Course Schedule and Catalog

Long Title: MBA-P IMMERSION

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: The Rice MBA Program Immersion is composed of a rigorous one week experience intended to help acclimate students to the Jones School Culture, as well as the rapid pace of a top-tier graduate business program. At the end of Immersion students will be better prepared academically, professionally, administratively, and culturally to reap the full benefits of the MBA experience. The Rice MBA Program Immersion is a mandatory activity for all incoming students.

Long Title: FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 3

Description: Introduction to the preparation, analysis, and use of corporate financial reports. Covers the basic techniques of financial reporting analysis from the perspective of managers as well as external users of information such as investors. Required for MBA.

Long Title: MANAGERIAL ACCOUNTING

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: Introduction to the use of financial and cost information by managers in budgeting, resource allocation, pricing, quality control, and other contexts to help managers set goals and monitor and evaluate performance. Required for MBA.

Long Title: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: Study of the many factors, which influence how individuals, groups, and teams behave and function in complex organizations and how they can be effectively managed.

Long Title: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience

Credit Hours: .75

Description: Emphasizes understanding what constitutes effective organizational designs, considers both the macro designing initiatives and the micro execution of those initiatives. Required for MBA.

Long Title: MANAGERIAL ECONOMICS

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: We study production and pricing decisions under different assumptions about firm market power. Emphasis is placed on understanding the relevant costs in firm decision-making. Examples are used from marketing and accounting areas. Required for MBA.

Long Title: FINANCE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 3

Description: Introduction to the theory and practice of corporate finance, with emphasis on topics such as valuation, capital budgeting, risk and return, and capital structure. Required for MBA.

Long Title: CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience

Credit Hours: .75

Description: An exploration of the ethical and legal basis of managerial decision making and the social dimension of the business firm. Required for MBA. Repeatable for Credit.

Long Title: COMPETITIVE STRATEGY

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: Systematic examination of models and techniques used to analyze a competitive situation within an industry from a strategic perspective. Examines the roles of key players in competitive situations and the fundamentals of analytical and fact-oriented strategic reasoning. Examples of applied competitive and industry analysis are emphasized. Required for MBA.

Long Title: STRATEGY FORMULATION AND IMPLEMENTATION

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: This course focuses on formulating and implementing effective organizational strategy, including competitive positioning, core competencies and competitive advantage, cooperative arrangements, and tools for implementation.

Long Title: OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: Introduction to the principles of production management and process improvement. Required for MBA.

Long Title: MARKETING

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 3

Description: Introduction to the key concepts underlying the function of marketing and its interaction with other functions in a business enterprise. Explores marketing's role in defining, creating, and communicating value to customers. Primarily case-based with capstone simulation exercise, providing a foundation for advanced course work in marketing. Required for MBA.

Long Title: STRATEGIC BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture/Laboratory

Credit Hours: .75

Description: Introduction to the strategy and practice of business presentations. Includes frequent oral presentations (both individual and team) and feedback.

Long Title: DATA ANALYSIS

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 3

Description: The ever-increasing capacity of computers to analyze data and the explosion of the amount of data available have resulted in an increase role for data analysis as an aid to business decision-making. This course exposes the student to most important ideas and methods relevant for data analysis in a business context. Emphasizing practical applications to real problems, the course covers the following topics: sampling, descriptive statistics, probability distributions, and regression analysis. Required for MBA.

Long Title: STRATEGIC BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS II

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: .75

Description: Introduction to the strategy and practice of management communication. Assignments are based on core courses integrated across the curriculum. Includes individual communication skills assessment and development and team-based oral and written communication instruction. Required for MBA.

Long Title: INTEGRATIVE COMPETITIVE EXERCISE ILE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: This course is designed with two major objectives in mind. First, is to thoroughly understand, and be able to competently apply, those statistical methods typically used in the analysis of business data. Secondly, is to affect how you think about problems. If data can help you resolve a business problem, this course should enable you to: structure the problem in a way that facilitates its analysis; specify the data that needs to be analyzed; decide on the statistical technique(s) most appropriate for analyzing the data; apply the technique correctly; and, insightfully interpret the results in terms of their implications for the original problem.

