Program overview
Education systems around the world face the central challenge of finding innovative solutions and techniques for improving student performance. This challenge is shared by teachers, teacher-leaders, and principals who are responsible for improving opportunities to learn, with two goals: raising average levels of student performance and reducing achievement gaps between students.
Beyond schools, leaders in district offices, government agencies, professional associations, and other non-governmental enterprises also share the challenge of improving student performance at scale across entire schools, districts, and systems.
What will you learn
- To envision new possibilities for the work of students and teachers in classrooms.
- To understand alternative logics and strategies for organizing the practice of educational innovation.
- To examine the application of the emerging field of improvement science to the practice of educational innovation.
- To explore innovation and improvement in large-scale educational reform initiatives in the US and around the world.
- To improve your own practice as an educator, innovator, and/or reformer.
- To develop and manage teams that use disciplined, evidence-based methods of educational innovation and improvement.
- To employ disciplined, evidence-based methods of educational innovation and improvement to manage collaborations among schools, districts, and systems.
Program Class List
1Leading Ambitious Teaching and Learning
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Learn why ambitious teaching and learning may be the key to global educational improvement and how to put it into practice.
2Designing and Leading Learning Systems
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Learn leading strategies for educational innovation to improve practice, raise student performance, and reduce achievement gaps.
3Improvement Science in Education
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Learn how to apply principles and practices of improvement science to improve educational practice, raise student performance, and reduce achievement gaps.
4Case Studies in Continuous Educational Improvement
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Learn about leading approaches to continuous educational improvement through case studies of educational innovation.
5Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement Capstone
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Apply your knowledge and demonstrate mastery, personal growth, and competency along dimensions central to leading educational innovation and improvement.
Meet Your Instructors
Deborah Loewenberg Ball
The William H. Payne Collegiate Professor of Education and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the School of Education at University of Michigan
Deborah Loewenberg Ball is the William H. Payne Collegiate Professor of Education and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan, and the founding director of TeachingWorks. She taught elementary school for more than 15 years, and continues to teach mathematics to elementary students every summer. Ball serves on the National Science Board and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Board of Trustees, chairs the Spencer Foundation Board of Directors, and is the president-elect of the American Educational Research Association. She completed eleven years as dean of the U-M School of Education in June 2016. Ball's research focuses on the practice of mathematics instruction and on the improvement of teacher training and development. She is an expert on teacher education, with a particular interest in how professional training and experience combine to equip beginning teachers with the skills and knowledge needed for responsible practice. Ball has authored or co-authored more than 150 publications and has lectured and made numerous major presentations around the world.
Nell Duke
Professor in the School of Education at The University of Michigan
Nell Duke is a Professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. Her work focuses on early literacy development, particularly among children living in poverty. Her specific areas of expertise include development of informational reading and writing in young children, comprehension development and instruction in early schooling, and issues of equity in literacy education. She is the recipient of the P. David Pearson Scholarly Influence Award from the Literacy Research Association and the American Educational Research Association Early Career Award, as well as awards from the National Reading Conference, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the International Reading Association. She has served as co-principal investigator on projects funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the George Lucas Educational Foundation, among other organizations. Duke has served as an advisor for many education and policy organizations. She has also served as author and consultant on a number of educational programs and speaks widely on literacy education. Among her books is Inside information: Developing powerful readers and writers of informational text through project-based instruction and Beyond bedtime stories: A parent’s guide to promoting reading, writing, and other literacy skills from birth to 5, now in its second edition.
Liz Kolb
Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Education at University of Michigan
Liz Kolb is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. She authored Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education (published by ISTE, 2008), Cell Phones in the Classroom: A Practical Guide for the K-12 Educator (ISTE, 2011), and Unleash the Learning Power of Your Child's Cell Phone (ISTE, 2013). In addition, she has published numerous articles and book chapters on new technologies and education in prominent publications such as Education Leadership, Scholastic, Edutopia, ISTE's Edtekhub, and Learning and Leading with Technology. Kolb has done consulting work and has been a featured and keynote speaker at conferences all over the United States and Canada. She is an elected board member to MACUL, the state of Michigan organization for teaching with technology. She is a member of the COSN advisory board for mobile learning and emerging technologies. She is passionate about engaging students in education and educational opportunity through their own technologies. Kolb is also the creator and coordinator of the 4T Virtual Conference, which is a free conference for practitioners that occurs every May. Kolb is a former social studies and computer technology teacher.
