The Professional Component requires of 45 credits.

Professional Core Requirements

Management Concepts and Applications

Sharpen the skills you need to execute the four functions of management (planning, organizing, leading, and controlling) in the workplace. This course introduces the activities involved in strategic management and how to use performance metrics to measure results. Learn how to evaluate an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and how to conduct competitive analyses. Readings and assignments cover manager roles and job responsibilities, leadership models, staffing, and managing change.

Business Leadership

Explore research findings about leadership, leadership practice, and leadership skill development, evaluate leadership behaviors and personal attributes of leaders, and prepare case studies of leaders in organizations. This course balances theory with real-world applications for a practical, skill-building approach to leadership. Topics include: empowerment of followers, teamwork, diversity in the workforce, rewards, conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, and ethics and corporate social responsibility.

Financial Accounting

Do you know how to read a financial statement of a publicly traded company? Does your job require you to report whether you’re above or below the budget for the year? Do your company’s assets cover its expenses and liabilities? In this course, you learn how to manage budgets, read financial statements, and use accounting principles and processes to make business decisions in real-world settings. Gain experience recording common business transactions for service and merchandising proprietorships, and preparing basic journal entries for transactions that affect the balance sheet. Topics include financial statement analysis, accounting information systems, operating decisions, financing, ratio analysis of business performance, and internal control features for cash and accounts/notes receivables transactions.

Introduction to Computers

Increase your knowledge of computer hardware, application software, operating systems, networking, and the World Wide Web. Course material covers topics in information privacy and security, database management, and ethical and legal issues in information technology. Learn how to create documents in Microsoft Word, calculate formulas in Excel spreadsheets, create Access databases, and produce narrated PowerPoint presentations. Become familiar with the business uses of websites, online software services, and social media platforms.

Project Management

Learn the methodologies, tools, and processes used by successful project managers to define, plan, execute, and manage projects. Coursework teaches you how to identify project requirements and develop a project plan that specifies project scope, project features, project staffing, and project deliverables. Study the system development life cycle (SDLC) and project life cycle (PLC), and enhance your budget, scheduling, timeline management, cost and risk analysis, and stakeholder communication skills. Topics include program evaluation review technique (PERT), and the critical path method.

Business and Management Core Requirements

Managing Human Resources

This course covers human resource management, fair employment practices, human resource planning, human resource staffing, performance management, employee development, compensation, and labor relations. Apply personnel management theories to real-world scenarios as you learn about legal issues, job analysis, recruitment and selection practices, employee training and review, salaries and benefits, safety and health regulations in the workplace, and contingency planning.

Marketing Concepts and Applications

Deepen your knowledge of the four Ps (product, price, promotion, and placement), market segmentation and differentiation, the marketing mix, and the product life cycle. Gain experience putting together a comprehensive strategic marketing plan for an organization. Material for this class covers business-to-business (B2B) versus business-to-consumer (B2C) commercial transactions, marketing management, market research methods, product planning, distribution channels, pricing strategies, the promotion of products and services in international markets, and careers in marketing.

Principles of Finance

Get familiar with the discipline of corporate finance in this course that covers: financial statements, cash flow, the time value of money, stock and bond valuation, net present value, risk and return, capital budgeting, the cost of capital, financial forecasting and ratio analysis, working capital management, EVA (economic value added) and MVA (market value added) concepts, and trends in corporate finance. Learn how to determine values across time at various discount rates and calculate time value functions, how to use basic ratio tools to interpret financial statements, and how to analyze and solve capital budgeting problems. Prerequisites: Financial accounting, college algebra and statistics, and proficiency performing calculations in Microsoft Excel.

Organizational Behavior

This writing-enriched course focuses on the behaviors of organizations at the individual, group/team, and organizational levels. Complete two case studies and examine how external and internal forces influence leadership, communication, management, job design, employee motivation, conflict resolution, and inclusion in the workplace. Topics cover domestic and global private, public, and military organizations, and the impact of organizational behavior on the organizational performance.

International Business

Learn how economic, political, legal, ethical, and financial environments affect international business operations. This course introduces the challenges and opportunities that globalization presents to business. Study the influence of cultural differences on business strategies, the impact of governmental policies on international trade and investment, foreign development, transnational management, and diplomacy. Coursework covers the growing economic interdependence of nations and its impact on managerial and corporate policy decisions that transcend national boundaries.

Integrated Business and Management Assessment Capstone

In the capstone for the Bachelor of Professional Studies (BPS) in Business and Management, you analyze complex management situations to make strategic decisions related to process improvement. This course is open only to BPS students who have completed all other professional component core requirements and most, if not all, of their general education requirements.

Professional Component Electives

Business and management credits other than those earned through core courses are applied to this professional component elective requirement. If you earn more than 45 total credits in business and management subjects, the extra credits may be used to fulfill outstanding free elective requirements.