Doctor of Business Administration

Elevate your career with a Smith DBA

The explosion of data and advancements in technology has redefined how we think about and solve business problems. Senior executives and researchers need to expand their expertise and skill sets to keep current with a rapidly changing business landscape. The Smith School’s Doctor of Business Administration will help you do just that. The DBA program will give you a new level of expertise in business research and theories that you'll apply to business and organizational problems.

With the DBA you'll learn research methodology, how to identify important practical problems and relevant data, and how to apply this knowledge to an actual organization through a culminating capstone project.

Since the most qualified students for this program will be busy with thriving careers, the DBA is designed to offer flexibility and customization with course materials and the capstone project. A dedicated student can complete this degree in three years.

Domestic Applicant Final Deadline - April 20

We are no longer accepting international applicants at this time.

Testimonials

Our first-year DBA students are benefiting greatly from the program's curriculum, flexibility and supportive faculty. Meet them below to hear their unique perspectives and discover why they chose the Smith DBA.

Takesha Brown, DBA Candidate
Brendan Dunne, DBA Candidate
Wendy Jin, DBA Candidate
Fathya Pemy, DBA Candidate

Upcoming Events

Info Session

Doctor of Business Administration Information Session

Tuesday, April 9, 2024
12:00 PM EDT
View Event Doctor of Business Administration Information Session

Areas of Specialization

The DBA program currently offers two areas of specialization: Information Systems and Marketing. They are developed in response to evolving demands in the business world and aimed at elevating Smith DBAs to prominent leaders of their respective industries.

Information Systems

Business analytics expertise with an expansion on project management.

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Marketing

Marketing analytics and consumer behavior from an industry and management perspective.

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Featured Program Faculty

Experience a truly transformative educational experience with the research-driven curriculum and personalized mentorship of the Smith DBA program.

Information Systems

Tejwansh (Tej) Singh Anand

Tejwansh (Tej) Singh Anand

Clinical Professor
Academic Director, MS in Information Systems
Il-Horn Hann

Il-Horn Hann

Professor of Information Systems
Co-Director, Center for Digital Innovation, Technology and Strategy
Louiqa Raschid

Louiqa Raschid

Dean’s Professor of Information Systems
Jui Ramaprasad

Jui Ramaprasad

Associate Professor
ADVANCE Professor
Lauren Rhue

Lauren Rhue

Assistant Professor of Information Systems
Siva Viswanathan

Siva Viswanathan

Dean's Professor of Information Systems

Marketing

Judy Frels

Judy Frels

Academic Director of the MS Marketing Analytics
Senior Fellow, Executive Development Programs and Clinical Professor
Mary Beth Furst

Mary Beth Furst

Clinical Professor
Associate Area Chair, Marketing
P. K. Kannan

P. K. Kannan

Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives
Dean's Chair in Marketing Science
Michael Trusov

Michael Trusov

Dean’s Professor of Digital Marketing and Analytics
Jie Zhang

Jie Zhang

Dean’s Professor of Marketing
Harvey Sanders Fellow of Retail Management
Bo "Bobby" Zhou

Bo "Bobby" Zhou

Associate Professor

Curriculum

The DBA curriculum is carefully curated to be practice-focused, with segments in research methodology, analytics, legal and ethical issues in big data management, and regulatory structure.

54
TOTAL CREDITS
42
COURSE CREDITS
12
CAPSTONE PROJECT CREDITS

Students will take 42 credits in the following categories: Research Tools and Methodologies (10–12 credits), courses in the student’s major field of study (22–24 credits), and practice-focused elective courses (10–12 credits). All students must complete 12 credits of the capstone project research in addition to the coursework for graduation eligibility.

Courses

Smith IS DBA – A Customized Hybrid Program

Hi-Touch (18 credits) + Flexible (20 credits) + Custom (18 credits)
Total Credits: 56 credits

Research Foundations: 18 credits Weekend In-Person
Required/Elective Courses: 20 credits Flex (In-Person/Online)
Individual Research: 18 credits (Customized)

Year 1

Fall – I (12 credits)

Research Foundations: Quantitative Research Methods (3) (Weekend)

Research Foundations: Economics for Business Research (3) (Weekend)

Data Models and Decisions (3) (Flex)

BDBA: Data Processing and Analysis in Python (3) (Flex)

Spring – I (9 credits)

Research Foundations – Causal Methods in Business Research (3) (Weekend)

