An Online MBA Curriculum That Builds Leadership

This course is a comprehensive, strategic-focused course designed to equip students with the knowledge and tools to integrate artificial intelligence into organizational decision-making. Participants will explore foundational AI concepts—agentic AI, machine learning, deep learning and data analytics—and gain a clear understanding of how to identify high-impact AI opportunities across diverse business functions. Through case studies, ethical frameworks and hands-on activities, the course will introduce the opportunities and challenges of AI adoption and align AI initiatives with organizational goals. The course will cover responsible deployment, risk management, and leadership strategies for fostering an AI-ready culture. Students will emerge with a practical AI roadmap and the ability to drive innovation, efficiency and competitive advantage in their organizations.

This course provides business leaders and professionals with the knowledge and frameworks to build and lead data-driven organizations. While covering key technical concepts, the focus is on how to align data initiatives with business goals, develop a data-centric culture, and leverage analytics for effective decision-making. The course will utilize case studies, frameworks and practical tools to help students understand how organizations can successfully integrate data into their operations and strategy. Students will be equipped to make informed decisions about data initiatives, collaborate effectively with technical teams, and drive data-led transformations.

This course focuses on qualitative and quantitative analytics techniques designed to assess the current state of any marketing situation-how consumers are responding to current efforts, how their responses fit with expectations, and gauging the effect on purchase, repeat purchase and recommendation.

This course focuses on the use of research to plan and optimize future marketing efforts. Consumers expect personalization in exchange for loyalty(ish). Customer analytics allows marketers to use customer behavior data to identify insights and help make key business decisions. Market segmentation is used along with predictive analytics to drive tactics such as product/service innovation, promotional activities such as direct marketing, distribution decisions like site selection, pricing tactics, and customer relationship management.

This course is focused on an ability to innovate through several interrelated capabilities: a) the ability to identify unique insights into customers’ needs and motivations, b) the ability to identify and define the best opportunities for innovation given these insights, c) the ability to generate creative product and service solution concepts to exploit these opportunities, and d) the ability to continually learn from customer feedback and to iterate towards products and services that capture a disproportionate market share and/or that create new markets. Course activities will promote the development of each student’s innovation skills and mindset (e.g., design thinking), as well as equip each student to participate on and to lead cross-functional innovation projects.

This course is focused on innovation tools and techniques appropriate to corporate strategy along with innovation management. Success factors in innovation management include: innovation strategy, innovation process, resources and organization, and innovation culture. Visual design, innovation techniques, and cutting-edge tools are added to the traditional strategic toolbox to bring new insights into innovation management, including business model canvas, value proposition canvas, strategy canvas, service blueprinting, corporate identity, branding, and other visual marketing strategy tools.

Integrated campaign management entails the orchestration of paid, earned and owned media vehicles to create a marketing experience that increases consumer engagement, strengthens brand differentiation and demand, and moves consumers through the purchase funnel toward repeat purchase and brand advocacy. This course will approach integrated marketing communications through an experience planning lens: teaching students to create integrated communications experiences that make strategic use of communications vehicles to drive brand and business growth.

This course explores the evolving world of digital content management and its role in integrated marketing campaigns. Students will examine how digital media tools and techniques can be leveraged to advance products and services as well as their personal brands. Upon completion of this course, students will have a working knowledge of the current digital marketing ecosystem, content marketing tactics and ethical practices.

To create meaningful societal impact, nonprofits and governments must fund essential services, maintain accountability, and ensure long-term financial sustainability. After providing an overview of the nonprofit and public sectors, this course examines how reporting and disclosure tools support decision-making and foster trust. It also explores how financial management practices contribute to financial health and organizational performance. Topics include IRS Form 990, CAFRs, tax-exempt financing, endowment management, fundraising strategies, governance practices, budgeting and sector-specific considerations.

Legal considerations influence many aspects of business decision-making. Understanding business law helps accountants, managers, entrepreneurs, and board members manage risk, ensure compliance and develop informed strategies. Following an introduction of the American U.S. legal system, this course will expose students to contract law, commercial law, negotiable instruments, secured transactions and creditors’ rights. Additional topics covered include bankruptcy, agency law, and business organizations, including sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLC and corporations.

