The MBA for Non-Business Majors
M.S. in Management
The One Year MBA for Non-Business Undergraduate Degree Holders
Build Your Resume While Earning Your Degree
Saint Mary’s one-year part-time M.S. in Management Program is designed to give recent graduates with no prior work experience, and a background in liberal arts, science, and other non-business undergraduate degrees, the practical business skills and hands-on consulting projects necessary to stand out in the job market. In one year, you will enhance your employment marketability by adding a solid business foundation to your resume.
Learn by Doing
Gain real-world experiences through two faculty-supervised field project courses with a Bay Area organization. During a field project-based international business course, you will have the opportunity to learn about business practices in a foreign country with close ties to the Bay Area economy. Students also have the opportunity to gain mentoring advice and networking opportunities through the MSM Advisory Board.
Earn Your Degree at a School Ranked for Excellence
Curriculum
Schedule
Course Descriptions
Admissions Requirements
The curriculum of the M.S. in Management Program is designed to teach you the solid business fundamentals you will need to Think Globally, Lead Responsibly and to successfully launch your career in the industry or field of your choosing.
Curriculum includes topics such as:
- Economics
- Accounting
- Finance
- Marketing
- Data Analysis
- Data Visualization and Storytelling
- Business Analytics
- Ethics, Leadership and Managing Teams, and Business Communication
- Spreadsheet Modeling
Additionally, you will build the critical interpersonal and collaborative skills sought after by recruiters, such as business ethics, leadership, managing teams, business communications, creative thinking, and innovation.
Through required professional development and career management training workshops, you will accrue invaluable knowledge on how to manage your job search and career trajectories.
You will also gain real-world experiences through two faculty-supervised field project courses with a Bay Area organization. During a field project-based international business course, you will have the opportunity to learn about business practices in a foreign country with close ties to the Bay Area economy. Students also have the opportunity to gain mentoring advice and networking opportunities through the MSM Advisory Board.
The M.S. in Management Program is a cohort-based, one-year, full-time program offered in the evenings with traditional face-to-face classes offered on campus.
- The program will be offered over four quarters, consisting of two five-week ‘modules’ per quarter, for a total of eight modules.
- Over the first three quarters each five-week module consists of three courses. The last quarter will include the international business travel immersion project and two local field projects.
- Students will attend three evening classes per week, Tuesday-Thursday from 6:00pm-10:00pm (subject to change).
- Additionally, there are six required non-credit half-day professional development and career management workshops that must be completed to graduate.
Summer Quarter
Module 1 - Spreadsheet Modeling, Business Communications, and Economics
Module 2 - Data Analysis 1, Managing Contemporary Organizations, and Financial Accounting
Fall Quarter
Module 3 - Data Visualization & Storytelling, Leadership & Managing Teams, and Managerial Accounting
Module 4 - Data Analysis 2, Ethics, and Finance 1
Winter Quarter
Module 5 - Programming for Business Analytics, Creativity & Innovation, and Finance 2
Module 6 - Supply Chain Management, Business Idea Competition, and Marketing
Spring Quarter
Module 7 - Field Project 1 and International Business Project
Module 8 - Field Project 2 and International Business Project
OPS 401: Spreadsheet Modeling (2 quarter units)
The Spreadsheet Modeling course teaches you to recognize and translate managerial decision scenarios into structured mathematical models and find optimum solutions using Excel. Upon completion of this hands-on interactive course, you will enhance your problem-solving capabilities and spreadsheet skills. Topics include linear programming, integer linear programming, and simulation.
MGT 402: Business Communications (2 quarter units)
This course introduces students to the study of formal argument to prepare them for the ethical communication decisions they will make in today's global economy. Students will learn professional written and oral communication by reviewing and applying editing principles, analyzing audiences, and developing organizational structures. Emphasis will be placed on the development of persuasive arguments to recommend solutions and initiate action.
ECON 403: Economics (2 quarter units)
This course, an overview of selected economics topics, introduces micro- and macro-economic concepts and analytical techniques used in managing businesses. Topics include consumer behavior, production and cost, market structures and market failure, fiscal and monetary policy, and international trade and finance.
OPS 404: Data Analysis 1 (2 quarter units)
This course arms you with knowledge of inferential statistics and demonstrates their uses in managerial decision-making. Using Excel, you will become familiar with the various uses of data as critical components in organizational decision-making processes. In particular, you will learn how to summarize and analyze data using descriptive statistics, probability distributions, interval estimation, and hypothesis testing. This course will also serve as the analytical foundation for other downstream courses in the program.
ORB 405: Managing Contemporary Organizations (2 quarter units)
This course provides you with theory-based knowledge of managerial and organizational processes from a behavioral point of view, along with the necessary tools to enable you to design those processes prudently and optimize their uses. It aims to provide theoretical and practical approaches to better enhance interpersonal, dyadic and organizational processes.
