Tepper School of Business

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David A. Tepper School of Business
Established: 1949 by William Larimer Mellon
Type: Private Business School
Endowment: $113 Million[1]
Dean: Kenneth B. Dunn
Faculty: 100[2]
Undergraduates: 428[2]
Postgraduates: 826[2]
Doctoral students: 94[2]
Location: Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Campus: Urban
Website: Tepper School of Business

The Tepper School of Business is a private business school located on Carnegie Mellon University’s 140-acre campus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

The Tepper School consistently ranks highly among the top business schools in the world as well as in a wide range of specializations, such as Finance, Entrepreneurship, Operations Management and Information Technology.[3][4] The school offers degrees from the undergraduate through doctoral levels, in addition to executive education programs.

Prior to the founding of the Tepper School, management education typically used the case method approach popularized at the Harvard Business School, based upon widely accepted examples from successful companies and microeconomic theory.[5] Although the Tepper School did not entirely abandon those traditional models and theories, it gained wide recognition for its focus on management science, or decision-making based on quantitative models and an analytic approach to decision making and problem solving. Today, the Tepper School is known for its strong emphasis on quantitative skills and its continued teaching of courses based upon the science of management.

The Tepper School of Business was originally known as The Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA), which was founded in 1949 by William Larimer Mellon. In March 2004, the school received a record $55 million gift from alumnus David Tepper.[6] In recognition of this gift, the school was named the David A. Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon.

Contents

[edit] History

Nobel Prize Winner Herbert Simon, coined the term Bounded Rationality
Nobel Prize Winner Herbert Simon, coined the term Bounded Rationality

The origins of the Tepper School can be traced to the hire of economist George Bach in 1946. Bach was returning from a wartime assignment with the Federal Reserve and was hired by Carnegie Mellon (then known as the Carnegie Institute of Technology) to restart the university’s economics department. To assist in building the department, Bach brought in William Cooper from the field of Operations Research, which had increased its visibility during World War II, and a political scientist named Herbert Simon, who was to direct the undergraduate business program. The Cold War was applying pressure on the academic community to increase U.S. managerial ability, and when William Larimer Mellon gave a $6 million grant to found a school of industrial administration, George Bach became the first dean, bringing along the entire economics department.[7]

Initially under Bach’s leadership, the Tepper School was credited with several educational innovations that have now become standard at other prominent business schools. Specifically, in 1958, the Tepper School's Management Game was the first to use computer simulations for experiential learning of business roles, and such simulations have subsequently been adopted by other institutions.[8] Additionally, in 1989, the Tepper School's Financial Analysis and Security Trading Center (FAST) was the first educational institution to successfully replicate the live international data feeds and sophisticated software of Wall Street trading firms.[9]

Several Tepper School faculty members have won acclaim for research in the areas of business and economics. As an example, the school has produced six Nobel Prize winners in Economics: Robert Lucas, Jr., Merton Miller, Franco Modigliani, Herb Simon, Edward Prescott and Finn Kydland.[10] Lucas was awarded the prize for developing and applying the theory of rational expectations, an econometric hypothesis which directly challenged Keynesian orthodoxy.[11] Modigliani's prize recognized his life-cycle hypothesis, which attempts to explain the level of saving in the economy. Modigliani proposed that consumers would aim for a stable level of income throughout their lifetime, for example by saving during their working years and spending during their retirement.[12] Miller's prize was awarded in recognition of his contributions to corporate finance through the Capital Asset Pricing Model, used for pricing an individual security (asset) or a portfolio, which is now an integral model in all business school curriculum.[13][14] Simon's prize was given for his development of the idea of bounded rationality in economics, described as "pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations".[15] In 2004, Kydland and Prescott became the most recent Nobel Prize recipients from the Tepper School for "their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles".[16]

[edit] Programs

Posner Hall, the principal teaching facility at the Tepper School
Posner Hall, the principal teaching facility at the Tepper School

Undergraduate Business

Tepper offers a traditional four year undergraduate degree in business. The program's coursework has a global focus and places an emphasis on quantitative decision making and analytical problem solving. The structure of the undergraduate program is distinctly different from the MBA program, emphasizing that students receive breadth of academic experience over focused professionally oriented courses.[17] Students can major in:[18]

  • Computing and Information Technology
  • Finance
  • General Management
  • Graphic Medical Management

For the academic year ending in May 2007, there were 475[19] total students enrolled in the undergraduate program.

