Rawls College of Business to Offer Texas’ First STEM MBA: MBA News

By QS Contributor Updated Aug 26, 2019

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Introduction
STEM graduates to receive classes tailored to their backgrounds

Rawls College of Business to Offer Texas’ First STEM MBA: MBA News main image

Texas Tech University’s Rawls College of Business is to offer the US state’s first specialized STEM MBA program for STEM graduates from June 2014.

Designed to meet a growing market demand for leaders within the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), the one-year STEM MBA program at Rawls College will seek to allow STEM graduates to develop the leadership, communication and business-analytics skills required to successfully further their careers.

STEM programs at undergraduate level have risen dramatically in popularity over the past decade in the US, especially in realm of science technology, and this trend has not gone unnoticed among US business schools.

At MBA-level, the new program at Rawls College of Business follows on from a STEM executive MBA launched by Krannert School of Management, Purdue University late last year and ‘The STEM path to the MBA’ program offered by the University of Alabama’s Manderson Graduate School of Business.

STEM graduates to receive classes tailored to their backgrounds

STEM graduates enrolling on the new STEM MBA program at Rawls College of Business can expect to benefit from a course that will focus on content and examples relevant to their industry.

“There will be less emphasis on the financial and retail sectors and greater focus on the high-tech, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and energy industries,” said William Pasewark, a Rawls College professor and associate dean, in a press release for the school.

For example, aside from classes on management concepts, financial accounting and leadership ethics, the STEM MBA will offer a commercialization class that will highlight best practices in marketing scientific or engineering innovation and concepts.

“Our external stakeholders talked about the need for greater cross-disciplinary training in approaching problems and more effective individual and collective communication skills to lead within an organization. I don’t know how many times I heard about the early- to mid-career engineer or scientist with excellent technical skills whose career could have been enhanced by the knowledge of those same business and leadership skills,” said Lance Nail, dean at Rawls College of Business.

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