Elon launches new M.S. in Management program

​Elon University launched an accelerated Master of Science in Management program on Aug. 10, welcoming 18 students in its inaugural class.

The 33-credit-hour program offers tracks in Organizational Analytics and Corporate Communications – the latter a partnership between the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business and the School of Communications. The inaugural class features 11 students focusing on corporate communications and seven studying analytics.

The graduate students hail from a variety of undergraduate majors, including applied mathematics, biology, economics, international studies, media arts and entertainment, psychology, software engineering and strategic communications.

About 60 percent of the incoming class are Elon graduates, with the remainder of the class graduating from Duke University, University of Illinois and other universities in the United States and India.

“The class is a great mix, perhaps an ideal representation of full and part time, analytics and communications, young, recently graduated students and older working adults,” said Bill Burpitt, associate dean of the Love School of Business who directs both the MBA and M.S. in Management programs.

​Burpitt explained that the program can be completed in less than a year, but also provides a flexible part-time option for working professionals. He said the program fulfills two complementary objectives. First, the program will meet the strategic objectives of the institution in delivering innovative pathways for graduate education. Likewise, it will provide students an opportunity to acquire valuable knowledge and skills that enable them to create innovative career pathways of their own.

“We quite naturally hope the program will grow and be a success both for Elon and, more importantly, prove to be successful in meeting the career objectives of the students,” Burpitt said. “This class is particularly important as a test of how well the program design will be one that we can reliably deliver and one that will be attractive to the students.”

Paul Parsons, dean of the School of Communications, noted that the partnership between the business and communications schools is truly unique.

“We studied graduate programs across the nation looking for a partnership like this between business and communications and didn’t find any model, leading us to conceive of the Corporate Communications track that we believe will be very attractive at the graduate level,” Parsons said.

To learn more, visit elon.edu/msm. Applications are evaluated on a rolling basis throughout the year. All required application materials must be submitted no later than June 1 for the summer semester.