Undergraduate Economics

The Undergraduate Economics Program is jointly administered by the Tepper School of Business and the Carnegie Mellon College of Humanities and Social Sciences. It has been designed to prepare students for careers as economic analysts in either the private or public sector, for advanced professional studies in business, law and public policy, as well as for entry into Ph.D. programs in economics, finance, and related fields.[20]

View of Hamerschlag Hall at Carnegie Mellon University
View of Hamerschlag Hall at Carnegie Mellon University

MBA

The Tepper School's primary MBA degree is a two-year, full-time program, during which most students complete an internship in the summer between the first and second year of study. Students have the option of waiving the summer internship and taking classes, which allows full-time students to complete their studies in 16 months. Working professionals in the Pittsburgh area may also complete the MBA degree in the evening as members of the flex-time program.[21]

The mini-semester system is half the length of a traditional academic semester, creating four mini-semesters per academic year. Each mini-semester is 7.5 weeks long, and students typically take 5 different courses each mini-semester. This system, which was pioneered by the Tepper School, allows students to take more than 32 different courses while enrolled in the MBA program. The Tepper School prefers this structure as students can gain exposure to a greater breadth of topics, as well as several electives.[21]

The MBA curriculum is designed to increase in complexity and application throughout students' time at the Tepper School. The first year builds a fundamental skill set in the core disciplines, including Finance, Operations, Marketing, Strategy, Organizational Behavior and Technology. Year two advances the theories and analytical framework developed in the first year to provide breadth and depth in areas that support corporate strategy and general management as students complete three to four concentrations in specific functional areas. In lieu of selecting three to four general management concentrations, second year students may complete courses in satisfaction of specialized "MBA Tracks".[22]

The capstone course of the MBA curriculum is known as the Management Game. The Management Game, which was first introduced by Carnegie Mellon in 1958, has been adopted by many other leading business schools as an effective business simulation model. Tepper students work with an external board of directors to manage a multinational corporation, guiding the organization through a wide range of issues including global expansion, labor negotiations, operations, market share, shifting economies and financial performance.[23]

The Barco Building: Home of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. The JD/MBA program is the only Tepper School joint degree taught partially outside of Carnegie Mellon.
The Barco Building: Home of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. The JD/MBA program is the only Tepper School joint degree taught partially outside of Carnegie Mellon.

The General Management MBA Track, the Core MBA degree, serves as an umbrella academic option due to the flexibility associated with multiple concentrations. The General Management MBA Track complements the eight other Tepper MBA Tracks: Biotechnology, Computational Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Integrated Product Development, International Management, Operations Management, Operations Research, and Wealth and Asset Management.[24]

Tepper also offers the following joint and dual MBA degrees:[25]

For the academic year ending in May 2007, there were 302[26] total students enrolled in the full time MBA program.

MS Computational Finance

Carnegie Mellon's intensive, Master of Science in Computational Finance (MSCF) is considered by many to be the top quantitative finance program in the country.[27][28] The MSCF degree is primary granted through a sixteen month full-time program. The Tepper School also offers a thirty-three month part-time degree program and four non-degree certificate programs. Certificate students focus on one "stream" of the MSCF degree curriculum: Math, Statistics or Financial Computing.[29]

The MSCF degree was created in 1994 to fill a perceived gap in the market between traditional MBA students and Ph. Ds. At the time of its creation, MBAs were perceived to have too little math skills, while the Ph. Ds traditionally hired as quantitative analysts were deemed to have too little experience in finance. The purpose of the MSCF curriculum was to give students the correct balance of math and finance to enable them to fill the gap created in the market between MBAs and Ph. Ds.[30]

