A Planning Framework for Crafting the Required-Curriculum Phase of an MBA Program

This article introduces a planning framework for designing that part of an MBA program during which students take the bulk, if not all, of their required courses. The framework highlights three student venues that can be jointly leveraged for enhanced student learning. Those venues are the required curriculum, students’ affinity groups, and the career-related searches that they pursue. For each venue, the framework links three program design foci. These design foci are balance and pace, for sustaining student interest and effort; integration, for leveraging expanded and reinforced learning opportunities; and standards, for the quality design and delivery of the program components. Numerous specific practices used to plan and deliver the required-curriculum phase of the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School MBA program are also presented.