fixed income portfolios. It covers the determinants of asset prices and yields, the term structure of interest rates, and yield curve analysis. It also deals with the concepts and techniques used to evaluate and manage exposures to interest rate, credit, and foreign exchange risk. |
| FIN 583 | Modern Portfolio Management | This course provides the rigorous theoretical foundations and vital tools needed to structure, manage, and monitor the performance of an investment portfolio. Topics include portfolio theory, the risk-return relationship, asset allocation and security selection, style analysis and performance evaluation, mutual/hedge funds. |
| FIN 597F | Nittany Lion Fund | This is your Capstone course in IMPA portfolio and it builds on concepts covered in previous IMPA portfolio courses. You'll focus on applied issues & topics in the management of investments. Outside lecturers from investment management world will play prominent role in delivery of course. Topics include: wealth management, asset allocation & portfolio management, security selection & trading, retirement planning, mutual & hedge funds, and tax issues in investment banking. |
| FIN 597G | Financial Modeling | This course introduces and applies equity, debt, and derivative models and computational techniques using Excel and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). |
| FIN/IB 555 | Global Finance | This is the capstone course for the portfolio. The course deals with the analysis of problems in international business finance and the impact of evolving international payment systems on business. The focus will be on how decisions about financial management are and should be made in the modern multinational enterprise. The impact that these decisions have on the worldwide allocation of economic resources and distribution of wealth will be assessed. Other topics of discussion include: what are the financial risks inherent in these decisions? What role can new financial instruments play in the management of these risks? |
| FIN 597I | Merger Finance and Economics | In this course, you will learn: (1) a fundamental understanding of the finance and economics of the M&A marketplace, and (2) the basic skills needed to succeed in various professional capacities in the M&A marketplace, such as investment banker, management consultant, strategic planner, and lawyer. You will read significant portions of three books: Takeovers, Restructuring & Corporate Governance; Applied Mergers and Acquisitions; and Big Deal. There also will be periodic supplemental materials. Thus, there will be a significant amount of reading, and you will have to make several presentations on assigned topics. |
| INS 575 | Risk Management | Corporate executives face a growing variety of risks that can interrupt their normal business operations and negatively impact the value of their firms. Such recent events as the threat of corporate class action lawsuits (e.g., Merck’s three-year legal battle with consumers over the health risks of the firm’s Vioxx drug), the increase in the price of commodities (e.g., petroleum or grains), the unraveling of corporate employee benefit programs among U.S. auto makers, and the increased liability exposure placed upon corporate executives by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act reflect the growing spectrum of risks that threatens today’s businesses and organizations. Risk Management examines the methods used by firms to protect their interests from these types of corporate risks. |
| MGMT 520 with MGMT 597F Lab | Team Facilitation | Provides you with an in-depth understanding of team dynamics and the opportunity to develop skills for facilitating teams to achieve effective performance through the facilitation of one or more first-year MBA teams. Specific course topics include models of group development, diagnosing team problems, selecting effective intervention strategies, skills in giving and receiving feedback, conflict management, and working constructively with gender, race, and cultural differences within teams. |
| MGMT 521 | Complex Negotiations | This elective course is designed to help you develop understanding and competencies necessary for conducting complex multi-party negotiations. Topics include: framing of negotiations, dealing with internal and external negotiations simultaneously, dealing with social dilemmas, mediation, negotiating across power differences, multiparty negotiations, and international business negotiations. |
| MGMT 531 | Strategy Implementation & Organizational Change | This course gives you the key analytic ability to assess the gap between the current status of the organization and the need to implement a new strategy or execute change, and then identify a strategy for closing the gap. You'll develop facility with two essential frameworks: a model of organizational alignment and a model for managing the change process. The topics covered include alignment of organizational structure, information and decision processes, rewards, people, and symbols; persuasion, resource, time and pacing, and leadership by the top team in the change process; implementation of an innovation strategy, a turnaround strategy, a transnational strategy, or an acquisition integration strategy. |
