Lei Lei, dean of the Rutgers Business School, said the Ivy Exec ranks institutions based on survey responses, program data and other major rankings.
The Rutgers Business School Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) program was ranked the number one EMBA program offered among all public business schools in the Northeast by Ivy Exec’s 2020 Best Executive MBA Programs.
This is not the first time Rutgers Business School’s EMBA program, also referred to as “The Powerhouse,” has ranked highly, said Farrokh Langdana, professor and director of the Rutgers EMBA program.
The EMBA program was ranked number one before in Life Balance for Executive MBA programs in 2019 by Ivy Exec, Langdana said. The program has also ranked number two for Economics three times by Financial Times and was ranked the number five Top EMBA program for Corporate Social Responsibility in 2019, both globally.
Langdana also said statistics, corporate finance, supply chain and corporate strategy are a few other areas the EMBA program has ranked in globally by Financial Times’ Top 1.
Rutgers Business School Dean Lei Lei detailed the steps Ivy Exec uses to rank its programs in an interview.
“Ivy Exec surveyed (approximately) 6,000 individuals from the Ivy Exec professional community of successful business professionals with more than seven years of work experience, 75 percent of whom hold an MBA or EMBA degree. Survey participants evaluated approximately 300 (EMBA) programs on career advancement, curriculum, prestige, the global experience and life balance. The rankings derive from the survey responses combined with program data and other major rankings such as return on investment by Financial Times,” Lei said.
Lei and Rosa Oppenheim, professor and vice chair of the Department of Supply Chain Management, said it is due to the efforts of Langdana and his EMBA team of faculty and staff that Rutgers Business School has achieved so much in recent years.
“We are very proud of the gold standard of the (Rutgers Business School) EMBA program that features world-class business faculty, academic and industry co-teaching, innovative and cross-functional curriculum and an experience-building learning process. Our EMBA director, (Langdana), and his entire EMBA team of faculty, staff, students and alumni constantly adapt, innovate curricula and connect students to the needs of business, making the Rutgers (EMBA) the powerhouse it has become today,” Lei said.
Langdana said in an interview that in addition to the constant re-engineering of the curriculum, the professors that teach EMBA courses at Rutgers Business School are why the program is thriving today.
He called this network of professors a rare species, saying professors this exceptional are hard to come by.
Oppenheim, who not only has been teaching at Rutgers for approximately 47 years but has also taught every EMBA class since its inception, spoke on the quality of the students that work in tandem with the quality of education at the Rutgers Business School program.
“They (EMBA students) are all professionally successful in many different fields and bring their experiences and enthusiasm to the classroom. They are exceptionally motivated and hardworking, balancing a rigorous academic program with demanding careers and busy families, and I have tremendous admiration for them. Working together in this challenging two-year program, they form close friendships and have exhibited extraordinary kindness and compassion towards each other,” Oppenheim said.
She also said there are certain practices integrated into the program that are believed to have encouraged this success.
“The weekend structure, the team organization, the emphasis on practical takeaways backed by rigor in every course, the team projects and presentations that link theory to practice, the EMBA overseas seminar course, the attention to detail by the staff to every aspect of their experience in the program, expert career counseling and social and professional activities for current students and alumni all combine to make this an exceptional and successful program,” Oppenheim said.
Langdana said the Powerhouse also orchestrates a highly acclaimed leadership exercise, unique to the Rutgers EMBA Program: the Cycle of One.
He said the Cycle of One builds on examples of leaders from history and allows graduates of the Rutgers EMBA Powerhouse to engage in a compassionate and radical leadership style.
Lei said special plans are underway to further improve Rutgers EMBA.
She said a new stackable program tailored for the perfect “re-entry” for MBA graduates will introduce stand-alone three-credit courses on topics such as artificial intelligence, big data, digital marketing, digitization and exchange rate dynamics.
Lei said a newly re-engineered Executive Leadership course, which offers a brand-new segment on Innovation Strategy, will embrace an emphasis on written and oral presentations.
Supply Chain Strategy is another course that was recently enhanced to feature Cloud and Supply Chains, Green Sustainability, Shocks to Supply Chains and a segment on Robotics in global supply chains, Lei said.
“The Rutgers EMBA promise to our students is simple: What you learn in class today, you will deploy at work the following week. This is not an easy charter. It means constant curriculum evolution and constant program development on our part, but we make it happen. This is the fundamental key to our success — very cutting-edge material taught only by superstar professors and all this under the umbrella of impeccable staff service,” Lei said.
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