Graduate Business Programs
Technology Update and New Initiatives
Fall  Semester, 2009

New Main Program Website. This week we formally launch our new website, www.smcmba.com, the result of a development effort that now includes open-source partners in Belarus, Denmark, and Switzerland. This site has been dramatically redesigned, in both appearance and in the underlying technologies. It now has nearly 700 members, including faculty, current students, and alumni who return to the site because of their interest in archived materials or particular areas of academic content.

Technology Conferences and Associate Sites. Our work in the area of integrated technology will be featured at the national conference of the Executive MBA Council, when it meets this October, and we will host the first annual Conference on New Media in Executive MBA Education on April 5, 2009 at Saint Mary’s College. Schools committed to attending thus far include Stanford, UCLA, USC, Cornell-Queens, Berkeley-Columbia, the Claremont Graduate School, and the University of Utah. We are hosting (as a sub domain) a discussion website that will help shape the agenda for this conference and sustain intercollegiate exchanges outside of it. In a similar vein, and thanks to Professor Jyoti Bachani, we have accepted web sponsorship for the Western Casewriters Association, which is now also a sub domain of our main site. You can find it at www.wca.smcmba.com.

New iTunes Podcast Network. We continue our main podcast channel and have launched a new one that feature interviews with leaders in instructional technology and adult education. Search iTunes podcasts for EMBA Tech or just click here if you have iTunes installed.

Initiative on Digital Workplace Proficiency. We continue to work on a new initiative, in “digital workplace proficiency,” which would provide students in our Hybrid EMBA Program with a  certification in particular areas of digital communication, presentation, and authoring. Related to that effort and our planning in this area, we launched this past Saturday our Netbook Project: all entering Hybrid Executive MBA students each received a customized laptop computer that has the operating system, applications, and content tailored to the work they will be doing in this program over the next eighteen months.

Saint Mary's in Second Life: The McKeon Pavilion Project. We continue our work with virtual worlds and 3D environments. McKeon Pavilion And finally, we plan to launch our first academic project in Second Life this fall, when Professor Linda Herkenhoff’s course in Sports Management will have an assignment organized around redesigning a virtual McKeon Pavilion.

If you have any questions about the items above, please let us know, and thank you for your ongoing interest in and support of our work in this area.

Barry Eckhouse, Professor
Director, Technology and Online Programs
Director, Hybrid Executive MBA Program

School of Economics & Business Administration
Saint Mary's College of California