Elizabeth Birr Moje
Dean of the School of Education at University of Michigan
Elizabeth Birr Moje is the Dean of the School of Education, the George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor of Education, and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. She is also a faculty associate in the Institute for Social Research and in the Latino/a Studies program. Moje began her career teaching history, biology, and drama at high schools in Colorado and Michigan. In her current research and community engagement work, Moje uses an array of methods to study and support young people’s literacy learning in Detroit, Michigan. She is particularly interested in the intersections between disciplinary literacies of school and the literacy practices of youth outside of school. She also studies how youth draw from home, community, ethnic, popular, and school cultures to make cultures and to enact identities. In related work focused on teacher learning, Moje developed and co-directs Teaching and Learning the Disciplines through Clinical Practice Rounds, with colleague Robert Bain. The Rounds Project, which advances discipline-based literacy teacher education in urban settings, was awarded the provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize at the University of Michigan in 2010.
Donald J. Peurach
Associate Professor of Educational Policy, Leadership, and Innovation in the School of Education at University of Michigan
Donald J. Peurach is Associate Professor of Educational Policy, Leadership, and Innovation in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. His research, teaching, and outreach focus on the production, use, and management of knowledge-in-practice among social innovators and those they seek to serve. As such, his work sits squarely at the intersection of educational policy, leadership, and innovation. He is the author of Seeing Complexity in Public Education: Problems, Possibilities, and Success for All (2011, Oxford University Press) and a co-author of Improvement by Design: The Promise of Better Schools (2014, University of Chicago Press). Peurach also serves as a Fellow of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and as a Faculty Associate in the Center for Positive Organizations in the Ross School of Business (University of Michigan). Before pursuing an academic career, he was a high school mathematics teacher and, before that, a systems analyst in manufacturing, healthcare, and higher education. Peurach holds a BA in computer science from Wayne State University, an MPP from the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and a PhD in Educational Studies from the School of Education at the University of Michigan.
Gretchen Spreitzer
The Keith E. and Valerie J. Alessi Professor of Business Administration at University of Michigan
Gretchen M. Spreitzer is the Keith E. and Valerie J. Alessi Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Management and Organizations in the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on employee empowerment and leadership development, particularly within a context of organizational change and decline. Her most recent work is looking at positive deviance and how organizations enable employees to thrive. This work fits within a larger effort at Ross to develop a Scholarship of Positive Organizing. She is the co-author of several books including How to be a Positive Leader (2014) with Jane Dutton, Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship with Kim Cameron, The Leader's Change Handbook: An Essential Guide to Setting Direction and Taking Action (1999) with Jay Conger and Edward Lawler, The Future of Leadership: Speaking to the Next Generation (2001) with Warren Bennis and Thomas Cummings, and A Company of Leaders: Five Disciplines for Unleashing the Power in Your Workforce (2001) with Robert Quinn.
Anthony S. Bryk
President at Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Anthony S. Bryk is the ninth president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, where he is leading work on transforming educational research and development, more closely joining researchers and practitioners in networked improvement communities to improve teaching and learning. Formerly, he held the Spencer Chair in Organizational Studies in the School of Education and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University from 2004 until assuming Carnegie's presidency in September 2008.
He is a member of the National Academy of Education and was appointed by President Obama to the National Board for Education Sciences in 2010. He is one of America's most noted educational researchers. His 1993 book, Catholic Schools and the Common Good, is a classic in the sociology of education. His deep interest in bringing scholarship to bear on improving schooling is reflected in his later volumes, Trust in Schools (2002) and Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago (2010). In his most recent work, Learning to Improve (2015), Bryk argues improvement science combined with the power of networks offers the field a new approach to reach ever increasing educational aspirations. Bryk holds a B.S. from Boston College and an Ed.D. from Harvard University.
