The Executive MBA classroom is energized! Play the video above to hear how student insights and perspectives are brought together, resulting in improved understanding and conclusions.
Challenging and immediately relevant
The 21-month Executive MBA Program is a demanding, integrated, general-management curriculum that emphasizes leadership development and strategic thinking as well as the application of decision-making tools. Ranked #1 in the Northwest, and #16 in the U.S. by The Financial Times, the Foster Executive MBA Program delivered salary increases of 40%, and average salaries of more than $194,000.
Based on UW Graduate School enrollment policy, the EMBA Program is considered a full-time enrollment program (at least 10 credits per term). A total of 68 credits is required.
Integrated cohort-based curriculum
Current business trends, including globalization are integrated throughout the entire curriculum and within individual courses.
- First year courses focus on the building blocks of business — accounting, economics, management, statistics and team building
- Second year courses explore the connections between operations, finance, strategy and leadership, including marketing and entrepreneurship.
The course sequence is designed as a cohort-based model. That is, EMBA classes are completed in a predetermined progression and as a group. There are no electives within the EMBA Program. Grades are based on both individual achievement and study group based assignments.
Diverse teaching approaches
EMBA students experience a variety of teaching styles that create a challenging and dynamic learning environment. With opportunities for both individual learning and group involvement, students come away with a rich and valuable experience:
- Classes combine thought-provoking lectures with lively discussions
- One-on-one interaction with world class faculty
- Supportive, motivating study teams
- Case studies link theory with real-time challenges and current business practices
- Students use their own organizations as laboratories and bring the results to class for further discussion and analysis, a valuable return on investment for sponsoring companies.
International Immersion
Successful business executives must intimately understand the challenges posed by today’s competitive global environment. To provide first-hand knowledge about business practices, as well as the impact of legal, political, historical and economic issues on business in different countries, the Executive MBA curriculum includes a required International Immersion for second-year students.
- Occurs early-September of 2nd year; 8-10 days
- Two academic credits awarded (EMBA 590)
- Most on-the-ground expenses included except travel costs to and from the Immersion site(s)
- 2 – 3 trips offered; students (groups up to 30) travel with faculty and staff.
Since the inaugural trip to Seoul, South Korea in 2001, EMBA International Immersions have spanned the globe. Recent immersions have offered students interesting choices:
- (2023) Bangalore and Mumbai, India or Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- (2022) Berlin or Munich, Germany; Prague, Czech Republic or Barcelona, Spain
- (2021 – virtual) Mumbai and Bangalore, India and Bucharest, Romania and Zagreb, Croatia
- (2019) Bangkok, Thailand and Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
- (2018) Singapore and Jakarta, Indonesia; Tallinn, Estonia and Amsterdam, the Netherlands; or Panama City, Panama and Lima, Peru;
- (2017) Athens, Greece and Frankfurt, Germany; Bangkok, Thailand and Hong Kong; or Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Taipei, Taiwan;
- (2016) Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, Vietnam or Warsaw, Poland and Munich, Germany;
- (2015) Santiago, Chile and Lima, Peru; Shanghai and Chengdu, China or Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Learn from Northwest business leaders
The Foster School enjoys a long-standing, collaborative relationship with myriad pacific northwest organizations and their leaders. In addition to Foster school wide speaker interaction opportunities, Executive MBA students appreciate the opportunity to hear from and speak with prominent leaders in the intimate classroom environment in individual classes as well as throughout their second year Corporate Governance class.
EMBA Business Plan Competition: The Capstone
The EMBA Business Plan Competition is the capstone experience for second-year EMBA students. The competition is designed to promote student ideas and venture creation by providing a forum in which students can present new business concepts to local venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and investors. EMBA students create an original business plan and compete in a one-day competition just prior to graduation.
In preparation for the competition, guest speakers including venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and program alumni meet with students to guide them through effective competition planning strategies. Topics include executive summary development, management team skill, market opportunity, competitive strategy, go to market strategy, traction, and the financials. Past winning plans have gone on to launch new small businesses.
For some students, the competition is more than an academic and emotional peak experience. A few of the business plans presented here will one day turn into real businesses. Whether they build new companies based on their plans or integrate their new knowledge and skills into their careers in other ways, the competition instills confidence in student’s ability to apply what they’ve learned in the EMBA Program.
Course Sequence
Based on UW Graduate School enrollment policy, the EMBA Program is considered a full-time enrollment program (at least 10 credits per term). A total of 68 credits is earned.
The 21-month curriculum design and courses build a solid business fundamentals foundation. Case studies and group projects link theory with current business practice. Themes based on current trends in business, including the impact of technology and globalization, are threaded through the entire curriculum.
Students frequently use their own organizations as laboratories, applying lessons learned in the classroom and then bringing the results back to the class for further discussion.
