Success in today’s marketplace requires keen analytical skills, broad cultural sensitivity and clear strategic vision. Effective leaders must meet the ongoing challenges of effective teamwork, mutually respectful communication, and creative yet realistic decision analysis. The skills needed to meet these challenges are not learned once and then applied over and over. Rather, the value of an executive MBA degree can be measured by how well it prepares students to adapt modes of thinking and business fundamentals to a continuously changing environment.

The Duke MBA - Weekend Executive Advantage

Through its unique classroom-workplace format, the Weekend Executive program is ideally suited to meet the demands of managers and organizations. Specifically, the Weekend Executive develops:

• creative, informed decision analysis

• strategic thinking to address complex issues and competitive challenges

• leadership and the ability to work effectively in teams

• functional knowledge across the business disciplines

• oral and written management communication skills

• proficiency in computing for analysis, communication and presentations

• an international management perspective

The Duke MBA - Weekend Executive students have already proven themselves to be valuable, high-performing employees in their respective companies. The knowledge and skills they gain during the intensive 20-month program prepare them to make even greater contributions to their companies’ successes.

Student Success Story

Fulton Breen is a strategic marketing services manager at Rhône-Poulenc Ag Company in Research Triangle Park, NC, and a member of the Weekend Executive class of 1997. During his first semester in the Weekend Executive program, he took the standard three courses all first-year students struggle through: Probability and Statistics, Managerial Effectiveness and Financial Accounting. Breen found himself especially engaged by Professor Kevin McCardle's statistics course, which combined clearly-defined concepts with a solid grounding in statistical theory and models. In fact, as Breen worked on one particular theoretical model, he realized that it seemed tailor-made to analyze a situation his company was then facing.

Theory quickly turned into application as Breen persuaded Rhône-Poulenc to try the product launch model that he had worked on for a class project. McCardle remained involved in the project with Breen and Rhône-Poulenc, helping management assess the critical market risks associated with the launch and generating substantial time and cost savings — including $100,000 in market research alone. These same modeling techniques have since been adopted by Rhône-Poulenc for acquisition and project valuations. No one has to convince Breen or anyone at Rhône-Poulenc of the value of his education. As he said in a thank-you letter to McCardle shortly after his first semester ended, "As far as Rhône-Poulenc is concerned, the Weekend Executive program has already paid for itself many times over in the first semester."