Research Foundations- Theoretical Foundations of Digital Organizations (3) (Weekend)

Data Mining and Predictive Analytics (3) (Flex)

Summer – I (2 credits)

Special Topics in IS Research – Customized Research Study (2) (Custom)

Year 2

Fall – II (10 credits)

Research Foundations: Executive Decision Making in the Age of AI (3) (Weekend)

Data Science – Big Data for Business (3) (Flex)

Special Topics: Electives (2) (Flex)

Special Topics in IS Research – Customized Research Study (2) (Custom)

Spring – II (9 credits)

Research Foundations: Emerging Technologies Research Foundations (3) (Weekend)

Special Topics: Advanced Electives (Choice of 3 electives) (6) (Flex)

Summer – II (2 credits)

Special Topics in IS Research – Customized Research Study (2) (Custom)

Year 3

Fall – III (6 credits)

Capstone Research Project (6) (Custom)

Spring – III (6 credits)

Capstone Research Project (6) (Custom)

Marketing Specialization

BDBA750, also offered as BUSM706 Innovation and Product Management (2 credits)

Focuses on the development of innovations - new products or new services - from the perspective of a marketer. For an innovation to be successful in the market, it has to be customer-centric: hence, in this course, we study how to develop and bring to market elegant and efficient solutions to strong customer needs. This is a fundamental business challenge, faced while working in a startup or in an established company; when developing a new product or a new service; and when serving customers who are individuals or large corporations.

BDBA751, also offered as BUSM714 Integrated Brand Management (2 credits)

Marketing communications are a complex but critical component of marketing strategy. Topics include communication tools: advertising, sales promotions, corporation communications, one-on-one or direct marketing, public relations, internet communications, sponsorship/events marketing, and marketing communication plans: defining objectives, implementing the plan, and measuring communications effectiveness. Achieving integration in the content, look, and feel of all marketing communications is stressed.

BDBA752, also offered as BUMK758B Market-Based Management or BUMK750 Marketing Strategy (3 credits)

Introduces students to the fundamentals of marketing. This course combines lectures, readings, case analyses and a competitive simulation. A significant part of the course involves a competitive computer-based simulation in which student teams leverage marketing data and metrics to make marketing decisions for an organization that is competing in a market against other student teams in the class.

BDBA753, also offered as BUMK758D Consumer Analysis or BUMK724 Customer Analysis (3 credits)

Focuses on the analysis of customer decision-making and how marketing strategy can be used to influence those decisions. The framework used is the buyer behavior model, in which concepts from psychology, sociology, and economics are applied to individual and organizational purchase decisions. Marketing strategies of leading firms in consumer products, technology, and services (including internet services) are analyzed using a variety of case study formats.

BDBA754, also offered as BUMK758E Statistical Programming or BUMK726 Statistical Programming for Customer Analytics (3 credits)

Provides students with a foundation in probability and statistics with a focus on business applications. It also gives students a foundation for thinking in both likelihood and Bayesian frameworks. The course teaches students the basics of SAS, as well as its use in statistical analysis and statistical programming. Also addressed are basic SAS language structure, data management, OLAP, enterprise miner, statistical analysis, writing procedures.

BDBA755, also offered as BUMK758L or BUMK744 Marketing Research & Analysis (3 credits)

Provides a review of primary data collection methods for marketing data. Students will learn how to design and implement effective confirmatory research. Both direct methods such as surveys and indirect methods such as experiments will be covered. In this hands-on course, students will design and conduct research with target customers, analyze the data, and then present their results to decision makers.

BDAB756, also offered as BUMK758K Advanced Marketing Analytics (3 credits)

The analysis of marketing data needed for profitable marketing decisions. Advanced methods of

marketing analysis for marketing decisions, including choice and count data models, joint analysis of consumers choice, quantity and timing decisions, mixture and mixture regression models, and conjoint analysis, all using data-based cases and SAS software. Applications are in the areas of strategic marketing, marketing segmentation, eye tracking for advertising effectiveness, new product development, sales promotion analysis, pricing, design of marketing mix, and direct marketing.

BDBA757, also offered as BUMK758W Data Science (3 credits)

An introduction to data science and the basic concepts of database management. The course also provides an overview of the various sources of in-house data that are available to many organizations. Students will learn how to work with click stream, scanner panel and social media data. Geodemographic datasets will be discussed and explored, and techniques for data-fusion will receive ample attention.

