By SHANA SLOMA
news@readthereporter.com
Indiana State University (ISU) in partnership with Westfield Washington Schools (WWS) is launching an innovative Professional MBA program in Westfield beginning Sept. 5.
The collaboration between ISU and WWS is giving adults a chance to further their education close to home. Graduate students will have the opportunity to earn a Professional MBA from the Scott College of Business in a part-time evening class format in Westfield.
The venture to create an educational extension to support the academic needs of Westfield and other Hamilton County residents began when Superintendent of Westfield Washington Schools Dr. Paul Kaiser met with ISU Provost Dr. Christopher Olsen. Together the two visionary scholars were able to determine the best way to utilize the ISU ProMBA program to stimulate academic growth within Westfield and the surrounding communities.
Kaiser
Dr. Kaiser shared his thoughts on the benefits of offering people the chance to complete their degrees.
“We have 30,000 people in Hamilton County that have not finished their college education,” Kaiser said. “We think this is a great opportunity for our community and all of Hamilton County.”
In the ProMBA graduate program’s inaugural year, classes will be offered at the WWS Administrative Office located at 19500 Tomlinson Road, but construction recently began on a new Westfield YMCA facility. The eight-classroom extension known as The University Center of Hamilton County will be run by WWS Director of College Careers and District Initiatives Lindsay Tomamichel. The Center is slated to become the permanent location for all of Westfield’s post-secondary education beginning in early 2025.
The 21-month accelerated ProMBA program will give local residents and those for whom a Westfield campus is more convenient a chance to obtain an ISU graduate degree without traveling 80 miles southwest to Terre Haute. The hybrid ProMBA program was designed to give the students the benefit of an in-person brick-and-mortar classroom experience with the convenience of an online component. The combination of providing a convenient classroom location with remote access to testing and assignments will allow students with financial or transportation challenges to enroll in the program.
The program boasts a year-round continuous application process. While this is the first year of the ProMBA program, the program is expected to run concurrently.
Students will meet each Thursday from 5:30 to 10 p.m. rotating weekly between two classes. The program will run for five consecutive 10-week semesters. During that time, the cohort-based program will allow students to build and maintain relationships as they progress through the course.
The cost of tuition is $27,000 with no additional fees. The all-inclusive program includes each of the five semesters, books and materials, a meal on school nights, and individualized professional career coaching from Manpower Group.
Interested applicants can take part in a Mock ProMBA Class Experience on March 5 in Westfield. This is an opportunity for interested students to test drive the Professional MBA and see what an MBA class is like. Click here to register.
Though ISU’s ProMBA program is highly competitive, it was developed to offer all students from varied educational and professional backgrounds the opportunity to better themselves personally and professionally.
Rice
While the optimal ProMBA candidates should have a minimum of three to five years of professional experience and an undergraduate grade-point average of 3.0 or above, Kyle Rice, Executive Director of Graduate Programs for ISU encourages any mid-career student seeking a graduate degree in Business Administration to consider ISU’s ProMBA program.
“We are not looking at one thing specifically,” Rice said. “It’s very much a holistic admissions process where we are looking at your resume, your personal statement, your transcript because one thing doesn’t tell the story of a student. In our mission at Indiana State, we are all about opportunity and giving people those chances that maybe they would not get it elsewhere.”
You can learn more about the program at indstate.edu/business/MBA/proMBA.