The current curriculum consists of courses in finance, traditional finance theories of equity and bond portfolio management, the stochastic calculus models on which derivative trading is based, the application of these models in both fixed income and equity markets, computational methods including Monte Carlo simulation and finite difference approximations of partial differential equations, and statistical methodologies including regression and time series, culminating with courses on statistical arbitrage, risk management and dynamic asset management. Early in the program, students are taught C++, which enables them to build the computational financial models necessary for their finance courses. The program's capstone is a sophisticated financial computing course.[29]

Twenty full-time faculty instruct 35 full-time students in Pittsburgh and 70 full and part-time students in the financial district of New York City.[29] The primary method of instruction for the New York campus is live, interactive video. Lectures are recorded and made immediately available to students via the internet. Faculty teach twice every seven weeks in New York at which times the students are invited to join the professor for lunch after class.[29]

MS Quantitative Economics

In the fall of 2003, the program began enrolling students, known as the MSQE program. This degree is currently offered only to Carnegie Mellon undergraduates. The MSQE is designed to differ from a traditional MA in Economics based upon the program's emphasis on rigorous analytical coursework. The Tepper School reports that the MSQE coursework is as advanced and as quantitative as any Ph.D. program in the United States.[31]

Doctoral Program

The doctoral degree is organized around a preliminary set of courses in the core disciplines of Economics, Organization Behavior and Theory, and Operations Research. The foundational knowledge and methodologies that students in the doctoral program learn form the basis for further study and research either in one of the core disciplines, or in one (or more) of the remaining functional areas of business: Accounting, Financial Economics, Information Systems, Marketing, or Manufacturing and Operating Systems.[32]

The school also offers Ph.D. degrees jointly with other colleges in the University:

  • Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization (joint with Mathematics and Computer Science)
    The Hunt Library at Carnegie Mellon University is the primary source of hardcopy research material for students and faculty at the Tepper School
    The Hunt Library at Carnegie Mellon University is the primary source of hardcopy research material for students and faculty at the Tepper School
  • Economics and Public Policy (joint with the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management)
  • Management of Manufacturing and Automation (joint with the Robotics Institute)
  • Mathematical Finance (joint with Mathematics)

All doctoral candidates receive full tuition, plus a stipend for three years, through the William Larimer Mellon Fund.[33]

Executive Education[34]

In addition to customizable executive programs, the Tepper School offers three executive education events for the 2007 calendar year:

  • The Operations Executive Series is three focused executive education programs that offer coverage of the people, process and technology management capabilities that drive effective operations.
  • Global Leadership Executive Summer Forum, offered in conjunction with the Carnegie Bosch Institute, is a four week program addressing issues of strategy and leadership while also presenting topics of broad economic and international scope.
  • Management in Technology Organizations teaches best practices in managing technology professionals, enhancing leadership skills and driving innovation.

[edit] Student life

Dodgeball at the University Center, which houses the majority of Carnegie Mellon’s indoor recreational facilities as well as space for assemblies, dining, and student organizations
Dodgeball at the University Center, which houses the majority of Carnegie Mellon’s indoor recreational facilities as well as space for assemblies, dining, and student organizations[35]

The Tepper School places a strong emphasis on developing a sense of community and encourages students to get to know one another. There are dozens of student clubs organized around various aspects of business: functional, cultural and social. These clubs organize speakers, trips to various corporations and plants, as well as internal and external case competitions. Students participate in numerous case competitions and design case studies of their own. On the undergraduate level, there are various clubs and organizations that support the needs and interests of business administration students, including but not limited to the Undergraduate Marketing Organization (UMO), the Undergraduate Finance Association (UFA), Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), the Carnegie Mellon Business Association (CMBA), the Undergraduate Consulting Club (UCC), and the Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Association (UEA). Students have also created and supported clubs that help with specific networking areas such as the Tepper Women in Business, the Black Business Association, the Asian Business Association and the Latin American Business Club.

The Tepper School has its own, irreverent, weekly student newspaper – Robber Barons. Additionally, students gather every Friday at Posner Hall to socialize and discuss their experiences with classmates, significant others, faculty, administrators and occasionally alumni. School-related functions include the annual social, holiday parties, Pirate games and whitewater rafting. Others events are more functional, like business etiquette and leadership workshops.