Long Title: EDUCATION LEADERSHIP INDEPENDENT STUDY

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Independent Study

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description:  Repeatable for Credit.

Long Title: USING FINANCIAL STATEMENTS TO EVALUATE FIRM PERFORMANCE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: This course is designed to develop basic skills in financial statement analysis with special emphasis on understanding, organizing and summarizing financial data for decision making purposes related to valuation. The course focuses on financial and accounting analysis which consists of documenting and understanding a firm's profitability relative to past performance and comparable firms. Ratio analysis, accounting quality, and earnings management are the focal points of this portion of the course.

Long Title: ACCOUNTING-BASED VALUATION

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Prerequisite(s): MGMP 601

Description: This course covers two major topics: 1) Forecasting financial statements based on a complete historical analysis of the firm; 2) Deriving firm value under a variety of approaches including DCF and residual income valuation (RIV). The prerequisite MGMP 601 may be taken concurrently with MGMP 602.

Long Title: FEDERAL TAXATION

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: Taxes affect most business decisions in the industrialized world. This course provides the body of tax knowledge that corporate executives and professionals need as a part of basic business decision making. The course is designed for those with no formal tax background and for those whose tax work is dated or has not included a focus on business entities. The course emphasizes corporate tax matters and questions to consider in choosing a business entity. Class members should be tax literate at the end of the course.

Long Title: FINANCING THE STARTUP VENTURE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: The goal of this course is to provide students with an overview of financing options for startups. The course covers crowdfunding, angel investors, accelerators, and the venture capital industry; the organization and operation of venture capital funds; investment methodology; monitoring and portfolio liquidation.

Long Title: ENTERPRISE EXCHANGE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 3

Description:  Repeatable for Credit.

Long Title: INVESTMENTS / PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: Review of classic investment theory, with emphasis on measuring & managing investment risk & return. Includes the development of modern portfolio theory & asset pricing models, an introduction to option & futures contracts, market efficiency, & stock evaluation. Repeatable for Credit.

Long Title: FIXED INCOME MANAGEMENT

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: The course provides an in-depth analysis of the concepts that are most often encountered in the market for fixed income securities. The goals of the course are twofold: (i) to illustrate the fundamental concepts that are commonly used for analyzing fixed income instruments; (ii) to investigate how the fundamental concepts are related to the institutional structures that are most often encountered in practice. The course will focus on topics that are most likely to have practical relevance for students once they graduate. The goals are accomplished via a combination of case studies, lectures, problem sets (to be handed in). Some of the topics that will be covered include term structure of interest rate, duration-based analysis, inverse floater, corporate bond markets, mortgage-backed securities. Repeatable for Credit.

Long Title: REAL ESTATE FINANCE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: This course has two major objectives: First, this course provides an overview of topics related to real estate finance. Specifically, this course provides a detailed description of the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model applied to real estate. The DCF model is the main financial decision tool used in the real estate industry and we use it extensively in this course. In addition, this course also describes the connection between financial markets and real estate. A large part of this course is devoted to the study of public traded securities that have their cash flows tied to real property cash flows, such as commercial mortgage-backed securities and REITs. Second, this course is the first elective related to real estate in a series available to Rice MBA students, and hence it briefly overviews basic concepts commonly used in the Real Estate Industry. Repeatable for Credit.

Long Title: BRAND STRATEGY

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: Brand Management is an elective class that addresses important branding decisions faced by an organization. Its basic objectives are: 1) to provide students with a complete understanding of the consumer and of how consumers develop brand attitudes and behaviors; 2) to increase understanding of the important issues in planning and evaluating brand strategies; and 3) to provide a forum for students to apply branding strategies in a variety of domains. Particular emphasis is placed in the course on understanding psychological principles at the consumer or customer level that will improve managerial decision-making with respect to brands. One aim of the course is to make these concepts relevant for any type of organization (public or private, large or small, etc).

