Academics
Taking a cue from its progressive environs in Portland, Oregon, Portland State University offers an MBA program with a “focus on sustainability” and an emphasis on “personal development as a leader.” Offering more than your standard MBA, “this school is committed to the whole student,” and “creativity, along with sustainable, equitable solutions, are promoted, even prized.” Throughout the hefty seventy-four-credit curriculum, you’ll never lose sight of the school’s core values: “PSU also works hard to integrate sustainability into most aspects of the curriculum, from core classes to elective offerings.” The MBA includes plenty of required coursework (as well as required hands-on projects), yet electives give students the opportunity to tailor their education. In fact, “the wide latitude given to students to pursue their studies in a multi-disciplinary manner” is a trademark of PSU’s graduate program. SBA has several Graduate Certificates for students, including: Social Innovation, Global Supply Chain, and Business Intelligence & Analytics.
Thanks to its strong reputation and enviable Portland location, PSU can “attract and retain an extremely high-quality faculty roster.” On the whole, “professors are informed, enlightened educators as well as experts in their respective fields.” Despite overall excellence, students say there are a few instructors who “seem unprepared, disorganized, and unclear on what they’re supposed to be teaching us.” The local community also plays an important role in the PSU experience. “Portland is truly at the center of this nation’s move toward sustainability,” and therefore, “being in Portland is a huge plus—there’s so much sustainable business thinking and practice here that it’s easy to see in the field what I learn in school.” A student adds, “I have been introduced to and met with many people that are driving regional and national movements on the cutting edge of sustainability.”
PSU is a large school, but you won’t get lost in the crowd. Despite its 400-plus enrollment, “The SBA manages by breaking up [its] graduate studies into discrete cohorts and providing a concrete plan of study for each. There’s never much doubt what you should be doing, yet there is flexibility should you need it.” Depending on your schedule, the school offers several program options. For full-time students, “MBA cohort classes are four hours long one day a week from about [noon] until four,” while part-time students “typically go to class two to three evenings a week.” Though students say the business school’s classrooms could use a refresh, (a major renovation will be complete in September 2017), “the academic resources are great.” For example, “the library has done a lot of work to make research as easy as possible, even for those of us who are only on campus a couple times a week.”
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