News

Freeman revises MBA curriculum

October 26, 2005

Angelo DeNisi, dean of the Freeman School, marvels at the accomplishment. “When people actually sit down and talk,” DeNisi says, “it's amazing what they get done.”

DeNisi is referring to the new MBA curriculum, hammered out in a single day by a business school task force in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Based in part on recommendations submitted by Freeman MBA students last year, the revised curriculum calls for more integrated core courses spread throughout the program, a required global leadership module and a required “practice of management” experiential learning module that spans the two years of the program.

While experiential learning offerings—including Burkenroad Reports and community service projects coordinated through the Levy-Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship—have long distinguished the Freeman School from other institutions, DeNisi believes post-Katrina New Orleans will present even greater opportunities for students to get involved with the community and gain practical experience. The revised MBA curriculum's practice of management module, in fact, includes an opening team-based course on rebuilding New Orleans taught by John Elstrott, clinical professor of business and director of the Levy-Rosenblum Institute.

“Basically, this is field work,” DeNisi explains. “There are people involved in getting small businesses up and running and people involved with construction and other projects. We will find these projects and then work with the students to find projects that are meaningful to them and meaningful to the community, and this will become part of their coursework.”

Freeman School graduate programs will resume on Jan. 9 and feature two 12-week sessions. The undergraduate program will resume a week later, observing the same schedule as Tulane's other undergraduate schools and colleges with a 15-week session, followed by a concentrated seven-week “Lagniappe Semester.” The two-session format will enable returning students to complete their degree requirements no more than one month later than previously anticipated.

Since Katrina hit, DeNisi says he's been receiving between 200 and 300 e-mails a day from concerned students, parents, friends and alumni. Most, he says, are committed to New Orleans and the Freeman School but are concerned about the future. DeNisi does his best to reassure them. “Every time a new restaurant re-opens, people flock to it,” he says. “There was an event recently where hundreds of volunteers gathered together to clean up Magazine Street and get it ready for business.

“There are amazing things happening here that aren't making it into the national media,” DeNisi says. “I have no doubt New Orleans will be back, but it will be better in the sense that people are working together to bring it back.”

-- Mark Miester