PROVIDENCE – Brown University will team with Instituto de Empresa, an elite European business school, to launch an executive MBA program aimed at experienced business people in the spring of 2011.
The 15-month program will mix online lessons with classroom courses participants will be required to attend at the campuses of both schools, Brown and Instituto de Empresa said Monday in a joint statement unveiling the venture.
Students will graduate with a degree from Instituto de Empresa, known as IE, a highly regarded private university with campuses in Madrid and Segovia.
“This executive MBA program draws on the distinct expertise of both IE and Brown to address, in a new and unique way, the key issues faced by senior managers in the 21st century – from economic uncertainty and rapidly changing business models to the rise of emerging markets and increased globalization,” Santiago Iniguez, dean of IE Business School, said in a statement.
Officials at both schools said the MBA program is designed for executives with more than 10 years of experience, and will combine IE’s business management education with Brown’s offerings in the humanities and the social, biological and physical sciences.
Brown will accept 35 MBA candidates in the first year. Tuition for the full program has been set at $95,000.
The MBA program is the result of a joint agreement between IE and Brown that was signed last year. Both schools have said they are exploring other ways of partnering, such as research and faculty and students exchanges.
While Brown offers a business economics concentration and a master’s degree in innovation management and entrepreneurship, the local university is one of only two Ivy League schools that does not have a business school, the other being Princeton.
Brown and IE said the core MBA courses will examine management styles and insights through real-life cases studies.
The “liberal arts and critical studies” portion of the program will use history, philosophy, legal studies and psychology “to uncover the underpinnings of society – from the dialogue between religion and secularization to capitalism and its hidden economies,” a joint news release said.
Other courses will examine political and social forces shaping emerging markets, corporative innovations and entrepreneurial skills.
While there will be an online component, MBA candidates will attend four courses in Providence – for one or two weeks at a time – and one course in Madrid, said Brown Provost David Kertzer.
“This relationship is an opportunity to focus on innovative approaches to management,” Kertzer said in a statement. “By linking traditional analytical skills with humanist and scientific learning, IE Business School and Brown aim to pursue interdisciplinary research across a broad range of fields relating to organizational, economic and social dynamics, and develop new pedagogic avenues in the fields of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.”
Additional information is available at brown.edu.
