The PSU eMBA Program

Partnerships promote local access to MBA

The School of Extended Studies at Portland State University has been collaborating with the School of Business Administration for more than 13 years to offer a distance-learning MBA program statewide. The program thrives by the strong relationships it has developed with community partners.

Many of the 20 or so communities served in Oregon and southwest Washington did not previously have a way for residents to earn an MBA degree without leaving the community. Many sponsoring companies now bolster the opportunity for local development by offering partial or full tuition costs for students, and may even provide space for them to study.

Over 200 students from seven cohorts have earned their MBA degree through distance learning. The statewide MBA program maintains high marks in student achievement and satisfaction, and has been continually reaccredited without question.

MBA degree goes online = eMBA

Today, the statewide MBA program has been redesigned to meet the changing needs of busy professionals seeking an advanced business degree. The newly launched PSU eMBA program is a combination of web-based study, and short, intensive campus residencies.

During the three-year part-time program, students come together to campus four times a year for Friday through Sunday sessions. The remaining online work utilizes interactive multimedia, streaming video and audio, threaded discussion boards, and live chats. The newly designed eMBA provides maximum flexibility for working professionals, while maintaining high academic integrity and significant face-to-face learning opportunities.

• The online portion of the program accesses the university’s course management system, called WebCT. WebCT is used extensively at PSU for delivering web-enhanced and fully online courses. The system incorporates a number of useful learning tools, such as threaded discussion boards, live chat, online quizzing, testing and surveying, private email, and modularized course content delivery.

Accredited eMBA among top in nation

The distance-learning option is integrated directly into the cohort-based MBA program in the School of Business Administration. The eMBA curriculum is exactly the same as other cohorts, taught by the same instructors, and students are held to the same academic standards as in the other more traditional delivery formats. The only difference is the delivery.

With the same status as regular cohort options in Business Administration, the eMBA is both regionally and nationally accredited. It is the only nationally accredited MBA program of its kind in the Pacific Northwest. Recently, U.S. World and News Report rated the program one of the top 25 online MBA programs in the country (Oct 15, 2001).

Student academic assessment in the statewide MBA program mirrored assessment measures employed in other MBA cohorts in business administration. The eMBA program adds pre- and post-test assessments of student learning and satisfaction for each course.

For more information about the PSU eMBA program, go to the eMBA web site, call Andie Karinen at 503-725-4823, or send e-mail.

The eMBA program's did as its predecessor the Statewide MBA Program—successfully meets the needs of many nontraditional lifelong learners thereby enhancing the core mission of the School of Extended Studies and the outreach goals of the University. This is partially illustrated in the following profile of students, from 1991 to 2001

PSU Statewide MBA/eMBA Students 1991-2000

Student academic assessment in the Statewide MBA program mirrored assessment measures employed in other MBA cohorts in SBA. The eMBA program also includes pre- and post-test assessments of student learning based on core instructional objectives and uses in-depth student satisfaction surveys for each course.

For more information about the PSU eMBA program, go to the eMBA web site, call Andie Karinen at 503-725-4823, or send e-mail.