MS in Business: Information Systems 

Course Descriptions

Core (Required) Courses

BMGT703 Modeling and Designing IT Systems

Explores the analysis, design, operation, and management of information systems to support business processes has become crucial to organizational survival. Regardless of function, position, or career interest, managers and consultants must understand how to ensure that information systems are designed, developed and deployed in a way that is likely to optimize business success. IS professionals must bring to bear a unique combination of business knowledge, technical skills, and understanding of organizational context in order to develop successful information systems. Likewise, non-IS professionals must be able to understand how to contribute to the systems analysis and design process to support their functional areas. The objective of this course is to help students gain a solid foundation in the concepts, processes, tools, and techniques needed in analyzing business processes and conducting information systems projects. Students will explore different techniques for researching system requirements, develop skills in analyzing and modeling organizational processes and data, and develop an understanding of the challenges of successfully managing the development and implementation of systems in organizations. Students do not need an extensive technology background for this course, and the course does not require programming. Hands-on experience in analyzing organizational systems, evaluating areas for improvement, and recommending solutions will be gained through a course project in which students apply the concepts discussed in class to a real system.

BUDT705 Telecommunications

Examines the question of how to analyze the telecommunications and information technology industries through competitive and policy analyses. As businesses increasingly rely on telecommunications to participating in the digital economy, they rely on transmission, reception, and processing of digital information to manage their operations and explore new market opportunities. In this course, we will examine some of the characteristics of telecommunications industry and how it shapes businesses that are unique to the digital economy. In doing so, we will grasp a better understanding of how we can best manage these opportunities.

BUDT706 Social Media and Web 2.0

For majors only. Over the past years, social computing technologies such as online communities, blogs, wikis, and social networking systems have become important tools for individuals to seek information, socialize with others, get support, collaborate on work, and express themselves. Increasingly, businesses are trying to leverage web 2.0 by using social computing technologies to communicate with customers, employees, and other business partners or to build new business models. This course will review concepts and principles related to web 2.0 and examine issues and strategies associated with business use of social computing technologies.

Technology Projects

BMGT630 Data Analysis and Decision Models

Explores basic analytical principles that can guide a manager in making complex decisions. A good decision uses sound reasoning and takes into account all of the relevant information that is available at the time the decision is to be made. In order to arrive at a good decision, a manager must be able to:

• Identify an underlying analytical structure in a seemingly complex and amorphous decision problem
• Understand the role of uncertainty and risk in the decision-making process
• Analyze available data to understand relationships among variables and to create predictions
• Understand the trade-offs involved in the decision
• Use available computing technology (e.g., spreadsheets) to arrive at optimal solutions.

The objective of this course is to equip you with these skills.

BUSI621 Strategic and Transformational IT

Introduces students to the key issues in managing information technology (IT) and provides an overview of how major IT applications in today's firms support strategic, operational, and tactical decisions. Topics include: synchronizing IT and business strategy; the transformational impacts of IT; evaluating and coping with new technologies; governing, managing, and organizing the IT function including outsourcing/offshoring considerations; assessing the business value of IT and justifying IT projects; and managing IT applications in functional areas to support strategy and business process.

BUSI622 Managing Digital Businesses

Examines some of the characteristics of digital businesses and markets that make them unique and understand how companies can best manage them. At the beginning of the 21st century our economy is increasingly becoming “digital," that is, shifting to products and services that have fewer “physical” components and more “information” and “network” components. Music and news are just two examples of industries where each new generation of products and services tends to have fewer “atoms” and more “bits”. eBay, Facebook and Google are examples of companies that derive their value from tying together groups of users in a network. Such digital businesses have a number of unique and unusual properties that set them apart from physical businesses and fundamentally change the structure and competitive dynamics of their respective industries.

BUSI785 Project Management in Dynamic Environments

Addresses the project management skills that are required by successful managers in increasingly competitive and faster-moving environments. Skilled project managers are needed by organizations to reduce the current high rate of project failures and resultant loss of very large amounts of time and money. This course addresses fundamental concepts of successful project management, and the technical and managerial issues, methods, and techniques of project management, and of managing project managers.

This course is targeted at managers interested in developing both their understanding of project management as a management activity and their project management skills and abilities. The course is designed to offer the student the opportunity to learn how to effectively plan and manage projects that meet their organization's business goals, that effectively apply capital and that obtain the desired return on investment.

Elective Courses

BUSI664 Leadership and Managing Human Capital

Examines the concepts of leadership and human resource management principles, this course emphasizes skill building and creating a competitive advantage by creating a culture that develops extraordinary leaders and unleashes employee talent. Topics include leadership, decision making, communication and conflict, work motivation, teams, ensuring legal compliance and leveraging diversity, recruiting, selecting and retaining qualified employees who fit the job and the organization, measuring performance and providing feedback, and managing changes in leadership and HR strategy.

BUMK740 Marketing High Technology Products

Explores the unique characteristics of marketing in dynamic high technology industries. Explores implications for channel management, product development, and bundling of products and services to develop a unique value proposition.

BUSI660 Entrepreneurship & New Ventures

Provides an introduction to important tools and skills necessary to create and grow a successful new venture. Integrates research findings from a range of different practical and intellectual perspectives, including psychology, sociology, economics, strategic management, and history into practical, hands on lessons for an entrepreneur. Class projects provide the foundations for new, real businesses.

BUDT733 Data Mining for Business

Focuses on the use of data mining techniques in strategic business decision making. A hands-on course that provides an understanding of the key methods of data visualization, exploration, classification, prediction, time series forecasting, and clustering. Non-majors should review their registration eligibility in the statement preceding the BUDT courses.

BUSI634 Operations Management

Explores how firms can better organize their operations so that they more effectively align their supply with the demand for their products and services. This course will cover a mix of qualitative and quantitative problems and issues confronting operations managers. The first part of the course details different kinds of business processes, the impact of variability on business processes and explains how to measure key process parameters like capacity and lead time. The second part of the course focuses on process improvement and examines classic ideas in quality management as well as recent ideas on lean operations. The course concludes with a brief introduction to inventory management with applications in revenue management. Throughout the course we illustrate mathematical analysis applied to real operational challenges – we seek rigor and relevance. Our aim is to provide both tactical knowledge and high-level insights needed by general managers and management consultants. We will demonstrate that companies can use (and have used) the principles from the course to significantly enhance their competitiveness.

BUDT710 IT and Corporate Transformation

Introduces some of the key issues making organizational transformation an important phenomenon of concern to all senior managers. The course will provide you an opportunity to reflect and decide for yourself whether and when to lead or participate in change efforts and if so, how. Information technology (IT), in combination with trends in globalization and importance of services in modern economies, is making organizational transformation an important phenomenon that concerns all senior managers.