Baumhart Scholars go through Loyola’s top-notch MBA experience, while enjoying specialized leadership opportunities to drive their careers and their social impact forward.

Curriculum

Business Strategy + Social Purpose

Our 16-course, cohort-based approach to the MBA curriculum is designed to provide a solid foundation in all business disciplines, develop leadership skills, and deeply explore purpose in business.

The Baumhart Scholars curriculum has three parts:

• Foundational courses in business fundamentals, which prepare you to be a data-driven business leader with the ability to think critically and communicate effectively.
• Specialty courses in corporate social responsibility, social enterprise, impact investing, ESG, and values-based leadership, which equip you with the tools to marry profit and purpose.
• Elective courses in a wide array of disciplines, which enable you to dig deeper in areas that meet your individual learning goals.

Foundational Courses

Scholars go through Quinlan’s core MBA experience as a cohort, taking courses aimed at developing foundational business knowledge, skills, and values. The faculty who teach these courses are committed to integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues into their learning objectives.

Business Ethics

This course examines the ethical aspects of individual and corporate decision making in business and provides resources for making ethical decisions within the context of managerial practice.

Data Driven Decision Making

This course aims to improve your understanding of quantitative decision-making for management, including a focus on measuring and managing impact data.

Decision Strategy

The course introduces students to a variety of tools that will improve their critical reasoning skills and provide an analytical framework to help them make effective decisions.

Financial Management

This course provides students with an understanding of managerial finance: valuation, capital investment, financing, capital structure, and business ethics as they relate to finance.

Financial Accounting

This course is an introduction to the accounting function that is used to measure and communicate business transactions with a special emphasis on companies with high environmental, social, and governance standards.

Managerial Economics

This course uses tools of economic analysis to understand demand, supply, profits, production, competition, pricing policies, business criteria for investment, output, and marketing decisions.

Managing and Motivating in the Workplace

The course explores the structure and function of human behavior in organizations with a special focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion and on change management.

Marketing Management

This course develops a broad understanding of the marketing principles that undergird successful marketing strategies with special attention given to asset-based communications and mission-driven marketing.

Operations Management

This course explores concepts and methods for managing operations, including forecasting, capacity and aggregate planning, sustainable management, material requirements planning, scheduling, project planning, logistics, supply chain transparency, and supplier diversity.

Project Management

This course immerses students in the philosophy and practice of project management through the application of these management tools to a real-world project.

Strategy and Leadership

This class, which serves as a capstone for the Baumhart Scholars MBA experience, explores the manner in which companies develop and implement strategies to drive enhanced financial, social, and environmental performance.

Note: ISSCM 400 Quantitative Methods and ISSCM 402N Quantitative Methods II - Statistics Primer may also be required, depending on a student’s undergraduate record.

Specialty Courses

Scholars participate in an opening immersion weekend and receive mentoring and coaching opportunities designed exclusively for Baumhart Scholars. The program includes the specialty courses described below exploring values-based leadership, corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, influencing skills, ESG, and impact investing.

ESG Investing

This course will explore the growing integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into global investment decision-making. Students will learn about:

1. the history and growth of ESG in investing;
2. how to assess a company’s climate impact, water management, health and safety policies, supply chain integrity and other ESG factors in the context of financial risk and performance analysis; and
3. how companies can improve their ESG performance.

Outcomes

Students will:

1. understand why ESG factors influence a company’s financial performance;
2. assess a company’s ESG performance; and
3. develop recommendations for ESG improvement.

Impact Investing

This course will explore the rise of investments aimed simultaneously at social, environmental, and financial returns.

Outcomes

Students will:

1. understand how impact investing works and the growing spectrum of investment firms with impact investing strategies; and
2. be able to evaluate an investment with an SROI (social return on investment) framework.

Influential Leadership

This course will equip students with the tools to be influential leaders by better understanding their own leadership styles, further developing their emotional intelligence, and learning how to best apply their styles effectively in the workplace.

Outcomes

Students will be able to:

1. identify their personal leadership styles;
2. know how to apply their leadership most effectively in different organizational contexts with an emphasis on emotional intelligence; and
3. demonstrate familiarity with coaching techniques to improve personal and team performance.

Innovative Corporate Social Responsibility

This course will analyze why and how global businesses are innovating to address corporate responsibility expectations. The course will focus on companies that are co-creating value and will examine impacts from businesses, civil society and public policy that enhance (or detract from) competitiveness.

Outcomes

Students will be able to:

1. examine the interaction between market and civil society institutions in the development of corporate responsibility initiatives;
2. demonstrate understanding of changing legal, social, and political environments as they affect organizations; and
3. analyze organizational situations, identify key issues, and formulate arguments and appropriate ways to innovatively implement changes.

Social Enterprise

Social enterprise seeks to create ventures that provide critical social services in innovative ways using the concepts and methods of business. This course aims to prepare students to engage in social enterprise by focusing on how to create social value by business means; how to start and sustain an entrepreneurial social venture; how to scale social innovation and grow an organization; how to obtain funding and generate earned revenue; how to adopt an appropriate legal governance structure and tax status; and how to measure, document, and communicate social impact.

Outcomes

Students will demonstrate:

1. an understanding of the social enterprise sector, including what distinguishes social entrepreneurship from both traditional social services and traditional entrepreneurship;
2. a strategic understanding of how social enterprises succeed;
3. the ability to use analytical tools to develop and measure the impact of social enterprise models; and
4. the ability to formulate their ideas into a social enterprise model presentation.

Values-Based Leadership

This course will explore major approaches to leadership that are based on personal and organizational values. Students will have an opportunity to explore their own values and approach to leadership and be challenged to identify opportunities for improvement.

Outcomes

Students will:

1. learn and understand fundamental and diverse principles and theories of leadership and management;
2. develop a clearer understanding of and commitment to personal values as a way of developing a sound basis for making personal and professional decisions;
3. apply what they learn in this course to clarify thinking on leadership and to solve problems in the future;
4. learn to analyze and critically evaluate different ideas, concepts and points of view on the concepts of leadership and management;
5. develop a personal style that will begin to answer the question “What kind of leader do I want to be?”;
6. understand the meaning of “vocation” and how it applies to each student’s life.

Elective Courses

Through your three electives, you can customize your education to your personal career path and interests.

Elective courses can be taken within the Quinlan School of Business or from across Loyola colleges and schools (for example, Social Work, Law, Communications, or the School for Environmental Sustainability) for flexibility and customization.

You can choose to have a concentration by taking all three elective courses in the same discipline. You can also use your electives to work toward a Graduate Certificate, such as Business Data Analytics or Cybersecurity. See the full list of Graduate Certificates.

Elective courses in Quinlan are offered in a number of areas. Learn more here.

Learning Outcomes

1. Provide a solid foundation in all business disciplines: Students in this MBA go through Quinlan’s core MBA experience as a cohort, taking courses aimed at developing foundational business knowledge, skills, and values. Students take business ethics, data-driven decision-making, decision strategy, financial accounting for decision-making, financial management for a sustainable world, managerial economics, marketing management, operations management, project management and strategy and leadership.
2. Develop leadership skills: Students in this MBA take courses in managing and motivating in the workplace, values-based leadership, and influential leadership.
3. Deeply explore purpose in business: Specialty courses in corporate social responsibility, social enterprise, impact investing, and ESG equip students in this MBA with the tools to marry profit and purpose.