Amidst the physical changes Millikin is making to campus, the Tabor School of Business is making its own changes. Our school is known for wanting the best for its’ students, and with the addition of the fast-track MBA program, it seems like Millikin is looking out for us more than ever.

MBA program director and Chairman & CEO of Illini Corporation, Dr. Anthony Liberatore, says, “Millikin has a long tradition of building knowledge and skill, practice and performance.”

For years, Tabor School of Business has housed an evening MBA program that takes 17 months to complete. The evening MBA is usually made up of professionals wishing to move up in the business world from Illinois to international locations. In other words, a majority of the students in the evening MBA program already have a lot of experience and come to Millikin to move past their competitors.

This August the Millikin fast-track MBA will open its’ doors for the first time. This program offers an intensive 12 month program for students straight out of undergrad.

Dr. Liberatore says, “In today’s job market, the world is changing rapidly and you have to have more skill. Oftentimes, an undergraduate degree leaves you at a competitive disadvantage. We’d like to help all of our students get a leg up in the job market.”

Millikin’s Tabor school of Business has built an MBA program based on professionals teaching professionals. Libertore considers this approach to be the most successful, just as you would find surgeons teaching surgeons. “Bottomline,” he says, “business is a performing art. It’s all in the practice and execution, and the MBA program at Millikin offers students the opportunity to accelerate.”

Professor of Management and Dean of the Tabor School of Business, Dr. Susan Kruml, says “the new MBA program is available for all undergrad majors because they have an immersive boot camp to get all students, with or without a business degree, on the same page before starting the program.”

The program will be taught by C-Suite executives, meaning they are top executives. The “C” stands for chief, so professors will have the experience of being CEO’s, CFO’s or other top ranking exectuives in major businesses and corporations. Libertore says this is “much more like an apprenticeship program.”

Kruml says this program will “elevate skills and provide the ability to think like an executive.”

Students in the program will be in cohorts, meaning that they will spend their time with the same classmates. Students will also have a tremendous amount of work in groups within their cohorts because the ability to work with other people is a necessary skill in the real world, especially in business.

The program will be made up of ten core courses with emphasis in either accounting and finance, management and leadership or marketing and strategy. Students will also choose a graduate level certificate, which are data management, project management and entrepreneurship.

Dr. Libertore says there are three things you need to get into the program: capability, commitment and the ability to communicate.

He says, “We want you to be able to stand against someone and knock them down.”