First TCU MBA/Ed.D. Degrees Awarded

Three Dual Degrees - MBA/Ed.D.-will be handed out for the first time this December to Jessica Taylor, Jim Bowen and Alison Tanner. The Neeley School and the School of Education at TCU partnered to create this unique option: a comprehensive program that integrates a Master of Business Administration with a Doctorate in Educational Leadership, effectively combining the best of business and educational disciplines to help assure qualified leaders for our nation's educational institutions.

This program is one of only three in the nation to integrate the Master of Business Administration (MBA) and a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.). It prepares students to assume major leadership positions in a wide variety of education-related organizations by applying managerial skills and educational leadership in the field of education.

"To help assure qualified leaders for our nation's educational institutions, we created a program that combines the best of education and business disciplines," said Dr. Bill Cron, associate dean of graduate studies for Neeley. "The program prepares students to enter educational management in school systems, regional, state or federal governments, research institutions, private foundations, universities or private sector companies.

"This Dual Degree reflects the complexities of educational systems and emergent institutions," said Dr. Mike Sacken of the School of Education. "These graduates have drawn on the best knowledge about leading organizations and systems irrespective of public or private, profit or nonprofit, and have challenged and been challenged to question traditional expectations and solutions. They are prepared to lead in the present and future, however policy and practice evolves to meet the educational demands of our society and its young people."

Candidates for the MBA/Ed.D. first must be admitted to the MBA program and meet all 36 hours of core requirements as well as the START Workshop. At the completion of the first year of the MBA program, and a summer of coursework in educational administration, students apply for candidacy in the doctoral program. Admission depends on their performance in both MBA and education courses. Throughout the program, students must maintain a B average. At the completion of coursework, students take written and oral comprehensives before proceeding into the dissertation stage.

"The challenges we face and will face educationally can admit no boundaries to possible responses and alternatives," added Sacken. "That is what these students have accepted as their leadership perspective: that the future cannot be the captive of familiar reactions to new problems. They are prototypes of adaptive leaders and learners, exactly what our educational systems must expect and require now and in the future."