Tepper School students have access to a variety of athletic facilities, including tennis courts near the school’s main entrance, the university gymnasium across the street from the business school and the University Center. Students organize intramural softball and volleyball teams and compete in basketball and golf tournaments with other business schools. In particular, MBA students are active participants in Duke's MBA games.[36]

[edit] Career development

The Tepper School facilitates their students' employment through the Career Opportunities Center (COC). The COC provides assistance during the employment search through workshops, employment "treks", career fairs, and corporate presentations. They also provide individualized training for resume presentation and interviewing skills."[37]

MBA

Top Hiring Employers[38]
MBA Job Offers by Function
MBA Job Offers by Function[38]
MBA Job Offers by Region
MBA Job Offers by Region[38]
Undergraduate

Top Hiring Employers[39]
Undergraduate Job Offers by Function
Undergraduate Job Offers by Function[39]
Undergraduate Job Offers by Region
Undergraduate Job Offers by Region[39]

[edit] International study

Carnegie Bosch Institute

The Carnegie Bosch Institute for Applied Studies in International Management (CBI) is an alliance between the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon and the Bosch Group, a leading German-based multinational corporation with long-standing operations in North America. The institute was founded in the summer of 1990 to form a link between management and academia in the field of international management research.[40] The CBI was established through a donation made by the Robert Bosch Corporation.[41]

Global Study Abroad[42]

The International Management MBA Track features an eight-week global experience in which students travel to Western and Eastern Europe to study emerging, transitional and competitive economies. During study abroad, students experience real-world aspects of classroom work through manufacturing tours, presentations at financial institutions, meetings with government and non-governmental organizations as well as the experience of living in an international setting. This program operates in partnership with the WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management.

Undergraduate business students are also encouraged to explore opportunities to learn about different cultures in which to live and work. Each year students travel abroad as part of a capstone educational experience.

[edit] Research centers

From its outset, academic research has been one of the primary focuses of the Tepper School.[7][43] When speaking of the school's founders, one author stated "Research was their fundamental engine of progress".[44] The Tepper School has established 16 different research centers to continue the emphasis on research established at the school's founding.

[edit] Rankings

The ranking of MBA programs[45] has been discussed in articles and on academic Web sites.[46] One study found that objectively ranking MBA programs by a combination of graduates' starting salaries and average student Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) score can reasonably duplicate the top 20 list of the national publications.[47] The study concluded that a truly objective ranking would be individualized to the needs of each prospective student.[48]

Below are the most recent Tepper School rankings for undergraduate and MBA programs. As MBA rankings are driven largely from average GMAT scores and starting salaries, these statistics are provided for the past 9 years.

Average MBA GMAT Score Progression from 1998
Average MBA GMAT Score Progression from 1998[1]
Average MBA Salary Progression from 1998
Average MBA Salary Progression from 1998[1]

Wall Street Journal Rankings - 2007

  • #1 Business School (MBA) National
  • #2 Top School - Operations Management
  • #2 Top School - Information Technology
  • #4 Top School - Finance
  • #6 Top School - Entrepreneurship
  • #6 Top School - Strategy
  • #9 Top School - General Management
  • #8 Top School - For Recruiting Minorities
  • #9 Top School - For Recruiting MBAs With High Ethical Standards
  • #5 Management Consulting Industry Ranking
  • #6 Health Care Products and Services Industry Ranking
  • #7 Energy and Industrial Products and Services Industry Ranking
  • #8 Technology/Telecommunications/Internet Industry Ranking

Business Week Rankings – 2006

  • #16 MBA - Overall National Ranking
  • #21 Undergraduate - Overall National Ranking

U.S. News & World Report - 2008 (Graduate)

  • #2 Top School - Information Systems
  • #2 Top School - Production/Operations Management
  • #4 Top School - Supply Chain/Logistics
  • #17 Graduate Business School (MBA)

U.S. News & World Report - 2008 (Undergraduate)[49]

  • #7 Undergraduate Business School (BSBA)
  • #1 Management Information Systems[50]
  • #2 Quantitative Analysis
  • #2 Production/Operations Management
  • #6 Supply Chain Management/Logistics
  • #10 Finance
  • #17 Management
  • #18 Entrepreneurship