Paul LeMahieu
Senior VP for Programs and Operations at Carnegie Foundation
Paul LeMahieu is the senior vice president for programs and operations at the Carnegie Foundation. At Carnegie, he directs all of its programmatic efforts as well as the work of the Center for Networked Improvement (comprised of groups dedicated to collaborative technology, analytics, improvement science, as well as network initiation and development). LeMahieu served as superintendent of education for the state of Hawaii, the only state in the nation that is a unitary school district with annual budgets totaling over $1.8 billion. He was President of the National Association of Test Directors and Vice President of the American Educational Research Association. He served on the National Academy of Sciences' Board on International Comparative Studies in Education, Mathematical Sciences Education Board, the National Board on Testing Policy, and the National Board on Professional Teaching Standards. His current professional interests focus on the adaptation of improvement science tools and methodologies for application in networks in education. He is a co-author of the recent book Learning to improve: How America’s schools can get better at getting better, and lead author of the forthcoming Working to improve: Seven approaches to quality improvement in education. LeMahieu has a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh, a master’s from Harvard University, and a bachelor’s from Yale College.
Alicia Grunow
Senior Fellow, Improvement Science at Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Alicia Grunow is a Senior Fellow, Improvement Science, at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Amanda Meyer
Associate, Improvement Science at Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Amanda Meyer is an Associate, Improvement Science, at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Program overview
Business knowledge is in high demand in every area of work. From high-tech start-ups to non-profits, organizations are looking to leverage best practices from the business world to achieve their objectives. That’s why the MBA is widely recognized as a career accelerator, regardless of the industry you’re in.
With the MicroMasters program in MBA Core Curriculum, you will develop business insights and learn to lead others to achieve strategic goals. You’ll learn the different functional areas of a firm, how each area defines success, and how the functions work together to create success in the marketplace. You will be able to build and lead successful teams, influence others, and deliver high-quality outcomes on time and within budget.
The MicroMasters program in MBA Core Curriculum has also been designed to grow your professional and social networks. We will help you find people like yourself, both in your region and around the world, who are looking to advance their careers. In addition to facilitated discussions in your classes, you will be encouraged to interact with colleagues in real time by forming small study groups, holding virtual coffee hours, and discussing current articles and trends in business.
Are you ready? Turbocharge your career with the MicroMasters program in MBA Core Curriculum from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
What you will learn
- Devise the right marketing strategy for your idea or firm
- Use the vast information available in the world today to gain insight, create a competitive edge, and avoid being tomorrow’s data breach headline
- Evaluate corporate investment opportunities to drive shareholder value
- Use the language of business to communicate financial information to investors, shareholders, creditors, and regulators
- Interact with those in the “C” suite, speaking their language and making your case for your ideas
- Lead a team of people and use your influence to achieve strategic goals
- Create the right strategy for your firm to gain a competitive advantage over others in your market space, domestically and globally
Program Class List
1Marketing Management
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Learn key marketing strategies and tactics to help your company develop products that match customers' needs, create awareness and demand for those products, and drive sales.
2Leadership and Influence
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Learn how to capitalize on opportunities, and manage the challenges of the global marketplace, and leverage this dynamic environment for long-term value.
3Financial Accounting
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Financial accounting is the language of business. Learn to effectively interpret financial information to make sound decisions and confidently communicate to other leaders in your firm and with potential investors, shareholders, and creditors.
4Data Analysis for Decision Making
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Use data analysis to gather critical business insights,identifymarket trends before your competitors, and gain advantages for your business.
5Global Business Strategy
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Learn how to capitalize on opportunities, and manage the challenges of the global marketplace, and leverage this dynamic environment for long-term value.
6Digital Transformation in Business
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Learn about the explosion of technologies that are transforming business and how to strategically leverage technologies to maximize the value--and minimize the risk--to your firm.
7Corporate Finance
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Develop the ability to identify and resource high-value strategic initiatives and ensure a high rate of return for your firm's investments.
Meet Your Instructors
Ritu Agarwal
Professor of Information Systems, Distinguished University Professor, Robert H. Smith Dean's Chair of Information Systems, Senior Associate Dean for Research & Strategic Initiatives, Co-Director of Center for Health Information & Decision Systems at University of Maryland
Ritu Agarwal is Senior Associate Dean for Research, Distinguished University Professor and the Robert H. Smith Dean’s Chair of Information Systems at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the founder and Co-Director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems at the Smith School.