ACCTG 406: Financial Accounting (2 quarter units)
This course focuses on the concepts and principles that underlie corporate financial statements prepared for external users, including the balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement.
OPS 407: Data Visualization & Storytelling (2 quarter units)
This course prepares students to create compelling narratives to effectively present the results of their data driven analysis. Students learn various techniques and tools to present analytical results visually, communicate information clearly, and articulate the business insights effectively. Students learn data visualization software packages (e.g. Tableau) to present data effectively and dynamically.
ORB 408: Leading & Managing Teams (2 quarter units)
Teamwork continues to be a major thrust of current management thinking among managers and academics alike. This course aims to help develop you into a competent leader of teams, along with a deeper understanding of the elements common to high performing teams. This course utilizes a multi-method approach to not only demonstrate the value of using teams but also to see how that understanding translates to actual changes in both your behavior and those of the members of teams you manage.
ACCTG 409: Managerial Accounting (2 quarter units)
This course examines the internal use of accounting as a management tool. Emphasis is on cost concepts and analysis of cost variances. Topics include cost-volume-profit analysis, process and activity-based costing, cost allocation, budgeting and performance measures.
OPS 410: Data Analysis 2 (2 quarter units)
The second course in data analysis sequence provides additional tools including decision analysis, experimental design & analysis of variance, regression analysis, and time series forecasting. In this course you will further develop your Excel proficiency.
MGT 411: Ethics (2 quarter units)
This course offers an overview for leading ethical organizations. Students will learn the language of major ethical traditions and how to apply them to arrive at ethically defensible decisions. Students will also learn the characteristics of ethical organizational cultures and how to develop them.
FIN 412: Finance 1 (2 quarter units)
This course introduces the principles of corporate finance. It focuses on the measurement of value in a corporation. Topics include financial markets, free cash flow forecasting, present value analysis, the theory of risk and return, portfolio theory, and asset pricing models.
OPS 413: Programming for Business Analytics (2 quarter units)
This course prepares students to build well-designed code modules that follow basic programming concepts. It covers the fundamental concepts of computer programming using a standard programming language such as Python. Topics include data structures, control structures, data input/output, and debugging. Concepts and methods introduced in the course are illustrated with simple data analysis examples.
MGT 414: Creativity and Innovation (2 quarter units)
In this course, students develop their creative thinking, sharpen their idea generation process, and learn to stimulate creativity in more meaningful and manageable ways. Students will also gain a better understanding of the appropriate context to cultivate and implement creativity in the workplace. The purpose of the course is to help students acquire skills to form novel, useful and fresh solutions to new and unfamiliar problems.
FIN 415: Finance 2 (2 quarter units)
This course is a continuation of FIN 412. It applies finance principles into major financial decisions in a corporation. Topics include cost of capital, capital budgeting, capital structure, and value-based management.
OPS 416: Supply Chain Analytics (2 quarter units)
For many contemporary organizations, managing supply chain is critical because significant competitive advantages can be gained by effectively working with their suppliers and customers. Recognizing such importance, this course aims to provide you with a broad overview of supply chain management, and equips you with commonly used techniques for analyzing and optimizing a supply chain. Upon completion of this course, you will develop capabilities to make efficient use of resources to create value for the specific organization you will be working. Essential topics selected for this course include process analysis, six-sigma approach, and inventory models.
MGT 417: Business Idea Competition (2 quarter units)
This course includes special emphasis on argument and oral presentation in a competitive environment. Students will generate ideas for business solutions and learn to develop organizational strategies, manage opposition, use effective visual aids, present as individuals and as teams, and refine delivery skills. Students will give and receive feedback to maximize their success in business.
MKT 418: Marketing (2 quarter units)
This course provides an overview of the key issues, concepts, and models used in analyzing marketing problems and implementing marketing activities. Topics include market measurement and segmentation, consumer and organizational buying behavior, marketing mix, and ethical considerations in marketing. The course will use an applied approach and will include case studies in addition to conceptual explorations.
MGT 419: International Business Project (4 quarter units)
The international business project is designed to provide students with an introduction to international business and strategy concepts through an immersive, two-week experience in an international cultural setting. The project will involve working on a specific assignment for a local business, to gain an appreciation for local management practices and competitive dynamics; in addition, students will have the opportunity to increase their understanding of unique business practices to that culture, through select field trips to companies in diverse industry settings.
MGT 420: Field Project 1 (4 quarter units)
This field project-based course aims to provide students with the strategic tools to address a specific problem or opportunity faced by Bay Area organizations of multiple natures (for-profit, non-profit, or governmental agency), such as strategic planning, competitor analysis, industry and environmental analysis, a resource and capability audit, strategic partnerships, as examples. Students will work in small teams to develop implementable recommendations that will be presented in the form of an oral presentation and written report to the manager and faculty member, as the final deliverable.
