Term 1

GSBA-511: Microeconomics for Management

In this course, you will learn about supply and demand analysis, game theory, and the causes and consequences of market failures.

GSBA-540: Contemporary Issues for Competitive Strategy

Fundamental strategic business decisions can only be made effectively by viewing a firm holistically. This integrative course takes a broad view of the overall environment, including companies, customers, and competitors, to create a body of analytical tools to aid in strategic decision-making.

GSBA-541: Foundations of Your Professional Value

What drives you? This course is designed to help you put into place the foundational knowledge to discover, identify, and leverage your personal strengths to serve as catalysts in your career development.

GSBA-542: Communication for Management

This communication and leadership course is designed to jumpstart your development as a true leader in your respective field by enhancing your core leadership skills, professional communication style, and self-awareness through clinical research in leadership and communication theory.

Term 2

GSBA-510: Accounting Concepts and Financial Reporting

Learn the language, rules, and conventions used in preparing financial statements to critically assess companies and make decisions based on financial data. The course provides foundational financial reporting knowledge for business managers.

GSBA-524: Data Science for Business

This course offers a deep dive into probability, statistics, and advanced analytics critical to managerial decision making. You will learn modern statistical techniques like neural networks, data mining, and clustering analysis through multiple applications, including R programming language.

GSBA-527: Structured Analysis for Unstructured Problems

In this course, you will learn how to grapple with how to frame problems and make decisions with incomplete information that is typical in the business world through problem-framing, analogical reasoning, hypothesis evaluation, and counterfactual thinking.

GSBA-548: Corporate Finance

Familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of finance in this course designed to provide an introductory framework for understanding how financiers break down the components of a financial problem and make decisions as investors in capital markets.

Term 3

GSBA-509: Marketing Management

Marketing concepts are at the core of every business. After this course, you will be able to understand marketing strategy, determine market opportunities, and apply both qualitative and quantitative frameworks from a managerial perspective.

GSBA-510: Accounting Concepts and Financial Reporting (Cont’d)

GSBA-524: Data Science for Business (Cont’d)

GSBA-548: Corporate Finance (Cont’d)

Term 4

GSBA-504a: Operations Management

You will learn about the fundamentals of design, operations, and production systems of a firm's business practices critical to meeting consumer demands for goods and services.

GSBA-533: Organizational Behavior and Leadership

Leading, managing, and working collaboratively with others is essential to being effective in the workplace. By recognizing the motivations and behaviors of stakeholders inside and outside organizations, you will have a heightened ability to apply ethical principles and professional standards in the corporate world.

GSBA-552: Problem Solving and Decision Making: An Integrated Approach Electives

This immersive course will give you experience and exposure to actual unstructured business problems faced by various companies, ranging from startups to multinational organizations. You will apply classroom knowledge and your professional experience as you partner with local companies and help develop recommendations to solve business issues in this team-based consultancy project.

Term 5

GSBA-503: Contemporary Issues in Competitive Global Strategy

In the quest to enter foreign markets, firms must look at the overall strategy to become multinational. In this course, you will learn several aspects of corporate and global strategy designed to help you understand and analyze significant business opportunities around the world.

GSBA-580: The Global Context of Business: PRIME Electives

In this course, you will put the material you learned in your core classes to the test in a week-long immersive experience abroad. You will analyze the influence of emerging business models and technologies that have the potential to significantly alter the industry landscape and society. After studying the cultural, economic, and political characteristics of your selected region, you will work with multi-national companies, domestic enterprises, and governmental institutions to develop recommendations for pressing economic and societal issues they aim to solve.

Elective courses allow students to explore their areas of interest and develop deep competencies that align with their career goals.

MBA students may select 7.5 units of elective classes during the Spring semester of their first year. This provides students the opportunity to take classes that they feel will prepare them to be successful in their summer internship. Students may choose to take additional elective classes during the summer in lieu of an internship.