| MGMT 551 | Growth & Innovation Strategy | You'll be provided with concepts and tools that start-up and mature companies can use to create and sustain competitive advantage through technological and organizational innovation. Topics include: the relationship between technology strategy and corporate strategy, methods for understanding market demand for disruptive and sustaining innovations, leveraging assets through strategic alliances, and structuring the firm for successful innovation. |
| MGMT 561 | Global Strategy | In this course, you will focus on three major aspects of international business: competitive strategy, organization design, and management processes. |
| MGMT 597G Not offered in 07/08 |
Leadership & Change in Organizations | This course is concerned with understanding yourself as a leader, particularly as a leader in organizations and especially a leader of organizations undergoing change. The course focuses on: 1) developing conceptual understanding of issues involved in leading people; 2) providing opportunities for direct or vicarious learning of leadership skills; 3) giving insight into your own attitudes, beliefs, and leadership philosophy; 4) creating a stimulating forum for discussing leadership issues with colleagues. This course is for those who expect to become business and organizational leaders and are looking for the personal knowledge and skills to help become an effective leader of others, organizations, and of yourself. |
| MGMT 597I | Power & Influence | This course provides a pragmatic and ethical framework for analyzing the sources of power in organizations and the circumstances that lead to its attainment and effective use. The goals of this course are to help you learn more about the nature and sources of power in organizations and increase your ability and confidence in diagnosing power situations, managing conflict, and using political strategies in pragmatic ways to get things done in the workplace and other organizations. Topics covered include formal and informal sources of power, social exchange perspectives on power, network structures and their consequences, organizational culture and symbolic actions, the bases of interpersonal influence, and diagnostic tools and techniques to identify the "rules of the game." |
| MKTG 521 | Scientific Marketing Analysis | This course offers you an introduction to and practice in the various marketing research techniques currently used, the tools associated with these techniques, and the reasoning behind the utilization of these practices and their respective methods of implementation. |
| MKTG 532 | Brand Management | This course is designed to 1) examine and understand the processes of building, designing, measuring, and maintaining brand equity; 2) discuss actual applications of Brand Management strategies and methodologies presented in class, together with cases and exercises; and 3) provide you with the analytic and strategic skills necessary for internships or early careers in Brand Management. |
| MKTG 533 | Business Marketing (B2B) | The creation, measurement, and delivery of superior customer value in business markets is the focus of this course. Successful market-focused business-to-business (B2B) organizations know the importance of linking customer needs to the development of high value products throughout the value chain in a global, electronic environment. And those successful organizations require that marketing be viewed as an investment, with measurable results and not as an expense. |
| MKTG 534 | Integrated Marketing Communications | This course is designed to help you to more effectively: 1) describe, manage, and coach the concept and realities of “Brand”, and “Brand Equity” in an operational way with teams, agencies, and other supporting groups and their business; 2) implement and Coach an 8 step process for the development and execution of an Integrated Market Communications program, to build sales, build brand equity, and achieve financial objectives; and 3) get better, more effective, creative results from their advertising and support agencies, whether they are managing, influencing, or consulting to the process. |
| MKTG 542 | New Product Development | You'll be exposed to the various tools needed in NPD and familiarized with the NPD process (market opportunity identification, customer analysis, concept generation, selection and testing, prototyping, launch and product life cycle management). The capstone of this is a team project that gives you an opportunity to practice these process/tools discussed in the classroom. The second aim is to help you understand and tackle some key NPD challenges facing senior management and management consultants. |
| MKTG/EBIZ 543 | e-Biz/Marketing Strategy | You'll learn the concepts and tools to design and deploy marketing strategies to help organizations develop enduring relationships with customers in a global, networked, and digital economy. You will cover such topics as emerging market mechanisms. |
