Originally published April 3, 2015
By Lisa Y. Garibay
UTEP News Service
As general manager of the Border Environment Cooperation Commission, Maria Elena Giner felt that she was providing leadership intuitively rather than formally. Although her 10-plus years of senior management experience were helpful, she believed a Master of Business Administration would complement her engineering degree.
But not just any MBA would do. Giner and dozens like her have gravitated to The University of Texas at El Paso’s Executive MBA program specifically because it caters to professionals balancing professional development with real-world time constraints and life demands.
The Executive MBA program, or EMBA for short, launched in January 2010 and graduated its first cohort in July 2011 (read a story about them here). It was established to provide business and nonprofit leaders in the region with a first-class graduate business program through an expedited, nontraditional and flexible format facilitating academic and professional growth among highly experienced individuals with busy schedules.
“Although our Accelerated MBA has been a wonderful option for working professionals, we found that often those in managerial/executive positions had extensive travel obligations or very unpredictable schedules that made a twice-weekly class commitment unmanageable,” said Laura Uribarri, assistant dean for the MBA programs.
City of El Paso Fire Chief Sam Peña didn’t think he could continue his education beyond his bachelor’s degree at this point in his career, given the demands of his job.
“We have to abandon the idea that schooling is restricted to youth,” said the upcoming May 2015 grad. “Now that I’m here, I feel the EMBA experience has been one of the most riveting moments of my career.”
Kristen Daugherty, CEO of Emergence Health Network, had always wanted to pursue an MBA. Her board of trustees encouraged her to seek a business degree to compliment her clinical background, but she never imagined doing so while running an organization of nearly 600 employees with multiple locations across the region. UTEP’s EMBA was so tailored that she was able to commit to the program during her first year as CEO and graduated in 2014.
The current EMBA structure offers students the benefits of a classroom experience delivered in concentrated sessions, while still allowing them to meet their professional obligations. It also creates a learning environment where experienced business and nonprofit leaders are in a class with their peers.
The creation of the EMBA was championed by Robert Nachtmann, DBA, dean of the College of Business Administration, who felt that the college needed to offer this program in order to fully serve the graduate business education needs of the region.
“The managerial leadership and all organizations that are the source of economic development in this region deserved the opportunity that our EMBA program provides to grow and develop,” Nachtmann said.
The program takes 18 months to complete and is structured to accommodate leaders in the for- and nonprofit arenas. Its format is conducive to the busy schedule of advancing managers with courses offered twice a month every other week on Friday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with two courses completed over a five-week period. Courses are presented in topical modules that reflect the multidisciplinary nature of business.
Additionally, the EMBA features an international research course focused on comparative corporate governance that is conducted during a short study abroad. This year’s cohort went to China.
Daugherty, Giner and Peña all agreed that balancing school, jobs and family was the biggest challenge for someone coming to the EMBA program. There also was the process of re-acclimating to an academic environment.
Uribarri says that candidates with at least eight years of managerial experience who are looking to enhance their understanding and ability to integrate the business disciplines, advance their managerial skills, and further their leadership effectiveness are best served by the EMBA format. Each EMBA cohort is kept purposefully small and will range between 20-30 students to maximize meaningful discourse and networking opportunities.
Diversity is an important aspect of the EMBA program. The number of female applicants and enrollees has increased over the years, starting with one woman in a class of 11 during the first EMBA class to today, when women comprise 42 percent of this year’s cohort.
Nachtmann calls the program “another story of success from UTEP for the people of our region.”
“We had faith in the people of this region and made a bet,” he said. “That bet resulted in a modern and an efficient professional education facility – some say the best in the state, but certainly in the Southwest – and a cadre of UTEP EMBA graduates that now lead corporations and launch enterprises in this region.”