The Evolving MBA Program

It was more than a decade ago when Grant McQueen, BYU Marriott finance professor and former MBA program director, began noticing four trends in the business world—trends that would be catalysts for evolving BYU Marriott’s MBA program. McQueen says:

These four trends signaled that we needed to up our technology game. First, Silicon Slopes firms started needing MBA talent, particularly employees who understood both business and technology. Second, all business jobs started requiring better tech skills, including data analytics. Third, an exciting new job, product manager, took off, and it required a broad set of business skills together with the ability to understand technology and interact with customers. Fourth, a growing number of international students were interested in STEM-related business programs because they allow for a longer opportunity to gain work experience in the US.

The MBA program responded to these trends by increasing the number of tech electives, requiring a core analytics class, hiring an industry product manager as an adjunct professor, and establishing a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) management specialization within the MBA program.

The BYU Marriott MBA program has developed a symbiotic relationship with Silicon Slopes firms, feeding companies with a steady supply of well- prepared interns and employees. The companies, in turn, provide the MBA program with a real-time view of the forces shaping the business world, allowing BYU Marriott to nimbly adjust its program to better meet the needs of students.

Trend 1

Silicon Slopes needs MBA talent that understands both business and technology.

Daniel Snow, the Lee Tom Perry Distinguished Fellow and an associate professor of marketing and global supply chain, is the director of MBA programs at BYU. “The rise of Silicon Slopes in Utah has been critical for our students and for the university,” he says. “If you rewind five or six years, we had quite a few students who were headed into tech but had to figure out their own way in the program, piecing together something that was like a tech-focused MBA.” Those students would take a coding class in information systems and an econometrics class for analytics, trying to get the skills they needed. “It felt like they were being asked to swim against the tide,” Snow says. “Meanwhile, we were hearing from Silicon Slopes firms that they needed graduates who had these tech-crossover skills.”

The solution? Increase the number of tech electives. “When I was the MBA associate director,” Snow says, “we came up with the idea of tech horizontals.”

The verticals of the program, the majors and minors students declare and work toward, are well established. Within BYU Marriott’s MBA program, students have five majors to choose from: marketing, finance, strategic human resources, entrepreneurship, and operations and supply chain. They can also choose to supplement their major coursework by earning minors.

Tech horizontals, however, are courses that cut across all majors and minors, open to any MBA student who wants to strengthen their technology acumen.

“The horizontals allow students to focus on the kind of primary tech jobs that people are going into,” Snow says. “The emphasis adds to their tool kit coming out of an MBA program.”

Trend 2

All business jobs are starting to require analytics.

Jeff Dotson, former professor of marketing, was an early champion of making an analytics course part of the MBA’s core curriculum.

“Analytics are starting to play a very dominant role within businesses,” Dotson says. “So the MBA program created a core class in analytics for all the incoming students. It exposes them to the fundamentals of business analytics across a variety of domains, techniques, and applications, including the new generative artificial intelligence.”

Beyond adding analytics to the core curriculum, the faculty also added more elective courses. One such course covers a full year of instruction and pairs students with companies for practical execution of analytics projects.

Jason Alleger, who earned his MBA in 2018 and is now an adjunct professor in the program, praises the new approach. “When I was in the program, it was already shifting more toward analytics,” he says. “I’ve seen big improvements now that it’s part of the core.” Increasing access to analytics coursework has elevated the MBA program and made its graduates more marketable.

Trend 3

The product manager position is expanding, requiring a broad set of business skills and the ability to understand technology and interact with developers.

Johny Wudel, COO at JobNimbus, is a Harvard-trained adjunct professor of product management and strategy in the MBA program, and he has seen several new developments in this discipline.

“Product manager is a newer role in tech companies,” Wudel says. “If you go back seven or eight years ago, there were very few universities that had any kind of classes or programs around product management.” But the MBA program is adapting. “BYU has really been pushing hard on adding more curriculum around the discipline. It’s definitely an emerging critical component of tech companies.”

A product manager takes ownership of a product’s success from the beginning of its life cycle to the end, encompassing market analysis and other research. This role might include defining metrics for success, using analytics to better understand and anticipate consumer needs, and working with engineers, developers, designers, and marketers, among others.