Year 1
Teamwork & Managerial Effectiveness
2 credits
This course introduces concepts and principles fundamental to building and maintaining effective work teams. It will address how to (1) develop strong, shared commitment to a compelling purpose, (2) bring about collective buy-in to concrete performance objectives, (3) insure adherence to a set of suitable work rules, and (4) build the interpersonal trust crucial to mutual team member support and, ultimately, exemplary team performance.
Financial Reporting & Analysis
4 credits
This is an introduction to financial accounting from a management perspective. Topics include preparation and use of financial statements; measurement and reporting of assets, equities, and income; and issues and implications of alternative methods of reporting. Cases based on actual corporate financial statements are used to enhance the students’ understanding of the issues. Students are required to evaluate financial statements of their own or a teammates’ company.
Legal Environment of Business
2 credits
Increasingly, businesses are faced with the prospect of product liability, intellectual property rights, and general legal risk management issues. This class addresses the legal issues comprehensively by reviewing legal topics and bringing them together with real-world examples.
Dynamics of Negotiation
2 credits
This course deals with the wide variety of negotiations a manager is involved with both internally (i.e., within and between departments, between superiors and subordinates, or with peers), and externally (i.e., with community and/or business organizations). Topics include the nature of negotiations, the role of power in negotiations, negotiation planning and strategies for improving negotiation relationships.
Special Topics: General Management & Strategy II
4 credits
This course explores why firms succeed and why they fail. The focus in on the factors that increase the probability of competitive success or competitive failure. Specific topics addressed include the role of the following in determining competitive advantage: strategic planning and leadership, operations and business strategy, technological and innovation strategy, diversification and vertical integration, new business development, organizational architecture and organizational change efforts. A theme that runs throughout the course is the strategic management of new business activities.
Organizational Leadership
4 credits
This course introduces concepts and principles fundamental to creating and leading effective organizations. Major topics include perception and decision-making, employee motivation, group and team processes, human resource management practices, strategic organizational design, power and politics, corporate culture, and organizational change and transformation. The instructional approach includes readings, discussions, lectures, case analyses, video presentations, experiential exercises, and the analyses of “living cases.” A central goal of this course is to provide a foundation for a lifetime of leadership practice through the development of analytic skills to understand and influence your own and others’ behavior at work.
Managerial Accounting
4 credits
This course deals with the preparation and use of accounting information by managers for decision-making purposes. Topics include cost concepts, cost behavior, overhead allocation (including activity-based costing), budgeting, responsibility accounting, short-term decision and capital budgeting. Cases based on actual management decisions are used to enhance understanding of concepts and techniques.
Strategic Competitive Analysis
2 credits
This course explores the nature of the competitive process and the source of firm-level competitive advantage. The focus is on the economic principles of competition and applying these to the study of competitive advantage and strategy.
Statistics for Management
4 credits
This course provides an introduction to statistics and probability as techniques for collecting, summarizing and interpreting data and for coping with uncertainty in the management decision-making process. Topics include design of studies, observational studies, exploratory data analysis, statistical summaries, interactive statistical computing, probability, simple and multiple regressions, time series analysis, estimation, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, quality control/statistical process control and modern developments.
Marketing Management
4 credits
This course is organized around the central marketing issue of any organization: the continuous creation of superior value for customers. Through the use of cases and a project, students examine the tactical and strategic relationships, and effects of product management, promotion, distribution and pricing in both consumer and business-to-business contexts. Particular attention is given to growth strategies, to cross-functional approaches for discovering and satisfying customer needs, and to creating and sustaining a market-driven learning culture in an organization.
International Management
2 credits
This course is intended to help you develop a better understanding of the global environment in which US businesses compete. The US economy is increasingly linked to the rest of the world and many industries are global; therefore international markets and competitors cannot be ignored. All of you can think of ways in which your organizations are affected by international developments, and international business is critical to many. In a global economy, this means that managers need to develop a broad vision and an organization that can operate and compete effectively worldwide. This requires an appreciation of the importance of international markets. It means being willing to really think about the differences (and similarities) that exist among national markets and national business practices. It also requires developing an organization that can “think global and act local,” searching for global advantage while adapting itself to national differences.
Year 2
International Immersion
2 credits
To begin the second year of the program, students travel outside the country for an 8-10 day International Immersion, gaining an in-person understanding of conducting business globally. Students prepare by learning about the selected country’s economic, social, political and business environments. While in-country, students visit and interact with leaders representing a wide variety of important industries and types of organizations, potentially including: manufacturing; healthcare; technology; education; entrepreneurship; government; NGO’s, etc. The program fee covers most on-the-ground expenses of the International Immersion including double occupancy hotel accommodations and many meals; the program fee does not include transportation costs to and from the International Immersion beginning and ending locations.