MKT 421: Field Project 2 (4 quarter units)
This field project-based course aims to provide students with the tools to conduct market research to aid organizations of multiple natures (for-profit, not-for-profit, government agencies) in their decision making. Students will work in small teams with their clients to identify a decision problem, translate it into research questions, develop an appropriate research methodology, and conduct data gathering and analysis to arrive at implementable recommendations that will be presented in the form of an oral presentation and written report to the manager and faculty member, as the final deliverable.
M.S. in Management Program students are a diverse group of highly motivated recent graduates, representing a wide range of educational backgrounds.
To qualify for admission, you must demonstrate the ability to handle the academic rigor of the program and maintain a letter "B" average.
Academic preparation:
- Applicants for admission to the M.S. in Management program must hold a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent from an accredited college or university.
- Applicants with an undergraduate major or minor in a quantitative major are not required to take the GMAT or GRE if their GPA is at least 2.8.
- Applicants without a major/minor concentration in a quantitative major are not required to take the GMAT or GRE if their GPA is at least a 3.0.
Required Documentation:
- Online Graduate Application
- Non-refundable $50 Application Fee
- Personal Statement
- Official transcripts of colleges or universities with a degree conferred
- A resume
- Two letters of recommendation
- Official GMAT or GRE scores (dependent on GPA). The GMAT code is: 3HX-9C-97. The GRE code is: 8798.
International Applicants:
- Review International Applicants website for additional documentation requirements
Please mail all hard copy application materials to:
Saint Mary’s College of California
Office of Admissions
1928 Saint Mary's Road
PMB 4800
Moraga, CA 94575
You can email documentation directly to Graduate Business at smcmba@stmarys-ca.edu. Note that we do require official test scores and transcripts.
Have Questions? Schedule a one-on-one with a program specialist.
Meet the Students
Kenny Hillard
"Thinking globally means to look at all possible cultures and business projects in order to understand how we can apply our work globally and understand the broader scope."
Zoe de Lellis
"Leading responsibly means understanding how to be the best without compromising integrity and values."
Shane McCarthy
"I wanted the benefit of a liberal arts background with the pointedness of business skills."
Alexander Brooks
"I entered this program because I wanted the business skills to complement my prior education. The M.S. in Management program provides us with tools for any situation we might encounter in the business world."
Take the Next Step
Faculty Team
Natasha Munshi
M.S. in Management Program Director
Recent Publications:
- Cohen, S., Munshi N. (2017). “Innovation search dynamics in new domains: an exploratory study of academic founders’ search for funding in the biotechnology industry.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 20 (July): 130-143.
- Hadani, M., Munshi, N., Clark, K. (2017). The more you give the more you get? the impact of corporate political activity on the value of government contracts. Business and Society Review, vol. 122(3): 421-448
Tina Xiaotian Zhang
Academic Director
Focus: Global Finance
- Ph.D. Finance, Temple University
- BA. Major in Finance, Minor in Computer Science, Nanjing University
- Zhang, X. T. & Li, Y. (2018). How does firm lifecycle affect board structure? Evidence from China’s listed privately-owned enterprises. Management and Organization Review, Volume 14, pp. 305-341.
- Choi, J. J., Ju, M., Kotabe, M., Trigeorgis, L. & Zhang, X. T. (2018). Flexibility as firm value driver: Evidence from offshore outsourcing. Global Strategy Journal, Volume 8, Issue 2, pp. 351-376.
Saroja Subrahmanyan
Professor & Chair, Marketing & Communication
- Ph.D. Marketing, New York University, May 1993
- M.S. with distinction Statistics, New York University
- M.B.A. Management, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India
- Subrahmanyan, Saroja & Tomas Gomez-Arias (2017), CORE Foods: To Withdraw or Not to Withdraw CORE Meals? Case Research Journal, Vol. 37, Issue 3
- Subrahmanyan S. and Gomez-Arias, J.T. (2016) “Poverty in a marketing class?”, in Responsible Management and the Challenge of Poverty. Edited by Gudic, M.. Parkes, C. and Rosenbloom, A.; Greenleaf Publishing/ PRME Book Series for Responsibility in Management Education. Sheffiled, UK. Pp. 91-105.
John Dennen
Adjunct Professor
Focus: Finance and Corporate Compliance
- MBA, University of Georgia - Terry College of Business, 1970
- Accounting, Rutgers University, 1984
- Consultant, Finance and Accounting Training and Compliance
- 25 years of experience teaching in Executive and Professional MBA Programs
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Last updated by William Flitter on July 25, 2019
Contact Us
Graduate Business 
1928 Saint Mary's Road
PMB 4240
Moraga, CA 94575
Phone: (925) 631-4888
Email: smcmba@stmarys-ca.edu
1928 Saint Mary's Road
PMB 4240
Moraga, CA 94575
Phone: (925) 631-4888
Email: smcmba@stmarys-ca.edu