New Plu Program Lends A High-Technology Twist To Mba Students Learn To Manage Innovation And Change; Other Schools Seem Likely To Follow Plu’s Lead

In a sure sign of the times, one Northwest university is now offering Master of Business Administration degrees with a high-tech focus.

Jan Dempsey is the director of Graduate Programs in the School of Business at Tacoma’s Pacific Lutheran University (PLU). She said the new program grew out of a recognition that the job market for professionals was changing.

“We looked around,” she said, “and kind of saw a need a couple years ago for a program that focused on technology an innovation, that still maintains the traditional values of an MBA.

“It needed to be a business program, but with a focus on the technology industries and some of the challenges and unique things faced in them.”

The new MBA program carries a specialty in what PLU is calling Technology and Innovation Management (TIM).

“New management skills are needed for companies to compete in this fast-paced global environment,” reads the program’s on-line brochure. “To meet this critical need, Pacific Lutheran University offers an MBA with a specialization in Technology and Innovation.”

Dempsey said the program is “not a technical program, but is designed for people who need to manage within that environment.”Required courses include strategic management classes, technical classes and courses on managing innovation and technological change.

“The technological industries have a different lifestyle and experience much more rapid change than more conventional industries. They are not well covered in a traditional program,” Dempsey said.

Designed with the assistance of a NASA engineer on leave to PLU, the curriculum combines traditional MBA courses with 12 credit hours of offerings with titles such as “Strategic Management of Technology,” “Management of Information Technologies and Systems” and “New Venture Management.”

Students currently enrolled in the evening program tend to be drawn from Tacoma and South King County’s high-tech community.

Most of the programs current students have engineering or other types of technical undergraduate degrees and are working in a high-tech industry.

Some physicians have even enrolled, “which was surprise to us,” Dempsey said. “But we tried to make the program broad enough that it would appeal to people who were not just working in aerospace.

“The degree appeals to two groups,” Dempsey said, “students who were not necessarily from a technical track, but who are working in a technical industry or environment and wanted a technical grounding, and technical employees - let’s say an engineer who needs a business education that has more relevance to his or her career.

“Two-thirds of our students are from the second group.”

Although an on-line version of the program seems as if it would be a natural permutation, Dempsey said that because it is case-based and team-based “to be very interactive, we would have to change our philosophies on how we teach.”

Although all classes are currently held in the evening,some consideration has been given to adding Saturday classes.

Dempsey said that the program is a natural for the high-tech-rich western side of the state - “much of our clientele is locating in the region, and with Intel locating here I would expect a great deal of interest from them.”

Rumors have circulated, she said, that other schools want to follow PLU’s lead. “We’ve heard that the University of Washington and Seattle U are giving consideration to a program like ours.”