Long Title: DECISION MODELS

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: Successful management requires the ability to recognize a decision situation, understand its essential features, and make a choice. However, many of these situations - particularly those involving uncertainty and/or complex interactions - may be too difficult to grasp intuitively, and the stakes may be too high to learn by experience. This course introduces spreadsheet modeling, simulation, decision analysis and optimization to represent and analyze such complex problems. The skills learned in this course are applicable in almost all aspects of business and should be helpful in future courses. The course is divided into two parts. In the first part, we discuss the use of decision trees for structuring decision problems under uncertainty. In the second part of the course, we discuss Monte Carlo simulation, a technique for simulating complex, uncertain systems. Throughout the course, we will use Microsoft Excel as a modeling environment, using add-in programs as necessary. Familiarity with Excel is an important prerequisite for this course. Repeatable for Credit.

Long Title: REEP SUMMER INSTITUTE: EDUCATION ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Long Title: COMMUNICATION I ILE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience

Credit Hours: .75

Description: Internal and Interpersonal Communications Students discuss and practice effective ways to communicate both to groups within and organization and one-on-one. Content includes analyzing pitfalls of hierarchical communication; listening skills; productive vs. unproductive feedback; etc. Repeatable for Credit.

Long Title: CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY II

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience

Credit Hours: .75

Description: This ILE expands on the topics of the first ILE with three learning objectives in mind: 1. Heightened moral imagination defined as the ability to recognize ethical dilemmas / moral problems in business situations. 2. Increased skill at analyzing those dilemmas / problems in terms of economic outcomes, legal requirement, and moral duties through use of ethical decision-making frameworks. 3. Increased skill at ethical leadership as an executive / manager in presenting your moral point of view to others in order to best develop and maintain an ethical climate / culture in all our organizations, communities, and societies. Repeatable for Credit.

Long Title: COMMUNICATION II ILE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience

Credit Hours: .75

Description: Crisis Communications Students discuss and practice the methodology of managing crisis in business settings. Both proactive and reactive actions are reviewed; historic examples of both good and bad communication in a crisis are studied. Guest lecturer will discuss crisis communications. Repeatable for Credit.

Long Title: COMMUNICATIONS ILE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience

Credit Hours: .75

Description: Intercultural Communications Students focus on understanding how to conduct business in cultures different from their own. Content includes cultural and emotional intelligence; cross-cultural exercises; and ways to approach and learn about foreign culture and its related business practices.

Long Title: LEADERSHIP ILE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: The purpose of this course is to teach you some skills and give you some hands on practice around leading others in group settings. The course will focus on Fundamental Leadership Skills: Influence and Vision; Fundamental Leadership Skills: Leading a Key Decision; Fundamental Leadership Skills: Interpretive Leading under Crisis; Putting it Together: Climbing Mt. Everest.

Long Title: NEGOTIATIONS ILE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: Managers and professionals cannot be successful without possessing effective negotiation skills and strategies. The purpose of this ILE is to help one understand the processes of negotiation in a variety of settings. The ILE will cover a broad spectrum of negotiation problems faced by managers and professionals. This ILE helps students develop negotiation skills by tackling a series important topics central to effective negotiation.

Long Title: GLOBAL FIELD EXPERIENCE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: This unique experiential learning opportunity requires students to apply what was learned in the first year of the program through consulting projects on the ground in a designated country. The course fosters a global mindset and further develops the ability to tackle business challenges in dynamic, divers and complex environments. Department Permission Required.

Long Title: FIRST YEAR CAPSTONE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience

Credit Hours: 1.5

Description: This core course uses a capstone business strategy simulation conducted in close proximity to the required formulation/implementation course. Student teams operate simulated companies in a highly competitive industry. Emphasis is placed on integrating strategy, financial control, operational excellence, and team building. Teams make presentations at the end of the course.

Long Title: MBA-P PROGRAM CAPSTONE

Department: Management

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience

Credit Hours: 3

Description: The MBA-P Capstone course gives students the opportunity to apply their multi-functional (strategy, finance, marketing, organizational behavior, etc.) knowledge that they have gained in the program and their own professional experience to solve a complex, real-world managerial problem. However, this course will provide a unique twist to challenge the students - the real-world problem will be faced by a non-corporate, Houston-based, community organization. Students will work with senior executives at these organizations over the course of the semester to develop actionable solutions to strategic challenges facing these organizations.