Common ground!
EMBAC offers a place to share challenges and discover opportunities for executive and working professional master’s programs
Throughout the years, schools have invested in master's programs for executives and working professionals who increasingly wanted options to help advance their careers.
While EMBAC began as an organization serving Executive MBA (EMBA) Programs, it too noted the rise of those programs, as well as the common ground they shared. With that in mind, EMBAC's membership decided to encourage non-EMBA master's degree programs for executives and working professionals to apply for membership.
One umbrella
“These programs serve students who work yet want to advance their careers,” says Michael Desiderio, EMBAC executive director. “They also share many of the same challenges that EMBA Programs face. Uniting them under one umbrella offers benefits for all and the opportunity to strengthen executive and working professional educational experiences.”
Offering a place for professionals in these programs to gather also fits well with EMBAC’s historic culture of collaboration and collegiality, he says.
“Adopting best practices across program platforms happens today organically. It makes sense to try to accelerate this best practice sharing, to formalize it, as a way of keeping up with a shifting education landscape where many institutions are offering a portfolio of programs.”
Value for all
Brent Smith, Ph.D., associate vice president for executive education and professor of marketing at Emerson College, sees advantages in bringing together a network of administrators and staff from both executive and master’s degree programs for working professionals.
“Across the contexts, one finds stakeholders—learners, faculty administrators, staff, and vendors—who possess significant insights that could surface prospects, problems, and solutions that are relevant beyond the closed domains that typically confine them,” Smith says. “More conversations about these issues and approaches to them could be(come) quite useful for everyone involved.”
Emerson College offers 17 master’s programs with a focus on different aspects of communication, such as digital communication leadership, publishing and writing, film and media arts, and political communication, among others, including some fully online. EMBAC recently welcomed Emerson as a member.
“The experience with EMBAC has been quite good,” says Smith. “The leadership provides good energy and direction. The community has been welcoming and inclusive. Conversations have been especially rewarding in terms of validating some ideas and prompting rethinking on others.”
Ongoing trend
The demand from executives and working professionals for master’s programs that are designed with flexibility and relevance for them will remain strong, Smith says.
“Careers evolve. Over time, the necessity and nature of certain work, and, in turn, jobs, can change with respect to purpose, scope, significance, durability, and so on. These factors can influence how we imagine work and what skills would be required to perform it successfully today, tomorrow, and beyond.”
EMBAC will continue its role as a place for those who work in these programs to better understand market shifts, learn how programs respond, and strengthen their own professional development, says Desiderio.
“EMBAC provides members with opportunities to share, to find colleagues they will come to know and tap, and to gain insights on best practices and from industry research. EMBAC members recognize its uniqueness as an organization of sharing and forming valuable professional and personal connections.”