Brown programs targeting professional leadership

WORKING TOGETHER: Executive Master of Healthcare Leadership Class of 2015 students work during on-campus session held at Brown University in September 2013. / COURTESY KARL DOMINEY
WORKING TOGETHER: Executive Master of Healthcare Leadership Class of 2015 students work during on-campus session held at Brown University in September 2013. / COURTESY KARL DOMINEY

At 55, Meryl Moss, chief operating officer of Providence-based Coastal Medical, didn’t need another college degree.
Already armed with a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University and an undergraduate economics degree from Boston University, the Westport resident opted to take Brown University’s executive master of health care leadership program, to enhance her role as a leader in the rapidly changing profession of health care. It’s one of two executive leadership programs now centered within Brown’s new School of Professional Studies.
Her capstone project, which will be complete when she graduates in December, is a redesign of processes at Coastal Medical to develop the “primary care practice of the future,” she said, “with the patient firmly in the center of that care.”
Those processes cover everything from answering the phones to making sure patients understand how to take their medications.
“For me, I felt if I was going to lead and be part of leading with our CEO, I needed more tools,” said Moss. “I also needed to understand what was happening in health care in a broader perspective. I wanted the context. I wanted more learning and to understand what was happening around the rest of the country.”
Launched May 15, the new School of Professional Studies is home to two programs for midcareer professionals that began earlier, and is expected to be home to several more, said Karen Sibley, the new school’s dean.
The 16-month, $82,000 health care leadership master’s began in August 2013. Also, a 15-month, $100,500 executive MBA program first offered through Brown and the IE Business School in Madrid in 2011 has been revamped as of this May to result in a joint degree. Previously, the EMBA degree was awarded by the school in Spain, though Brown coursework had made up about 35 percent of the programming. The most recent class graduated June 6. The schools now divide the workload equally, she said.
Next, two more degrees that could launch a year to 18 months from now would focus on engineering and cybersecurity. And in the exploration stages are possible degrees relating to big data and public arts spaces, Sibley added. The school also houses Brown’s Choices Program, a nonprofit that develops courses on international issues and offers workshops, institutes and programming for high school teachers, with an emphasis on educating students in their participatory role as citizens.
Designed to give national and global context and leadership skills to midcareer professionals, the health care and business programs use blended learning to connect far-flung students. Online learning is supplemented with four face-to-face, seven-to-12-day meetings in Providence or, for the business program, also in Madrid and Cape Town, South Africa.
“We intend to build out a suite of programs from the school … that will serve more and more people [with] midcareer learning needs, with the quality Brown can bring to bear,” Sibley said. “We will build programs where we have the capacity to do well and conceivably find other partners. The goal is to expand the student populations we serve. This is the new learner of our new century.”
Sibley helped shape the school, which started with the executive MBA catering to midcareer professionals. Brown then obtained a proprietary report from the Education Advisory Board, a higher education consultant that supplemented Brown’s market research with independent, third-party validation, Sibley said.
With all of the transformation and shifting of leadership positions, not only in health care but in engineering and cybersecurity, she said, the Brown Corporation supported investing in these types of degrees to meet the growing demand. So far, the executive health care leadership and executive MBA programs have cost about $1 million each, she said.
John Luipold, 49, who graduated from in June 2013 with an executive MBA from Brown, is the school’s director of real estate for its Department of Facilities Management. For Luipold, the program wasn’t necessarily a way of propelling his career forward, he said, as much as an opportunity to broaden his management skills and take an “enriching” educational journey. “It’s more about how I approach my decision-making,” Luipold said. “How do I connect with people in a way that’s more productive and more in line with the university’s mission? The program helped me think more broadly beyond my own role.”
Interacting with people from all over the world helps “you really develop a great appreciation for how people think differently and why it’s important that we think differently,” he added.
Luipold’s capstone, shared with his classmates, involved a real-world situation concerning how Glaxo Smith Kline in Brazil would roll out a new vaccine and the strategies associated with it.
“It stretched beyond just the market and the price,” he said. “It [was] about how you create shared value within the region.”
Michael P. Steinberg, director of the Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown, teaches a required course in the executive MBA program entitled “Globalization and the Arts” that he designed for “global reflective leaders … looking for a deeper experience in their own professional lives.”
While many of the students in the program already have exposure to cultural differences globally, the transition to a service and information economy makes a deeper understanding of those differences more critical than ever, he said.
“What we hear from [students] and our partners in Spain and the business-education community in general is: a mistake has been made in thinking globalization is only a question of increased contact over the surfaces of the world, getting from place to place,” he said. “What they realize is that it’s deep contact that is necessary: human and cultural contact, which means understanding.”
Reflective leaders “geared for action” are the type of graduates Angus I. Kingon, the director of the executive MBA program, says he hopes to produce. Courses are designed to have participants analyze context and make business decisions that reflect this larger context. “To be successful, one has to have this type of bigger-picture awareness and pick one’s way through the difficult and nuanced environment” of the global business world, he said.
The executive master’s degree in health care leadership is already growing, according to Judy Bentkover, executive director and adjunct professor of health services, policy and practice.
Moss’ group of 30 students – the typical size for a cohort, or class – will be the first to graduate, but a second group begins this August and a third will be split into two groups not to exceed 30 people each for the Class of 2017, Bentkover said.
The program is designed for senior leaders in the “C-suite” – people in CEO and COO roles or other top management positions, Bentkover said. Each student identifies a challenge or project with a direct connection to the job they have now. As they work their way through the courses, they apply what they learn in the workplace and share it with colleagues in class.
Much of the exchanges are confidential, she said.
“The classroom provides a safe space,” she said. “What comes in stays in. What goes out is approved to go out.”
The blended-learning model enables students from all over the nation to continue working while studying, she added.
To date, more than 1,000 people have explored taking the two programs, with hundreds applying, Sibley said. The small cohorts of students are accepted through rolling admissions, she added.
For Moss, the mix of mature students and professionals, many of them aged 50 or older, has meant tapping into a wealth of experience and insight.
“This [program] has made me a much better leader,” she said. “From all the readings we’ve done and hearing my other classmates, I have a different perspective than I would have [had] working in my own space. I appreciate where other sectors are coming from and have a better understanding of how we can work together.” •

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