Central Michigan University

Thursday, February 28, 2008

New CMU programs aimed at helping to improve economy

Two new innovative online programs at Central Michigan University, created for working professionals, will help improve the economy in Michigan and beyond by adding direct value for the students' employers.

CMU's College of Business Administration will add two new online programs for working professionals to its curriculum beginning this summer, a graduate certificate in SAP and a Master of Business Administration program with a value driven organization concentration.

CMU's graduate certificate in SAP is a program geared at professionals in any field who want to build their SAP expertise. SAP is enterprise software that provides the capability to manage financial, asset, and cost accounting; production operations and materials; personnel; plants; and archived documents. The 16-credit hour program, which will begin in June, includes four online courses and a two-week face-to-face SAP Academy, which will take place in August. Thirteen credits from the graduate certificate also can be transferred to CMU's online MBA program with an SAP emphasis.

The VDO concentration, which will begin in the fall 2008 semester, was built with the mission of helping students add value to their companies through a focus on corporate governance and social responsibility, process improvement, and making business decisions based on the voice of the customer. The program consists of three 3-credit project-based courses, with a goal of students using relevant projects or problems from their companies to fulfill their class requirements.

"These programs are going to add immediate value to industry," said D. Michael Fields, dean of CMU's College of Business Administration. "This valuable skill set should put the working professional in a position to be promoted more quickly within their organization."

More information on the graduate certificate in SAP can be found at http://www.cel.cmich.edu/SAP and information on the online MBA with VDO concentration can be found at http://www.cel.cmich.edu/onlinemba.