Students who have completed a doctorate degree at Dartmouth will now have the opportunity to pursue an accelerated Masters degree in Business Administration under a new agreement between the College's Graduate Studies Program and the Tuck School of Business, Provost Barry Scherr announced on Monday. Students in the program will matriculate at Tuck after receiving their Ph.D and complete their MBA one term faster than regular Tuck students, according to the program's description.
"The design builds upon the outstanding strengths that the campus already has; it's a natural extension of what our students already do and are capable of," Dean of Graduate Studies Brian Pogue said in a College press release. "The new program simply takes the experience of our Ph.D students to the next higher level, giving them the skills to implement financial and management decisions with their basis of scientific knowledge."
According to the release, College President Jim Yong Kim endorsed the program, emphasizing the viability of the new degree combination.
"Dartmouth is positioned well to lead in this area of scientific business development," Kim said in the release. "The Tuck MBA is leading the way in business management, and new Dartmouth Ph.D/MBA graduates will be able to create new career tracks for themselves, well positioned to succeed in any pursuit."
The program rose from a high demand from graduate students and the fact that many schools have similar dual-degree programs, Pogue said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
"Because Dartmouth's business school is top-ranked, it made sense to consider it," he said.
Admittance to the program is based on an application to Tuck. Under the new program, students will be exempt from some elective courses in the MBA curriculum, and their graduate coursework will fulfill Tuck's post-bachelor's degree work experience requirement. Recipients of the dual-degree will complete the first-year core curriculum required of regular MBA students, according to the Graduate Studies web site.
Plans for the program began this January with the formation of an ad-hoc task force consisting of three doctoral students, three faculty members and two administrators, Pogue said.
The total planning process lasted less than six months, Paul Danos, dean of Tuck, said. The program was approved by Scherr and administrators from Graduate Studies and Tuck in the spring.
"In academic circles, that's pretty fast to get a program up and running," Danos said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
The project was finalized quickly in anticipation of processing this year's MBA program applications, Pogue said, noting that the first application deadline occurs in October.
Danos said he does not expect a large number of students to apply for the dual-degree program, adding that few students will be willing to complete the number of years of study that the curriculum entails.
Pogue said he expects around five students yearly to participate in the program, but added that this number will be dependent both upon the level of interest among Ph.D students and the number of students that Tuck will be able to accommodate.
Receiving an MBA will allow Ph.D students to do "exciting things," Danos told The Dartmouth.
Pogue characterized a typical dual-degree student as "the type of graduate who will lead in the high-tech world."
