The Daniels College of Business is in the early stages of redesigning its MBA program. The school is currently in the process of working on proposals for changes to the program, which will be voted on by the school’s faculty in late March.

“Academic programs need to be evaluated and redesigned periodically for market relevancy, and our MBA is no exception,” Senior Associate Dean Daniel Connolly said. “It has been several years since we undertook the last major overhaul.”

The MBA Redesign Committee, made up of many of the school’s faculty and two alumni members, has been working since September to restructure the MBA offered by the school.

“Redesigning our MBA program has meant a lot of research to see what other schools are doing and what our stakeholders are interested in,” Management Professor and Committee Member Cynthia Fukami said. “Through our exit interviews, we felt we could do a better job preparing students.”

Fukami said that the decision to revamp the MBA program was made after consulting school alumni as well as members of the business community. The committee has also held three student focus groups with current MBA students.

“We asked business and alumni groups, ‘what factors would you want to see in students to make you come and recruit from Daniels?’” Fukami said.

Some of the early proposed changes to the program include an increased focus on entrepreneurial thinking and international business.

“We are looking to significantly increase global coverage and content,” Fukami explained. “The faculty voted to eliminate the IMBA (International MBA) degree last fall. Through this new model, we are attempting to provide a strong global base for all of our MBA students.”

In addition to the increased focus on global business, the program will target topics such as database decision-making and critical thinking.

“One of the biggest things we heard from people in the business world was students need to be able to make decisions in the face of uncertainty,” Fukami said. “We want students to be able to answer: How do you make a decision when the world could look drastically different in a couple of months?”

According to the annual U.S. News and World Report Rankings, the Daniels MBA program is the 77th best in the nation. Despite the strong ranking, Fukami says the program can always be improved.

“You have got to constantly improve.” Fukami said. “Whatever it is we are doing, we want to be doing it better. We are excited to have this great opportunity to do some interesting things with the MBA program.”

According to Fukami, The committee hopes to finalize its initial plan by late March. After that, Daniels will start pilot testing classes in fall 2015, with the ultimate goal of implementing the new program as early as the fall or spring of 2016.

Students who wish to offer input on the redesign are welcome to contact the committee through the Daniels College of Business.