Accountants and analysts assist management in the formulation and implementation of operational and strategic decision-making. Focusing on contemporary and conceptually advanced tools, this course improves students’ ability to prepare, analyze, interpret, measure, and communicate financial and non-financial information so they can make appropriate recommendations to support management decision-making that improves organizational performance.

Many people find the tax system to be overwhelming, but there is a method to its madness. This course explores the U.S. individual income tax framework, including the motivations behind many of its complexities. Students also learn how taxes relate to many of our major life decisions and discuss basic tax planning considerations.

Legal considerations influence many aspects of business decision-making. Understanding business law helps accountants, managers, entrepreneurs, and board members manage risk, ensure compliance and develop informed strategies. Following an introduction of the American U.S. legal system, this course will expose students to contract law, commercial law, negotiable instruments, secured transactions and creditors’ rights. Additional topics covered include bankruptcy, agency law, and business organizations, including sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLC and corporations.

This course provides tax and accounting professionals the ability to recognize tax factors that influence business decisions and the ability to integrate them into the business decision-making process.

This course will familiarize students with the tools and techniques for valuing corporate investment projects and assets in a wide range of settings. It offers hands-on experience in building and interpreting valuation models in Excel as commonly used by corporate financial managers, investment managers and investment bankers.

The objective of this course is to study the major decision-making areas of managerial finance. The course reviews the theory and empirical evidence related to investment and financing policies of the firm and to develop decision-making ability in these areas.

Building on previous courses, this course incorporates richer institutional details and deepens understanding of how firms interact with the financial markets. Topics to be included are: financing investments with capital market imperfections, corporate control, governance and risk management.

The course introduces the theory and practice of portfolio management and investments in various asset classes. Emphasis is placed on wealth/asset management and hands-on development and use of financial software tools. Topics include financial markets and intermediaries, measuring risk and return, asset allocation, portfolio optimization and wealth management. Students will emerge from this course with a thorough understanding of modern techniques in asset management and the ability to apply these techniques in practice.

This course introduces students to the economic principles and practical skills that are essential to managing investment portfolios. Students will explore equity, fixed-income and derivatives strategies and their applications in achieving investment goals and managing investment risks. Students will also learn up-to-date knowledge on financial markets and the asset management industry.

The value of real estate is roughly the same as that of the stock market, yet business decision-makers often overlook its importance. For example, real estate requires a fundamental choice for every firm and individual: the decision to rent vs. own commercial/residential real estate. The real estate market collapse in 2008, which led to a global financial crisis, has changed the way we think about commercial and residential real estate. It is of great import to manage the financial risk of real estate as its very nature is to have tremendous financial leverage. This class will cover a wide range of real estate topics from understanding the home buying process to programming complex mortgages.

Real estate has become an established asset class in which private individuals and institutions, pensions, life companies and foreign investors have increasingly invested. This is due largely to real estate’s large investable universe, high yield, low volatility and diversification characteristics, resulting in potentially enhanced diversified portfolio risk-adjusted returns. Broadly speaking, real estate’s investable universe can be categorized into four quadrants, based on whether the investment is public or private, and whether the investment is equity or debt. While each quadrant has distinct investment characteristics, the underlying property and its ability to generate rental income ultimately drives investment performance. As such, an understanding of real estate property types, markets, underlying assets and tenancy, along with the respective space and capital markets in which an asset operates, is necessary when analyzing an investment opportunity. Additionally, an understanding of the various real estate investment vehicles, strategies and structures is important, especially when considering a real estate investment in the context of a multi-asset portfolio. In this course, students will explore each of these and several related topics that will improve their understanding of the real estate asset class, and if desired, prepare them for exciting careers in the real estate industry.

