Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington

The Michael G. Foster Graduate School of Business serves over 2,500 students each year and consistently ranks as one of the top business schools in the United States for graduate and undergraduate education.  The business school has a goal to be the best public school in the nation and plans to expand faculty and curricula to progress their path of entrepreneurial innovation, strategic research, and business leadership. The Foster School is accredited by the AACSB and has a mission to be a collaborative community of faculty, staff, students, alumni and business leaders that are dedicated to the creation, application and sharing of management knowledge.  One distinct part of the business school’s culture is their fostering of diversity within the school environment and its use of it as the foundation of it’s business and education strategy. 

Foster believes in celebrating the interactions and learning experiences created when bringing diversity of life experiences to the classroom environment. Foster offers the following programmes and activities:

Foster also has a Centre for Leadership and Strategic Thinking. The centre was founded in 2009 and offers a vast array of research and learning strategies that are aimed to create leaders who fully understand how their actions impact their organisations. 

Its strategic leadership model is a testing model that enhances the leader at all levels of an organisation, and also field leader labs, which are focused on creating high-impact, relevant projects. It is aimed at advancing the leaders' skills as well as the participants’ affiliated organisations.

The Full-time MBA Programme at Foster is a two-year programme that integrates the knowledge and leadership skills needed to operate in a complex business environment. The programme achieves this by emphasising the fine-tuning of communication skills through consistent peer, faculty, and executive interactions.

The curriculum is composed of the fundamentals of strategic thinking, leadership, and global business. Global business and strategy are the centre of the programme and are addressed through courses in competitive strategy, global strategic management, and macroeconomics. Additionally, international experiences, practical experiences, leadership development, and teamwork and collaborative learning are integrated throughout the programme.  Below is a chart of the full-time MBA curriculum, provided by Foster Graduate School of Business.

The Executive MBA Programme is designed for mid-level and senior managers, executives, and entrepreneurs.  The programme consists of a collaborative learning environment combined with a robust, integrated curriculum with a global perspective and leadership focus. The programme is 21 months long and classes are arranged in groups of 30 to 45 students. Also included is an eight to ten-day international immersion trip. The curriculum is demanding and emphasises leadership development and strategic thinking, as well as learning how to apply decision-making models and tools. 

The classes combine lectures, discussions, one-on-one interactions with faculty, study groups, and case studies that link theory with real-world business problems and projects directed toward participants’ organisations. 

The first year of courses focuses on:

• Accounting
• Economics
• Finance
• Statistics
• Team Building
• Leadership

The second year of courses confronts the relationships between operations and strategy and also contains courses in marketing, integrative management, and entrepreneurship. The courses are presented in a cohort-based, lock-step model where students spend the majority of their learning experience in the same group. A business plan competition is the capstone module of the course, giving students a chance to apply their newly learned skills in a mock business venture and present their ideas in front of investors.

The Executive Education Programme at Foster creates and delivers education designed to support businesses in reaching their desired goals while making an impact on the knowledge-driven, global economy.  Programmes explore each area of business enterprise from the perspective of an executive and are taught by the faculty at the University of Washington. Programmes last anywhere from one day to two weeks and are extremely specialised to address specific issues executives face in the business world.

Although Forbes and US News do not rank MBAs globally, they were included for their impact in the US

• Forbes Rank – 36
• Financial Times Rank – 78
• US News and World Report – 23
• Bloomberg Businessweek Rank – 37
• The Economist Rank – 34

According to Bloomberg Businessweek’s International Business School Ranking: High:  97% job offer three months post-graduation.

Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington, Mackenzie Hall 110 Box 353200 Seattle, WA 98195, United States

t: +1 206 685-3400 

w: www.foster.washington.edu