| MKTG 571 | Marketing Strategy | This is the capstone course for the portfolio. It is intended to help you review and integrate concepts presented in other product and market development courses. It examines marketing related issues and solutions to problems arising from market and product development of products or services in competitive business environments. It focuses on business-level marketing strategy, not corporate strategy or business policy. |
| MKTG 597C | Marketing Simulation Immersion | The Marketing Immersion course is designed to provide you with the chance to synthesize what they are learning in the PMD portfolio in particular and the MBA program in general. This comes through practicing managing the marketing function of a simulated enterprise over time in competition with classmates. |
| REST 560 | Real Estate Financial Analysis | This course provides you with a modern framework for the valuation and analysis of real property using both theoretical and empirical approaches. Topics include valuation of land and improvements, real estate finance methods, real estate investment strategies, and special topics relating real property to corporate finance. |
| REST 570 | Institutional Real Estate Investment | You'll learn about the convergence of real estate and the capital markets. You'll be exposed to the structure, analysis, and valuation of a variety of real estate securities including: residential mortgage backed securities (MBS), collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs), commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS), and real estate investment trusts (REITs). The course is divided into two sections. The first section covers the intersection of real estate debt financing and the capital markets (i.e. mortgage securitization). The second section concentrates on vehicles for public real estate investment analysis (REITs) and the place for real estate in modern investment portfolios. |
| SCM 546 | Strategic Procurement | You'll explore leveraging the contributions of a supply strategy, e-procurement, supply segmentation, collaboration & relationship management, and global procurement for developing and executing sourcing strategies, with special emphasis on the strategic planning and use of information technology. This is one of three foundation courses. |
| SCM 556 | Manufacturing Strategy | You will focus on understanding the connections between manufacturing, inventory, and location decisions on customer-focused, multi-stage supply chains. You will explore how strategic choices (such as information technology, facility location, and mass customization) tie in with planning decisions (such as forecasting and aggregate planning) to support synchronized supply chains. This is one of three foundation courses. Delivery is coordinated with BA 510. Evaluation methods include a combination of class participation, exams, “hands-on” exercises, case studies, and reactions papers. |
| SCM 566 | Supply Chain Processes and Methods Demand Fulfillment | You will develop an understanding of the strategic framework, the managerial issues, and the best practices related to the planning and execution of the demand-fulfillment process. Special attention is given to the e-enabled capabilities, relationships, and levers needed for responsive, flexible, and efficient demand fulfillment. |
| SCM 570 | Supply Chain Modeling | Supply Chain Modeling focuses on mathematical modeling techniques used to design, analyze, execute, and integrate supply chains. Three primary methods will be studied: simulation, optimization, and enterprise resource planning. Key conceptual and theoretical methods will be reviewed, along with the use of complementary, contemporary software in each of the three major areas. |
| SCM 576 | Logistics & Supply Chain Leadership | This capstone course is designed to integrate course topics covered in foundation courses and engage you in probing discussions of critical supply chain leadership issues. Special emphasis is given to supply chain technology adoption, change management, shareholder value assessment, capability assessment, relationship management, and performance metrics. Offered once per year in the spring semester. Evaluation methods include class participation, an intensive case project in the field, and a case competition judged by a panel of senior executives. |
| SCM 597A | Immersion | This course will use an appropriate pedagogical approach including but not limited to experiential, case based or problem based learning, this course is intended to support offering coverage of topics or special interest subjects. |
| BA 575 | Capstone Business Case | The Capstone Business Case course is designed to allow second-year MBA students the chance to integrate the knowledge what you have gained to date in the program. True business problems are not narrow, functional area problems; rather they require teams of people to come together to jointly solve a problem that extends across many areas. For example, to assess the commercial viability of a new product requires contributions from economics, marketing, supply chain, finance, strategy, and corporate innovation. In addition, working on a team and having to present the results gives you the ability to practice communication, teamwork, and leadership skills that are vital to succeed on the job. |