Terry Shannon: It enabled me to put a framework around coaching and working with individuals and executive coaching and what it was all about. And that was how I dove in more and more and more on the leadership course. And actually, what we’re doing now we’re creating a new first course for the online MBA called Renaissance Leader. And I’m co-author of that course with a fellow professor by the name of Jim Olver. And we’re using the framework from the original leadership course, very simple framework. It talks to increased awareness of self, of others, and of situations, leads to more choices and better outcomes. And everything we’re doing in that course builds off of that framework. The more you know about yourself and what your triggers are, what your biases are, the better leader you can become. The more awareness you are of others and the willingness to truly embrace the perspective that others come from and bring to the table. You’ve often heard the phrase potentially, or maybe heard the phrase, walk a mile in my shoes. Heard an add-on to that that really resonated. Walk a mile in my shoes, but first take your shoes off.

If you really want to see things from my perspective, you’ve got to leave your experience, your baggage, your biases at the door. And that framework has served well ’cause I work with outside clients, senior leaders in different kinds of organizations, and then working with the student population here at William & Mary, from career advising kinds of opportunities to project advising and all those things, as well as the courses in the online MBA that I’ve been involved with. So that’s the story at this point. The new Renaissance Leader course is kicking off in January for us, and it’s coming together beautifully at this point. A lot of work, but it feels good at this, the way it’s connecting and the way we’re blending two courses. And it’s gonna be the very first course for our students coming into the program. So it’ll set the tone in a lot of different ways on what to expect. But the skill sets and the models we’re gonna talk about in that course will serve them well through every course that they’re gonna take throughout the online MBA. Two key things that we look for in many of the assignments that they’re submitting throughout the course are reflection and insights, ’cause we’re really looking for them to look inside themselves and step back away from it and don’t look at things just at a surface level, but dive a little bit deeper.

And then, where the insights come into play, we’re going to provide them a number of different models, the framework I described earlier. We also do a pretty deep dive into design thinking and how that can help them from addressing complex problems and the wicked problem that runs in the online MBA program. And the ability to provide the students that kind of the tools and skill set to be more effective in complex problem solving, yet also dealing in the people environment and those soft skills. Because employers have told us again and again when we talk to them about employing our own students here at William & Mary is what will get them the interview, the resume. I’ve taken all these courses, I’ve done it at William & Mary, my grade point is this. But what ultimately gets them the job are the soft skills. It’s the communication skills, it’s the teamwork, kinds of stuff that they’ve done and been involved with. And it’s working hand in hand with a diverse set of people and coming up with solutions that never would have happened as an independent, standalone person.

The energy level that the students bring to the table ’cause they’re anxious to learn and understand and have one-off conversations. And that can be challenging as an instructor along the way, but it also can be the most rewarding when you’re having that conversation with somebody and based on the way the conversation is flowing, you can sense that the light bulb is turning on here. I can see it, I can feel it. And for them to walk out of the course at the end. On the leadership course, for example, one of the final deliverables is the creation of a personal development plan. Every one of us throughout our career, when you’re having that annual review with your boss and you sit down and you always talk about the business metrics, right? These are the goals for next year. These are the sales goals, the revenue goals, expense goals, whatever they might be, all those corporate kind of metrics. And then hopefully there’s always a component where it involves your personal development. What are we going to do to help you move to the next level or be prepared for the next opportunity within the company?

And the personal development plan that they create in the leadership, the Renaissance Leaders course, will give them an... They can almost hand it to their supervisor and say, "Here’s my plan. I created it in this course. It’s based on these factors of personal assessments that I did and reflection and models that we looked at." Or it can be modified slightly. But any personal development plan is a living document ’cause stuff changes, opportunities change. But giving them the opportunity to have something that they can walk out the door and immediately apply in the workplace. And the other thing, because we’re talking with the students about who they are as a person, what their listening skills are, it can create some positive things for them at home as well.

We’ve all had the situation where there’s three levels of listening. You listen to respond, you listen to understand, or you listen to hear what’s not being said. And that’s the one that surprises many folks, is that listen to hear what’s not being said. But we’ve all had the experience with somebody in recent times, probably, with, “I’m not getting the full story here.” Well, what signals are you picking up that give you that?

And understanding more about an individual is all about asking questions, not jumping to judgment. "This is what you need to do. This is how I did it." Those kinds of things. That’s mentoring. Coaching is all about challenging their thinking, helping find the blind spot, asking questions about stuff that they have done and how it can work and how... What’s worked, what hasn’t, along the way.