The second-year of the MBA program is intended to be customized to suit student’s interests and career goals. The 30 remaining elective units can be earned by:
- Taking elective coursework – Marshall offers close to 100 elective courses for MBA students in any given year;
- Designing an individualized program of study that cuts across several functional areas*;
- Completing an independent study project*; and/or
- Selecting courses from other graduate schools within the university*- students may take up to nine elective units at another USC graduate school

*Available to second year MBA students who have completed all core curriculum and are in good standing (minimum 3.0 GPA)

Please note course offerings are not guaranteed and students should consult the Schedule of Classes for courses offered during any given term.

Featured Elective Courses

Negotiation and Deal Making

The purpose of this course is to understand the theory and processes of negotiation as it is practiced in a variety of settings. The course is designed to be relevant to the broad spectrum of negotiation problems that managers face. Considerable emphasis is placed on simulations, role-playing and case studies.

Strategy and Operations through CFO Lens

This class addresses the strategic and operational issues that companies face in multiple industries, and the responses of chief financial officers who are responsible for the accounting and financial planning and decision making. The class includes guest speakers, CFOs who present how they view the business as a whole and measure performance effectively.

Graduate Student Investment Fund (SIF) Course

The Student Investment Fund (SIF) Program is a one-year experiential course consisting of two 3-unit finance electives in “Applied Portfolio Management” (i.e., FBE 553a & FBE553b). It is designed to give students rigorous exposure to contemporary investment and portfolio theory and practice. Each year interested Marshall graduate students apply to be part of the course and 16 students are selected to manage approximately $8.0 million of USC’s endowment fund in four equity and one fixed-income portfolio, each with a unique investment discipline. Analytical tools for the valuation of stocks, bonds, and options are presented. The course also covers risk management and portfolio optimization, behavioral finance, and performance attribution. Students will demonstrate and refine their ability to apply analytical concepts and techniques through the following:

• Fund management
• Sector reports
• Company research reports
• Investment research reports
• Security pitches

MBA Society and Business Fellowship Program

Sponsored by the USC Marshall Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab (BSEL), the MBA Society and Business Fellowship Program is a highly selective, year-long opportunity for the small cadre of MBA and MBA.PM students who are seeking a business degree in order to pursue careers in poverty alleviation, including homelessness, education, and global health.

As a Society and Business Fellow, students receive:

• Monthly cohort meetings with like-minded students and professional networking relationships with alumni who share values.
• Personal mentoring from the Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab (BSEL) staff.
• Targeted guidance and counseling for summer internships and full-time employment.
• Professional development tailored to non-traditional business careers.
• Priority registration for BAEP 566/567, 571, 591.
• Exclusive opportunities to meet with industry leaders and exposure to best practices in social entrepreneurship.
• Funding toward professional development.
• Priority consideration for a subsidy (up to $2,500) to complete a summer internship at an eligible nonprofit organization.

Marshall Leadership Fellows Program (MLFP)

MLFP offers a unique leadership development course combining classroom and experiential learning opportunities where second year MBA students dedicated to personal and professional leadership development provide coaching to first year Core teams. This program includes two semester academic experience, totaling 3.0 units of elective coursework (MOR-574a and MOR-574b). In this program second year student coaches hone their leadership skills, gain practical experience, and learn to provide structured feedback using concepts, mechanism, and management best practices while guided by the Business Communications and Organizational Behavior Core Faculty. At the same time, through this coaching, first year core teams become more high-functioning and collaborative while each team member becomes more high-performing, flexible and open to complexity.

Independent Projects

Upon completion of the core curriculum, second year MBA students in good standing may apply to complete an independent research project. The independent project option allows students to pursue research in specific areas of interest that may not be covered in other course offerings. Independent projects include Field Research in Business, Independent Research in Business, Research Practicum in Business and Consulting Project in Business. Students working on independent projects work one-on-one with their supervising faculty member to design and execute their research plan.