WEMBA: Wharton West

The Wharton School launched Wharton West, which will offer the School's executive MBA program, MBA courses for Philadelphia-based students, internships, expanded executive education programs and faculty research projects in San Francisco.

"Wharton West is a direct response to market forces. It will bring the Wharton brand of management education and the best of Wharton's resources to emerging markets and developing industries in the West," said Dean Patrick T. Harker. "We recognize that our faculty and students must be able to work firsthand on the West Coast, and this gives us an historic opportunity to expand our leadership in business education and service in one of the world's most important hubs of technological and economic activity."


Executive MBA Degree

Wharton West's executive MBA program (WEMBA), designed to better serve students, alumni and employers located in the western region of the U.S., will begin in San Francisco in fall 2001. The program will mirror Wharton's executive MBA program in Philadelphia, which offers the equivalent education and degree as the traditional, full-time MBA program by structuring the same curriculum around a full-time professional work schedule. Wharton faculty, some of whom will be based in the West for specific periods of time, will teach courses.


Additional Course Offerings and Internships for MBA & Undergraduates

As Wharton increases its courses offered in northern California, Philadelphia-based MBA students will have an opportunity to spend one of their semesters in California, or to complete the requirements for their degree while relocating to the California area. Additionally, Wharton recently launched MBA student summer internships with West Coast start-ups and venture capital firms. Similar internship opportunities will now be available for undergraduate students from the Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology, a joint-degree program between Wharton and SEAS.


Executive Education

Wharton faculty will conduct on-site, customized executive training for firms seeking the latest knowledge for the intensely competitive business environment. Wharton has also launched the Wharton Fellows in e-Business program, which is designed to prepare senior business executives to lead the transformation to a global e-business environment. The program uses a combination of one-week, face-to-face sessions in northern California, Philadelphia and Barcelona, Spain, augmented with distance learning and advanced networking technologies to build a learning community.


Knowledge Creation

The various initiatives will offer additional opportunities to bring faculty into contact with practitioners in the region's fastest growing and most promising companies to study current management practices. This newly created knowledge will, in turn, have immediate impact on the content of all Wharton leadership development programs delivered worldwide. It will also promote direct partnerships between Wharton faculty and West Coast firms, allowing individual faculty or multidisciplinary faculty teams to work directly with executives and managers to analyze data, product design and management processes to strengthen outcomes for emerging technology-based companies.


Almanac, Vol. 47, No. 16, December 19, 2000

| FRONT PAGE | CONTENTS | JOB-OPS | CRIMESTATS | FROM THE PRESIDENT: Response to Committee for Manufacturer Responsibility) | PENNs WAY 2001: Week 7 | TALK ABOUT TEACHING ARCHIVE | BETWEEN ISSUES | JANUARY at PENN |