Corporate Finance
4 credits
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to corporate financial management emphasizing relevant modern theory and practical applications. Topics include: financial statement analysis, financial planning, financial markets, principles of valuations, capital budgeting, capital structure, the cost of capital, dividend policy, merger analysis and issues of financial policy.
Enhancing Leadership Effectiveness
2 credits
This course examines a comprehensive approach to leadership and motivation issues. The instructor will begin the first year by providing an outline of leadership, and having the students conduct a 360 degree review of their work performance. The students will then meet with career coaches to evaluate the results of the review. With this information, students then have a basis for the following year’s exercises.
Global Economic Environment of the Firm
4 credits
This course builds a framework for understanding movements in economy-wide magnitudes such as price level, gross domestic product, unemployment rate, interest rate and exchange rate that affect business decisions. The framework is used to analyze contemporary economic issues that impact business, including the recent conduct of monetary and fiscal policy, growth, competitiveness and trade.
Operations Management
4 credits
This course is concerned with the system of delivery in any enterprise, manufacturing or service, public or private, profit or non-profit. The basic mission is to foster an understanding of how to continuously deliver superior value for customers in a manner that is profitable for the firm. This understanding is important both for those who manage operations and those whose career plans lie in other areas. For example, the commitment of product delivery dates is typically viewed as a marketing issue, yet products are built by manufacturing. Knowing how and why inventories accumulate permits more effective financial controls. Facility justification is typically a financial concern, but the capacity additions can have a dramatic effect on operational performance, especially at peak times in service organizations. Traditional accounting practices may actually provide disincentives toward productive behavior.
Marketing Strategy
4 credits
With a focus on marketing strategy from a decision making perspective, the course links marketing decisions and strategy to business performance. The course builds on the topics explored in the Marketing Management course by focusing on specific marketing strategies and critical marketing tools/processes in greater detail and accentuating the integrative nature of the marketing function through the development of a strategic marketing plan and use of simulation software.
Decision Models for Management
2 credits
This course presents and illustrates the use of techniques (such as simulation, heuristics, queuing, decision analysis and linear programming) that have been developed to help managers deal with complicated choice problems in manufacturing, service operations, marketing, and other areas.
International Finance
2 credits
This course introduces international finance at the level of the firm. Topics include understanding exchange rates, international parity conditions, measuring and managing exchange exposure, international financial markets, and trade financing. The emphasis throughout is on the practical implications of modern theory.
Ethical Leadership
2 credits
This course examines business ethics through case studies and short readings in ethical theory. Class discussions rely heavily on student contributions supplemented by brief lectures. Emphasis is placed on the development of a framework that helps managers make ethical decisions in a business environment.
Entrepreneurship
4 credits
This course provides a capstone opportunity for students to consolidate learning from the program. Each team chooses a business opportunity, either entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial, and develops a business plan. Class lectures focus on the basic components of a good business plan, and how to assemble and present information. The class culminates in a daylong competition where both the North America and Regional EMBA classes present their plans for judging by individuals from the venture capital community.
General Management & Strategy II
2 credits
This course focuses on technology strategy and innovation to explore a popular but much misused/misunderstood concept, disruptive innovation. It builds on the competitive strategy concepts explored during the first quarter in the program but goes beyond to explore the nuances of technology-related strategy. The focus is on the future — to examine how technology has become so pervasive in everyone’s lives and how numerous jobs (both low-paid and white-collar) depend on advanced technologies. In addition to the concept of disruption, we will devote two sessions to discuss how technologies, such as AI, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, and robotics impact work in different sectors. The intent is to examine whether advanced technologies will replace humans (including knowledge workers like us) in certain sectors in the foreseeable future.
Corporate Governance and Leadership
2 credits
Increasingly, businesses are faced with the prospect of product liability, intellectual property rights, and general legal risk management issues. This class addresses the legal issues comprehensively by reviewing legal topics and bringing them together with real-world examples.
Faculty Webinars
There is an interdependent relationship that makes professors’ research valuable in the classroom. Professors who are teaching have a different perspective from industry researchers, considering both how the results may impact industry and how this knowledge can benefit students.
The Foster School of Business is fortunate to have some amazing, globally recognized professors whose academic focus has real-world implications for the day-to-day workplaces of mid-career EMBA students.
We invite you to witness how impactful research is brought to life via a learn then apply dynamic by viewing some EMBA faculty “in action.” You will see how pursuing your Foster MBA can shift your perspective, add to your toolkit, and make you more effective in your role today and into the future.”
Recorded Sessions
Michael Johnson
Dynamic Leadership: Decision-making in an Unpredictable World
Watch the Recording