Wudel sees his BYU Marriott role—a professor brought in specifically to impart his expertise in product management—as indicative of the MBA program’s adaptability: “I feel like the MBA program is always looking at what’s changing in the industry and marketplace, and it’s constantly adapting to match student needs, which will in turn meet the needs of the companies that eventually hire those students.”

Ethan Shipp, who earned his MBA from BYU Marriott in 2021, agrees. Shipp benefited from the new coursework on product management and was able to secure an internship and a job in this emerging field.

Trend 4

International students are interested in stemrelated business programs because they allow for a longer opportunity to work in the us.

In fall 2021, the BYU Marriott MBA program began offering a specialization called management science and quantitative methods—STEM management.1 This new specialization is available to all MBA students, regardless of their chosen tracks of study.

The STEM management specialization requires students to take 15 credits of specific electives in addition to 12 credits of STEM-related classes already present in the MBA core.

These electives were chosen based on the descriptions of Classification of Instructional Programs that the United States Department of Homeland Security identifies as STEM-designated courses. The approved topics include applications of statistics, modeling, forecasting, data analysis, and risk management to business problems. The students must take at least one coding or programming elective, one analytics or statistics elective, and nine additional credits from a selection of approved tech-related or quantitatively rigorous electives.

McQueen, who originally advocated for the STEM management specialization, sees this as a positive step. “The specialization will better prepare our MBA students to enter the workforce,” he says.

In addition to improving student placement and creating a more competitive program, the STEM management specialization will also benefit international students, Snow notes. With this specialization, international students on F-1 visas can obtain three years of optional practical training in the United States instead of just one, making the students into more-attractive candidates for employers.

“We love our international MBA students,” Snow says. “They bring a wealth of unique ideas and insights into the classroom. The new STEM specialization will increase our number of international students, enhance the quality of education for all students, and expand the pool of companies hiring our students.”

Dunia Alrabadi not only benefited from the new STEM specialization, but she also helped McQueen pursue and receive the distinction through her participation in Kaizen—a special class in which students execute improvement projects for BYU Marriott. The required STEM coursework enhanced Alrabadi’s skill set and gave her leverage during the job hunt. “When recruiters asked if I needed sponsorship, obviously the answer was yes,” Alrabadi recalls. “But then I immediately followed up by explaining that I had three years because of the STEM program. I became more favorable to recruiters.”

Alrabadi is now in her dream job, but she holds a special place in her heart for BYU Marriott. “Seattle is great, but nothing will ever replace the MBA floor of the Tanner Building,” she says.

Rising to Meet the Challenges

The MBA program’s evolution and agility have allowed it to respond to a variety of trends in the business world. By increasing the number of tech electives, requiring a core analytics class, hiring product managers to teach product management, and establishing a STEM specialization, the program is positioned to deliver a higher quality of education and produce a higher caliber of graduates.

The quality and caliber of BYU Marriott’s MBA graduates come not only from the program’s academic excellence but also from its faith-based foundation. “The thing that I love that’s different about BYU is the religious aspect,” Wudel says. “It’s amazing to have the opportunity to start class with prayer and weave in religious and faith-based components, especially when I talk about career and life. Those have been some of the most precious moments for me, and that is when I get some of the best feedback from students.”

Thomas Peterson, associate teaching professor of entrepreneurship, adds, “We’re trying to drive students toward places where they can be very successful. Those places include spiritual growth, introspection, and action.”

As MBA alums enter the business world—at Silicon Slopes or elsewhere—Wudel hopes that their time at BYU Marriott has given them the latest tech and analytical skills coupled with the proclivity to seek the divine. “I’m just a big believer that truth is truth,” Wudel says. “I advise my students to pray and ask for help when they encounter problems at work. Seek a higher power to help navigate it. You shouldn’t compartmentalize your career and your values and religion. It’s a work-life balance that allows you to leverage it all together.”

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Note 1. See Sarah Calvert, “MBA Program Introduces New STEM Management Specialization,” BYU Marriott news release, marriott.byu.edu/news/ article?id=1915.