Johnson School unveils new boardroom executive MBA program

The S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management has just launched a new Cornell Boardroom Executive MBA Program that will bring the business classroom directly into workplaces in the United States and Canada. The program meets a need among corporate managers to expand their learning horizons without leaving their jobs for long periods of time.

The intense, team-based program has been developed in partnership with Queen's School of Business, Queens College, in Kingston, Ontario. The executive MBA program will employ the most current interactive videoconferencing techniques. Graduates will earn two MBA degrees -- one from Cornell's Johnson School and the other from Queen's School of Business. The Johnson School was ranked seventh this past year in the Business Week rankings of top U.S. business schools; the magazine ranked Queen's School of Business' MBA program the No. 1 MBA program outside the United States.

Participants in the new joint boardroom executive MBA program will learn in boardroom settings located in cities or regions where they live and work. Students will be organized into learning teams of six to eight people from different organizations or from a single organization. Courses will be delivered via a series of sessions involving interactive multipoint videoconferencing combined with three two-week, on-campus residential sessions at Cornell or Queen's. Classes will be held three Saturdays a month, with first-rate faculty from both business schools sharing the teaching responsibilities equally.

Applicants must meet the same high academic standards required for the Johnson School's standard two-year MBA program, Twelve Month Option and its other executive MBA programs. About 100 participants are expected to enroll in the first class, with half located in the United States and half in Canada. The program will begin in June 2005, and those who enroll are expected to graduate in November 2006.

"With this new boardroom executive MBA we can extend the reach and accessibility of the Johnson School and Cornell, while retaining the qualities that have always distinguished a Cornell MBA," said Robert J. Swieringa, the Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean of the Johnson School. "With Queen's as a partner, we benefit from their expertise and proven success in using videoconferencing to deliver a quality MBA program."

"This program offers our students the best of all worlds," said David Saunders, dean of Queen's School of Business. "Through our partnership with Cornell, our students will emerge with knowledge, perspectives, contacts and MBA degrees from not one, but two of the world's premier business schools."

For more information, see this Web site: http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/ academic/boardroom.