Forbes – 2005

  • #16 Business School (Full-Time MBA)
  • #8 Part-time MBA

Financial Times – 2007

  • #8 Top Salaries in Industry (MBA)
  • #14 Placement Success (MBA)
  • #15 Doctoral Program
  • #31 Research
  • #43 Business School (MBA)

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c School Profile. Business Week. Retrieved on 3 March 2007.
  2. ^ a b c d Carnegie Mellon Quick Facts. CMU Website. Retrieved on 8 June 2007.
  3. ^ America's Best Graduate Schools 2007. U.S. News and World Report. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  4. ^ 2005 National Rankings. Wall Street Journal Online. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  5. ^ Our Approach. School's Website. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  6. ^ Announcing a Transformational Gift. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  7. ^ a b Mintzburg, Henry: "Managers Not MBAs: A hard look at the soft practice of managing and management development", Henry Mintzberg, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, Calif., 2004, http://www.mbarealitycheck.com/default.aspx?id=144372
  8. ^ School Timeline. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  9. ^ The "FAST" Center. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  10. ^ Tepper History. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  11. ^ Robert Lucas Biography. The History of Economic Through Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  12. ^ Franco Modigliani- Autobiography. Nobelprize.org. Retrieved on 2007-04-11.
  13. ^ Merton Miller- Autobiography. Nobelprize.org. Retrieved on 11 April 2007.
  14. ^ Tepper History. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  15. ^ Economics 1978. Nobelprize.org. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  16. ^ Economics 2004. Nobelprize.org. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  17. ^ CMU's Strategy for Well-Rounded B-Schoolers. Business Week Online. Retrieved on 2007-03-07.
  18. ^ Business Administration Tracks. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-03-07.
  19. ^ Undergraduate Overview. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  20. ^ Undergraduate Economics. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  21. ^ a b MBA Program Structure. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  22. ^ MBA Curriculum. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  23. ^ Consulting Career Track. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-03.
  24. ^ MBA Tracks. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  25. ^ MBA Duel Degrees. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  26. ^ Class Profiles. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-06.
  27. ^ Carnegie Mellon's Computational Finance Program. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  28. ^ Wall Street Seeks Grads in Financial Engineering. WSJ.com. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  29. ^ a b c d Degrees and Certificates. School’s Website. Retrieved on 5 April 2007.
  30. ^ What Sets MSCF Apart. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  31. ^ MSQE Program Comparisons. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-04.
  32. ^ Ph. D Fields of Study. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  33. ^ Financial Aid and Grant Information. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-06.
  34. ^ Tepper Executive Education. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  35. ^ University Center. Carnegie Mellon Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-07.
  36. ^ Student Life Summary; 2007 Prospective Student Hardcopy Brochure
  37. ^ Events and Services for Students. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-04.
  38. ^ a b c Business Week School Profile. Business Week Online. Retrieved on 2007-04-04.
  39. ^ a b c Business Week School Profile. Business Week Online. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  40. ^ Carnegie Bosch Institute. CBI Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-06.
  41. ^ Carnegie Bosch Institute. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-04-06.
  42. ^ Global Programs. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
  43. ^ Research Centers. School’s Website,. Retrieved on 2007-02-26.
  44. ^ Robert E. Gleeson and Steven Schlossman, "George Leland Bach and the Rebirth of Graduate Management Education in the United States, 1945-1975." Selections: The Magazine of the Graduate Management Admission Council, 11, No. 3 (Spring 1995), 14.
  45. ^ RANKINGS. School’s Website. Retrieved on 2006-04-14.
  46. ^ Caution and Controversy. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Retrieved on 2005-09-06.
  47. ^ Schatz, Martin (1993). "What's Wrong with MBA Ranking Surveys?" (HTML). Management Research News 16 (7): 15-18. 
  48. ^ Official MBA Guide. Retrieved on 2007-04-11.
  49. ^ Tepper School Rises in New U.S. News Rankings : Tepper School of Business
  50. ^ USNews.com: America's Best Colleges 2008: Management Information Systems

[edit] External links


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