Kathryn Bartol
Professor of Management & Organization, Management and Organization Department Chair, Co-Director of Center for Innovation, Leadership, and Change at University of Maryland
Dr. Kathryn M. Bartol is the Robert H. Smith Professor of Leadership and Innovation and Chair of the Management and Organization Department at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park. She is the co-director of the Center for Leadership, Innovation and Change (CLIC). She holds an Executive Coach Certification from the Columbia University Coaching Certification Program.
Progyan Basu
Clinical Professor of Accounting Information Assurance at University of Maryland
Professor Basu has over 25 years of teaching a variety of Accounting courses and seminars in the US and abroad at different levels. At Smith School of Business, he teaches Financial and Managerial Accounting at the undergraduate, MBA, and EMBA levels. He has received several awards and distinctions for teaching excellence, including the Krowe Teaching Excellence Award, Distinguished Teaching Award, and Undergraduate Studies Faculty Fellowship. He serves as a Faculty Director for the PTMBA and EMBA program, as well as a Faculty Champion for the Undergraduate Accounting Teaching Scholars program
Margrét Bjarnadóttir
Professor of Decision, Operations & Information Technologies at University of Maryland
Dr. Margrét Vilborg Bjarnadóttir is an Assistant Professor of Management Science and Statistics in the DO&IT group. Dr. Margrét Bjarnadóttir graduated from MIT's Operations Research Center in 2008, defending her thesis titled “Data Driven Approach to Health Care, Application Using Claims Data”. Dr. Bjarnadóttir specializes in operations research methods using large scale data; her research centers around data driven decision making, combining optimization modeling with data analytics.
Gilad Chen
Organizational Behavior Department Chair at University of Maryland
Dr. Gilad Chen is the Robert H. Smith Chair in Organization Behavior, at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. He received his bachelor degree in Psychology from the Pennsylvania State University in 1996, and his doctoral degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from George Mason University in 2001. Prior to joining the Smith School, Dr. Chen was on the faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Texas A&M University, and a visiting scholar at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Technion, and Tel-Aviv University.
Nicole Coomber
Associate Clinical Professor in Management & Organization at University of Maryland
Nicole Coomber is an Associate Clinical Professor in Management & Organization. In addition to teaching management, leadership, and consulting, she is dedicated to helping women manage their complex lives more effectively. Nicole believes the time management, negotiation and communication strategies she teaches in her MBA classrooms at the University of Maryland Smith School of Business can help women navigate both their careers and families.
Michael Faulkender
Professor of Finance, Associate Dean of Masters’ Programs at University of Maryland
Dr. Michael Faulkender is the Associate Dean of Masters Programs and a Professor of Finance at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. As Associate Dean, he oversees the Full-time, Part-time, Online, and Executive MBA programs as well as the eight Specialty Masters Programs offered by the Smith School.
Trevor Foulk
Assistant Professor of Management & Organization at University of Maryland
Dr. Trevor Foulk is an Assistant Professor of Management & Organization at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida, and his Bachelors of Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Foulk’s research interests include deviant workplace behaviors, workplace power dynamics, social perception, and interpersonal influence behaviors.
Judy Frels
Clinical Professor of Marketing, Assistant Dean of Online Programs at University of Maryland
Judy Frels is a Clinical Professor of Marketing and teaches Marketing Strategy and leads Action Learning Projects at the EMBA and MBA levels at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. At Smith, she is the Assistant Dean of Online Programs.
David Godes
Dean's Professor of Marketing, Marketing Department Chair at University of Maryland
David Godes is a Professor of Marketing and is the Chair of the Marketing Department. He holds a Ph.D. and S.M. in Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the Smith School faculty in 2009 after teaching for ten years at Harvard Business School. His teaching experiences include undergraduate, graduate and executive courses ranging from Introduction to Marketing to Business-to-Business Marketing and Sales Management.
Anandasivam Gopal
Professor of Information Systems, Van Munching Faculty Fellow at University of Maryland
Anand Gopal is a Professor and Van Munching Faculty Fellow at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. His research interests are broadly in technology platforms, contracts and entrepreneurship. He has specific projects in technology-based entrepreneurship, secondary markets for tech products, mobile platforms and healthcare.
