Graduate Course Descriptions

The Comprehensive Portfolio will be used as the capstone experience. The creation of a portfolio will provide an opportunity to showcase professional activities, curriculum vitae, major course papers/presentations, research, and other relevant scholarly or professional documents. This course should be taken in the final semester of coursework for the MM Music Education degree.

Students will identify the unique nature, characteristics, and relationship of the Self and Others in regard to leadership and followership. Build upon an understanding of these identified differences to develop and implement strategies that improve the quality of the work culture and overall productivity for the betterment of the collective organization. This course lays the foundation for other courses in the program to include communication, ethics, power and aesthetics, strategy and subsidiarity, followership and solidarity, self-care, and more.

A systems perspective of organizations is explored. Learners integrate systems thinking and change theory to leverage best practices within the context of today’s uncertain environment to enhance an organization’s effectiveness. Specifics addressed include organizational design and its challenges such as structure and control, issues of culture, strategy in light of globalization, technology, change, decision-making, innovation, conflict, power and politics.

The effective and appropriate use of teams as a competitive advantage is explored. In order to understand the seemingly chaotic dynamics of groups, learners experience strategies to drive groups to a higher level of performance. Learners utilize various methods of group analysis, design, and implementation, while being provided the opportunity to experiment and take risks with creative strategies. Conflict styles are addressed as well as effective methods for having difficult conversations. Sensitizing strategies for the appreciation of diversity, including gender, sexual orientation, race and culture are explored.

This course examines macroeconomic concepts relevant for today’s economy and the government policies impacting organizations. Learners analyze corporate financial statements to gain insight and influence change. Management analytical abilities are honed through a deep understanding of financial objectives and their management including knowledge of ratio analysis, corporate responsibility, financial planning, capital budgeting, and financial markets. The course also prepares learners to meet the demands of a global economy by addressing trade, protectionism, and international finance. The class concludes with a study of personal finance.

This course presents a comprehensive, integrative, and practical focus on ethical leadership and management. In this learning community, foundational knowledge and practical approaches are developed to balance stakeholder interests, to ensure financial transparency and to address economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Learners will examine the intersections of the concepts of ethics and leadership from a wide range of disciplines, contexts, and professions, as well as the application for individuals, teams, organizations, and across a global perspective.

Characteristics of the virtual organization are examined along with emerging technologies and virtual influence methods that drive organizational productivity. Specifics addressed include the traps, pitfalls and solutions common to emerging technologies. Issues relating to commercialization and market adoption rates, strategy uncertainty, financing, and the leveraging of strategic alliances including “people” challenges are tackled. Finally, a focus on cybersecurity including threats and common issues such as what to do when getting hacked are reviewed.

Issues relating to the collection, analysis and dynamic application of data for critically informed decisions and performance improvement are explored. This course focuses on a classic understanding of research methodology as well as descriptive and inferential statistical tools. Ethical standards in treatment of human subjects, data, and analysis are addressed.

The process of formulating and executing a strategy is explored. Learners gain knowledge and skills in the areas of crafting a usable vision, mission, and set of core values for an organization; analytical tools of organization and industry analysis, setting measurable organizational objectives; defining the steps (the “how”) to achieve these objectives; executing; and monitoring/adjusting/correcting the strategy.

Project management techniques are introduced to harmonize and balance creativity with time and cost considerations. Theory on project life cycle and how to execute, monitor, control and close process groups are some of the concepts this course addresses. The idea of “agile” in project management and its relevance to innovation is discussed.