BDBA758(A-Z) Special Topics in DBA in Marketing (1-4 credits)

Courses designed to address trending topics that apply to practice focused elective course requirement for the DBA in Marketing track.

BDBA850, also offered as BMGT858L Seminar in Marketing Strategy (2 credits)

This course will address marketing problems of practical importance. The course will cover the topics of branding, advertising, societal issues, strategic emphasis, return on investment, customer lifetime value, personalization, word-of-mouth, robots and chatbots, and artificial intelligence.

BDAB851, also offered as BMGT858C Seminar in Consumer Behavior (3 credits)

This objective of this course is to expose students to doctoral level research that has emerged from (largely) psychological approaches to consumer behavior. Among the issues discussed are how people attend to information, how such information is related to prior knowledge, how knowledge guides judgements, how people form attitudes, how people respond to persuasion, how they make decision, and how emotions effect consumer behavior.

BDBA852, also offered as BMGT858P Seminar in Marketing Models (3 credits)

This course will cover basic concepts of marketing modeling, state-of-art techniques of analyzing marketing data, analytic modeling techniques, and incorporate current literature and substantiative marketing problems with the basic concepts and state-of-art techniques of analyzing marketing data with marketing and analytical modeling. Students will have a broad exposure to literature in the marketing modeling covering many areas such as consumer choice, pricing models, channels, dynamic models, service models, new product, and diffusion models, etc.

BDAB853, also offered as BMGT858J Seminar in Structural Models (2 credits)

Introduction to structural models in marketing and economics. This seminar will train students to identify and frame empirical analysis using structural models and further the understanding of basic frameworks and estimation techniques in structural analysis.

BDAB854, also offered as BMGT858G Seminar in Analytical Models (2 credits)

Provides a broader perspective on the use of analytical models to address marketing models and their contribution in the literature. Topics include pricing, advertising and promotion, communications, product line design, competition, search, models of cognitive aspects of game theory, and models of the organization. This course presumes knowledge of microeconomics, especially game theory and industrial organization.

BDAB855, also offered as BMGT858W Seminar in MCMC Estimation (2 credits)

Bayesian data analysis is an indispensable tool in the toolbox of empirical quantitative research and lend itself particularly well for market application. This seminar covers the foundations of Bayesian statistic that are needed to perform Bayesian analyses, which is a blend of theory and applications. Introduction to Bayes’ theorem with prior and posterior distributions, forecasting and testing in the Bayesian framework, parameter inference in the Bayesian setting, Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods including Gibb’s sampling and Metropolis-Hastings algorithm as well as the recent advances in inference such as Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) and Variational Inference (VI).

BDBA856, also offered as BMGT858E Experimental Design (2 credits)

This course is meant to familiarize students with the techniques used to conduct and to evaluate experimental research in the consumer behavior domain. The course will cover the topics of experimental manipulations, measurement of outcome variables, moderation, and mediation, how to rule out alternative explanations, external validity, and data collection.

BDBA857 (A-Z) Special Topics in DBA in Marketing (1-4 credits)

Courses designed to address trending topics that apply to major course requirement for the DBA in Marketing Consumer Behavior track.

BDBA858(A-Z) Special Topics in DBA in Marketing (1-4 credits)

Courses designed to address trending topics that apply to major course requirement for the DBA in Marketing Quantitative track.

BDBA829 Capstone Project (6 credits)

Admissions

  • Cover letter (please submit as Description of Research/Work Experience in the application)
  • Statement of purpose
  • Resume or curriculum vitae
  • Official transcripts of undergraduate degree and any graduate-level degrees if applicable
  • GMAT/GRE test scores: optional
  • Marketing: 2 letters of recommendation; IS: 3 letters of recommendation

Our program is projected to cost approximately $150,000 plus university mandatory fees for three years. The program charges per credit during traditional semesters.

Contact Us

For all inquiries about the DBA, please contact the faculty coordinator responsible for your specialization of interest. Please provide a brief description of the following information in your email inquiry:

  • Education background
  • Work experience
  • Why are you interested in pursuing a DBA degree and how does it relate to your career objectives?
  • Do you plan to work on your DBA degree full-time or part-time?

IS Specialization

Jui Ramaprasad
Associate Professor
DBA Program Faculty Coordinator

Email: jramapra@umd.edu

Marketing Specialization

Jie Zhang
Professor of Marketing
DBA Program Faculty Coordinator

Email: jiejie@umd.edu

Contact Information
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