Anil Gupta
Michael D. Dingman Chair in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at University of Maryland
Dr. Anil K. Gupta is the Michael Dingman Chair in Strategy at the Smith School of Business, The University of Maryland, USA. He also holds a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Tsinghua University, China as well as the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and has earlier served as a Chaired Professor in Strategy at INSEAD and as a visiting professor at Stanford. He earned his doctorate from Harvard University. Dr. Gupta is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on strategy and globalization.
Rebecca Hann
Associate Professor of Accounting, KPMG Term Professor at University of Maryland
Rebecca Hann received her Masters and PhD degrees from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines issues surrounding financial reporting and disclosure, corporate diversification, and more recently, the role of accounting information in the macroeconomy and the real effects of financial markets. Her research has been published in leading accounting and finance journals, including The Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, the Journal of Finance, and the Review of Accounting Studies
P.K. Kannan
Professor of Marketing, Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at University of Maryland
P. K. Kannan is the Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. His main research focus is on marketing modeling, applying statistical and econometric methods to marketing data. His current research stream focuses on attribution modeling, media mix modeling, new product/service development and customer relationship management (CRM).
Michael Kimbrough
Associate Professor of Accounting, LeRoy J. Herbert Fellow at University of Maryland
Michael D. Kimbrough joined the Robert H. Smith School at University of Maryland in 2010 after spending eight years at Harvard Business School as a faculty member in the Accounting and Management Unit. Professor Kimbrough earned his B.A. in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis and his Ph.D. in Accounting from Indiana University in Bloomington.
Henry Lucas
Professor of Information Systems Robert H. Smith Chair of Information Systems at University of Maryland
Professor Henry Lucas’ research interests include information technology-enabled transformations of organizations as well as disruptive technologies. He has conducted research on the impact of information technology on organizations, IT in organization design, electronic commerce, and the value of information technology.
Wendy Moe
Professor of Marketing | Director of MS in Marketing Analytics at University of Maryland
Wendy Moe is Professor of Marketing and Director of the Masters of Science in Marketing Analytics at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. She is an expert in online and social media marketing with a focus on analytics. Professor Moe is a highly published academic with her research appearing in numerous leading business journals. She is also the author of Social Media Intelligence (Cambridge: 2014). Professor Moe has been recognized by the American Marketing Association and the Marketing Science Institute as a leading scholar in her field with the Howard Award, the Young Scholar Award, the Erin Anderson Award and the Buzzell Award.
Neta Moye
Clinical Professor of Management at University of Maryland
Dr. Moye has over 25 years of experience in the field of human resources with particular expertise in helping individuals develop leader skills. She has spent the last 10 years focused on the practice of leadership development across academic, industry, and government settings. She has experience both designing and delivering leadership development solutions across the full range of development activities including formal classroom curricula, experiential development activities, executive coaching, and leader assessments and debriefs.
Myeong-Gu Seo
Associate Professor of Management and Organization at University of Maryland
Myeong-Gu Seo is Associate Professor of Management and Organization at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. His primary areas of research regard issues relating to work-related emotions, organizational- and institutional-change. Seo received the 2001 Best Doctoral Student Paper from the Academy of Management's Organizational Development and Change Division.
Nick Seybert
Associate Professor of Accounting at University of Maryland
Nick Seybert received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He conducts experimental and archival research in financial accounting with a focus on manager personality traits as well as on investors’ and managers’ decision-making biases.
Subra Tangirala
Associate Professor of Management & Organization at University of Maryland
Subra Tangirala is an Associate Professor of Management & Organization. He teaches the leadership course in the MBA program. His research focuses on interpersonal communication in organizations. Specifically, he explores reasons why employees often remain silent despite having information, concerns, or suggestions to share, and what organizations can do to facilitate candid exchange of ideas at the workplace.
Susan White
Clinical Professor of Finance at University of Maryland
Susan White is a Clinical Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, teaching corporate finance for undergraduates and MBAs. She received my undergraduate degree from Brown University, MBA from Binghamton University and PhD in finance from the University of Texas, Austin.
