* A Reputation for Action Since its inception in 1989 the Lancaster MBA has kept action and engagement with real world business and management issues at the heart of its programme. There are three practical elements based on work with organisations varying greatly in length and focus. All three will look great on your cv as evidence of real hands on ability. * New Venture Challenge Student teams spend the first term working with clients sourced by LUMS’s Institute for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development who are preparing start ups or new business developments. Students help them draw up marketing and business plans.
* Consultancy Challenge Each team is dropped into a consultancy situation and learns the capacity to be immediately effective in supporting and leading change. Don’t worry, we prepare you with customised modules which develop your skills. * Summer project You will expand your consultancy skills by undertaking a client project. In addition you will produce a dissertation reflecting on management theories in practice. * Mindful Manager Right from the first day of the programme we balance academic learning and personal and professional development through our Mindful Manager thread. This explores what management is really about and packs in lots of personal development opportunities based on experiential learning. We use the academic learning on the programme as the basis for helping you to learn how to manage yourself and how to work in teams. Why Lancaster University Management School? * Accreditation and reputation The School is accredited by AACSB ,the leading business school accreditation organisation, EQUIS, the top European quality mark for European Schools and AMBA, the top British quality mark. The MBA features regularly in the Financial Times Top 100 MBA Programmes Survey. In 2010 it was ranked 24th in the world by the FT and 16th in the world by Forbes magazine. * The Lancaster experience The Lancaster MBA emphasises the process of learning as much as the content. You will spend much of your time learning in teams that will develop collaborative and leadership skills essential in management. There will be over twenty nationalities in the classroom. You will learn about cultural difference and how to capitalise on its diversity in work, social and sporting contexts. We have an international reputation that also attracts faculty from across the world. Our campus is safe, beautifully located with views of mountains and sea, yet only an hour from the bright lights, nightlife and world class soccer of Manchester and Liverpool. Most students can live on campus and walk to the classroom in five minutes. The MBA Programme has a dedicated Career Development and Alumni Services Manager who provides personal counselling and arranges special events and workshops to help you make the right career decisions for your future employment. We keep in touch after you leave, support networking opportunities and are your link with current Programme participants. * Student Profile Before joining the MBA Michael Hass was a management consultant at Ernst & Young in Germany. “I chose the Lancaster MBA as I felt that its rigorous academic programme, combined with practical projects, was exactly the combination I was looking for. I also liked the fact that it offered me the opportunity to work in a truly international environment. In particular Lancaster’s action leaning approach has helped me to understand that there is often more than one appropriate way to look at issues, understand and resolve them. Working and studying with a variety of excellent people, from different backgrounds, also made me become more open-minded and people-oriented. The New Venture Challenge and Consultancy Challenge projects made me realise that I really enjoyed consulting for smaller companies as the impact of the recommendations made can be seen much more quickly than in larger organisations. My summer project was with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Leeds where we undertook a survey on the development of small and medium-sized businesses in the north of the UK. This was a superb finish to my MBA as it combined my fascination for small firms with my background in management consultancy.” After completing his MBA, Michael joined Ernst & Young’s business modelling - decision support team in London as a senior consultant. “I firmly believe that pursuing the Lancaster MBA has put me into a better position to manage such complex projects and to handle them with greater confidence.”