Master of Business Administration

If you’d like to work for a firm where artificial intelligence (AI) play a critical role, where you can find a management or leadership position in an emerging field, Ball State’s MBA, with a concentration in artificial intelligence, could be the option you are seeking.

The artificial intelligence concentration will provide you with a broad understanding of the fundamentals and importance of artificial intelligence.

Your course work will cover the foundations of artificial intelligence including approaches, algorithms, platforms, and uses for AI. You’ll also get an overview of the knowledge necessary to understand, evaluate, adopt, or oversee artificial intelligence operations or initiatives. Information and communication strategies are presented through class lectures, research and presentations, and hands-on labs.

Required Courses

• ICS 620 Information and Communication Technologies, Standards and Lab I
• ICS 625 Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
• ICS 698 Problems in Information Systems

Are your career plans pointing you to positions such as . . .

• Business Analyst
• Business Analytics Manager
• Market Analyst
• Risk Analyst
• Network Security Analyst
• Business Consultant
• Business Intelligence Project Manager
• Information Systems Manager
• Supply Chain Analyst
• Digital Product Manager

Ball State’s MBA concentration in Business Analytics—one of several concentrations available within the MBA—will direct you in the study of theories, techniques, and applications of business analytics. You will learn to use data-based discoveries to alleviate organizational risks and the skills to interpret large data sets. You’ll grow your career as you cultivate an analytics-based leadership mindset. You’ll develop both quantitative and analytical skills as you work with real-world problems from the business domain.

Required Courses

• ISOM 608 Business Analytics
• ISOM 613 Systems and Data Management: Analysis and Design

Elective Courses 

Choose one from the following:

• ECON 624 Econometric Methods and Applications
• ISOM 654 Project Management
• ISOM 655 Quality Management

About This MBA Concentration

The construction management concentration is for you if you work in a field that’s related to the construction industry and want to understand how the broader industry functions and make your contributions more meaningful.

For example, if you’re accountant working for a large general contractor, you would be a more integrated team member if you understood how the project has been estimated, scheduled, bid, and selected.

In other words, you would better understand how your role affects the overall project success. Our MBA construction management concentration is a specialized business degree that supports a significant market segment. Or you might take these courses as electives that you find useful as part of the general MBA track.

A Driving Force for Jobs

Construction is a driving force in today’s national economy. Consider: the construction industry is composed of more than 680,000 employers, who employ more than seven million employees, who build almost $1.3 trillion worth of structure each year, according to Associated General Contractors (AGC).

Meanwhile, the job outlook for construction managers is upbeat, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after forecasting in 2018 a job growth of 10 percent by 2028.

Required Courses

All courses are delivered completely online or on campus with an online option.

• CM 610 Construction Leadership
• CM 611 Construction Cost and Time Control
• CM 612 Construction Quality and Risk Control

It’s one thing to hatch a business idea. It’s another thing to make it work. And still another to make it succeed.

As a student in the entrepreneurship concentration of Ball State’s MBA, you learn deep skills to do all three.

In the MGT 640 class, for example, you define your business dream. In MGT 647, you work on operational and marketing support. In MGT 649, you design a financial strategy for its success.

Class projects typically build on each other and are a critical part of the concentration.

Faculty who have a track record in entrepreneurship interact with you one on one and step by step on class assignments. Those same faculty, who have notable expertise in areas of entrepreneurship, may have written your class material. Because the program is customer focused, you get feedback on assignments within 24 hours and you don’t have to wait for responses to your email.

The entrepreneurship concentration is designed so that neither a business degree nor a financial background is necessary. Your classmate may be an attorney or a doctor or a musician.

You’ll join students from all industries and other countries. Many of them want to be innovators in their own companies, a quality sought by corporations today. Others have a personal business goal that’s so irresistible they’re already thinking about exiting the 9 to 5.

If you’re considering this MBA concentration, you’re probably a risk taker. But you may be waiting until you have the confidence to put your plan in place. Our program’s key outcome is providing you with that confidence. And that comes by learning to innovate and create business ideas that succeed and then learning to follow through using the best business skills of implementation.

When you earn the MBA in entrepreneurship, you earn the confidence, too.

Required Courses

• MGT 640 Entrepreneurial Innovation
• MGT 647 Entrepreneurial Planning and Feasibility
• MGT 649 Entrepreneurial Strategy (instead of MBA 691 as a core course)

If you’re on track—or in search of a track—to positions such as financial analyst, budget analyst, financial manager, corporate treasurer/controller, or management consultant, Ball State’s Finance concentration can give you the analytic and theoretical tools needed once you get there.

Finance professionals are needed to provide critical input to businesses, governments, not-for-profit entities, and financial institutions. Your track may lead you into such fields as commercial banking, corporate finance, insurance, private equity, real estate, or financial planning. You will need the analytic and theoretical tools required to master practical issues in finance.

Employers Watch for Master’s Degrees

Although financial managers typically need at least a bachelor's degree in finance, accounting, economics, or business administration, many employers prefer to hire candidates who have a master’s degree in those same fields, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While you may bring a bachelor’s in business to the MBA program, the Finance concentration actually requires little or no knowledge of finance and welcomes students from outside the discipline.

Required Courses

• FIN 650 Investment Management
• FIN 680 Global Financial Policy
• RMI 670 Risk Management and Insurance

Apply Your Business Skills to Healthcare

If you’re a healthcare professional and eager for advancement, the MBA program offers a healthcare administration concentration that provides you with the knowledge and experience that will move you into an administrative role. In addition to developing a comprehensive understanding of state-of-the-art business practices, you’ll learn to apply business knowledge to the healthcare field.

