Full Course Description List:

MSPM Courses

(3 semester credits)

Contemporary business environments are increasingly competitive, global, fast paced, and knowledge intensive. In these environments, effective use of human capital is vital to an enterprise's success and survival. In this course, students will explore practical issues related to developing individuals and managing collaboration and will examine the skills and strategies necessary to address them effectively. Students will examine ethical and legal implications of managing a diverse workforce including issues that arise from cross-cultural differences and virtual work settings. The importance of communication as a tool to manage internal and external relationships is emphasized as it relates to the effectiveness of managing people to achieve organizational goals.

(3 semester credits)

Students in this course are introduced to the knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques needed to successfully manage projects throughout the life of a project, known as the project life cycle. By learning about the project management Knowledge Areas and Process Groups as well as the distinguishing characteristics of each, students gain an appreciation for how these two dimensions of project management interact in initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing a project.

(3 semester credits)

Students in this course are introduced to a comprehensive framework for proactively building, managing, and controlling project schedules from initiation to closeout. They explore the importance of defining deliverables, establishing project and product requirements, defining scope boundaries and building a detailed work breakdown structure as prerequisites to building network diagrams using both critical path and critical chain approaches. Students explore the challenges of project scheduling under uncertainty, address techniques for addressing resource constraints, and develop procedures for proactively managing and controlling the scheduling process throughout the project's lifecycle.

(3 semester credits)

Effective project management requires leaders with interdisciplinary knowledge and skills who understand the relationships between operational factors, such as business processes and product design. Students in this course learn about these relationships, in addition to other elements imperative in project management, including  project goal attainment, positive operating cash flow, risk mitigation strategy, and operational alignment. Students also explore the role of budgeting and management of operations in an organizational environment. They engage in practical exercises designed to help them develop budget and operational plans based on an organization's accounting and financial data, project plans, and goals. Students also examine planning considerations associated with global operations.

(3 semester credits)

Project management involves an ongoing, and nearly inevitable, variation of risks to which managers must be attuned and ready to mitigate. In this course, students learn how to plan, analyze, respond to, and control qualitative and quantitative risk in projects. They examine the internal risks associated with managing projects and the external risks associated with customer behavior, the supply chain, transportation and distribution channels, and acts of nature within the framework of the organization's overall risk strategy. Assessing real-world examples of project risks, students learn about strategies for working with project stakeholders to identify and respond to risk within defined ethical and legal standards.

(3 semester credits)

A major responsibility of many project managers is planning and administering project contracts for the purchase or acquisition of project resources from external sources. In this course, students learn about planning for purchases and acquisitions, requests for proposal, vendor selection, contract administration, and contract closure. They consider and discuss the role of the project manager in the procurement process as it relates to project requirements for purchases or acquisitions, managing the relationship between buyer and seller, assessing vendor performance, contract change control, and conflict resolution. Students also have the opportunity to reflect on theory presented in the course as well as how they can apply these concepts to professional practice.

(3 semester credits)

One role of the project manager is to lead teams in complex and diverse organizational settings while concurrently communicating with all stakeholders. In this course, students analyze this dual role and examine how individual and group behavior impacts organizational effectiveness. They discover how using influence, rather than organizational power, leads to more successful project management. Students learn ways to design projects to support organizational goals and how to build and engage organizational capital (intellectual, human, physical, financial, and structural). They also assess communications management as a tool to manage internal and external relationships with stakeholders, partners, vendors, and customers.

(3 semester credits)

How do project managers ensure that their organization's initiatives allow for sustainable business and promote positive change through products for a sustainable environment? Students in this course are provided with an opportunity to answer such questions as well as to develop their understanding of managing projects at the portfolio and program levels. Students learn about the nature of sustainability in project management in terms of how project management processes align with the three fundamentals of sustainable development: social equity, economic efficiency, and environmental performance. Students work toward gaining a real-world understanding of concepts through the examination of current research illustrating sustainability in project management and by assessing actual products developed through projects.

(3 semester credits)

Modern organizations are constantly seeking ways to improve business processes and systems for greater efficiency and effectiveness. to ensure stakeholder's needs are met and business prospers. In this course, students learn how to harness the tools needed to help businesses gain competitive advantage through business processes and systems. Students examine strategies for managing the flow of business information within and across organizational boundaries. They become familiar with the concept of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and learn how these systems can lead to novel ways of efficiently managing project execution and business innovation. Students also assess and discuss technologies for business process integration, automation, and optimization, and they examine and practice using practical tools of enterprise.

(3 semester credits)

This course is designed to allow students to bring together knowledge gained through the program and to demonstrate mastery of the various course competencies. Students synthesize concepts and skills in an integrative project that combines multiple aspects of their program, illustrating  how ethics, internal culture, and external forces shape project managers’ behaviors when executing projects within an organization. Students articulate how project managers within an organization can drive social change and sustainability through the example they set in their everyday work.