Concentration Fulfills ACHE Core Competencies

The concentration is designed to fulfill the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) Core Competencies for Healthcare Management, ensuring that it provides the skill set necessary for advancement in the field, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The demand for healthcare managers and administrators is growing at a rate faster than most other industries.

As a student in the healthcare administration concentration, you will enroll in the following courses: 

Required Courses

• MBA 640 Introduction to Healthcare Administration
• MBA 647 Financial Management and Performance Evaluation in Healthcare Organizations
• MBA 649 Strategic Management in Health Administration

For those who need an MBA that concentrates on health economics policy and administration, the list is long . . .

• RNs
• Public Health Professionals
• Pharmacists
• Medical Physicians
• Purchasing Agents
• Data Analysts
• Human Resource Professionals
• Health Care Executives
• Health Agency Administrators
• Medical Device Professionals

Whichever career track you are on, you can position yourself for the promotion you desire with Ball State’s MBA and health economics policy and administration concentration.

Health economics was never more relevant than today. The cost of health care, aging populations, health care access, and public policy are among the many issues you will consider.

Because you could be one of the next generation’s health economics leaders, you need the critical thinking and analytical skills to navigate this growing industry.

Nurses, in particular, may be in search of tools that focus on ethical and practical ways to manage and allocate scarce health care resources to maximize value and outcomes.

Whatever your career track, you’ll use economic concepts to understand how policy decisions made at various levels of both business and government affect health care access, quality, and cost.

You’ll learn to analyze the benefits and costs of different methods of health care delivery and financing, from the viewpoint of patients, providers, and manufacturers.

You’ll also learn the tools necessary to analyze the interrelationship of health care resources, providers, consumers, and markets as well as a conceptual understanding of health economics and how it relates to the U.S. health care system.

You don’t need a business degree or financial background to pursue the health economics policy and administration concentration.

Required Courses

• ECON 683 Health Economic Analysis
• ECON 693 Health Economics and Policy

Elective Courses

Select one of the following:

• ECON 624 Econometric Methods and Applications
• MGT 661 Human Resources Management
• RMI 670 Risk Management and Insurance

If you’ve always wanted to work for a technology company, or a highly tech-enabled company, but also fascinated by organizational leadership, our MBA concentration in information technology leadership can help make it happen.

This IT leadership concentration, one of ten offered through the Ball State MBA, will provide you with an understanding of the fundamental technologies and technology-related processes essential to organizational leadership. Your courses will cover key emerging technologies including IoT, coding, cloud services, and technology fundamentals. You’ll also learn how to apply leadership practices and skills in the context of technology and technology-enabled firms.

Required Courses

• ICS 601 Foundations of Information and Communication Sciences
• ICS 620 Information and Communication Technologies, Standards and Lab I
• ICS 699 Problems in Information and Communication Management

If you’ve ever thought about the flow of materials, supplies, and products from suppliers to clients—and ways to the improve that flow—you might think about Ball State’s MBA concentration in logistics and supply chain management.

This concentration prepares you for positions such as logistics manager, supply chain manager, procurement manager, or supplier manager. Different companies give these positions different names. For example, you could be a marketing analyst working on an organization’s supply chain.

As a logistician, you play a major corporate role because you are pursuing profitability in an increasingly complex and global economy. Because you’ll need to have knowledge of supply chain management, project management, and quality management, while managing the life cycle of a project, our course work is exactly what supply chain professionals need.

Required Courses

• ISOM 651 Supply Chain Management
• ISOM 654 Project Management
• ISOM 655 Quality Management

Supply Chain Rewards

A survey by the Association of Supply Chain Management (ASCM) suggests that the field has its rewards. The ACSM survey said 80 percent of supply chain professionals rated their careers as an 8, 9, or 10, on a 0-10 scale, while 95 percent gave an average rating of 8.5

Those rewards are also financial, according to the survey, with logistics professionals holding graduate degrees or higher reporting a median salary 25 percent more than those with only an undergraduate degree.

More than half, or 57 percent, reported having the option to work from home as needed.

It’s been said that sales people are made, not born.

For you, that means whatever your professional or undergraduate background, you can master the field of sales with our MBA concentration in professional selling and sales management, whatever your background.

At Ball State you will find one of few such graduate-level concentrations in the country.

Many of our students are employed in this industry but want to manage a sales team. Others are simply searching for ways to fine-tune their sales skills. Still others are in a position where they want to integrate the operations of marketing and sales. 

But if you’re looking to make a complete career change, you can transition effectively with this program, since neither a business degree or business background is required.

Your studies will include an advanced course in professional selling, a course offered by few schools, and a customer relationship management course, which integrates marketing and sales.

When we look at customer service, our focus is on more than the clerk at the cash register, but on being customer-centric company wide.

Our program recognizes that gone are the days when the sales person holds the information that the customer needs. Having researched a retailer’s website or blogs, customers come to the transaction more knowledgeable and pro-active, due in part to the seller’s effective blending of sales and marketing.

That’s why we demonstrate how to integrate technology—including customer management software, social networking tools, and emerging media—to drive sales.

With your MBA in professional selling and sales management, you will become a sales professional who can successfully build and manage buyer-seller relationships; select, develop, compensate, and manage salespeople; lead with your organization’s strategic objectives in mind; and be a driver of today’s exciting global economy. 

Required Courses

• MKG 625 Professional Selling Skills and Practices
• MKG 630 Customer Relationship Management
• MKG 635 Sales Management

Looking for a more general approach to your MBA studies? This 30-credit option is designed for professionals to develop knowledge and skills in fundamental business disciplines. This program will provide you with the most flexibility to customize your program to your career and educational goals.