Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business

The Tepper School aims to empower next-gen business leaders for success in today’s fast-changing global marketplace combining business, technology, and analytics. To do so successfully requires confidence in advanced analytical skills and thinking quickly and bringing about change quickly.

Carnegie Mellon’s undergraduate business curriculum features eight fields of study emphasizing STEM. It incorporates global experiences like manufacturing tours, presentations at financial institutions, and an annual trip to Western or Eastern Europe.

The Tepper Quad

The Tepper Quad is at the core of Carnegie Mellon’s Pittsburgh campus and serves as an essential civic hub, connecting research, teaching, and student life across campus. Designed by Moore Ruble Yudell and Renaissance 3 for 4.5 acres by Moore Ruble Yudell Architects of Los Angeles with Renaissance 3 architects of Dallas, this state-of-the-art project boasts a 315,000 sf Tepper School of Business building alongside multi-use HUB/Forum space, as well as a 600 seat flat floor auditorium – making for an exciting 4.5 acres project designed by Moore Ruble Yudell and Renaissance 3.

This five-story building design at its heart puts collaboration and interdisciplinary work at its center. There are no corridors within its five stories, instead featuring large floor plates with no corridors and terraces and social stairs on each level to foster spontaneous interaction between groups. Furthermore, its exterior consists of rectilinear volumes clad with buff-colored masonry that feature rotating glazed void elements to break up the visual mass. At the same time, its full-height atrium allows light into its core while improving human health through sunlight exposure and breathtaking views.

Tepper Quad marks an extraordinary breakthrough in management education by uniting research across Carnegie Mellon’s top ranked schools for technology, arts, engineering, public policy, and business. This revolutionary model equips students to thrive in an ever-evolving world that demands business leadership and an understanding of harnessing technological change for social good.

“Tepper offers a more scientific-based approach to decision-making, which makes us unique in a changing global marketplace,” according to Dean Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou. Furthermore, its new home plays on Tepper School’s strength in analytics while encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration among management researchers from diverse disciplines.

Tepper Quad’s open spaces also contribute to creating an active and dynamic campus experience. Its transparent ground level activates street spaces, while critical areas above showcase student collaboration across campus. Furthermore, this significant new open space connects Forbes Avenue to historic green spaces on campus and CMU Mall – acting as a new central gateway.

The Future of Business Education

Business schools are shifting and adapting to the new global order in response to pandemic outbreaks that have altered their mission statement and caused them to rethink their teaching methods and reach. Online learning platforms provide them an avenue for global expansion, while international partnerships enable them to collaborate rather than compete to solve business challenges.

Tomorrow’s business leaders must understand cross-cultural issues and know how to make decisions that positively affect people and the planet. To meet societal requirements, business students must acquire knowledge in various subjects relating to government/politics/environmental/humanistic concerns/social change, etc. Additionally, the curriculum must be modified to incorporate these subjects and how they relate to management.

Due to increased competition among business schools, some will offer online and face-to-face classes, expanding their audience while cutting costs and providing students with more options. Furthermore, business schools will continue offering different learning routes such as short courses, non-degree programs, and certificates to provide flexible education that meets changing-era needs.

Business schools will need to emphasize soft skills more than ever before, as these cannot easily be replaced by technology and will become ever more important as time progresses. Mastery of these will enable individuals to navigate rapidly changing business environments successfully.

Societal demands will continue to put business schools under strain in the form of reduced carbon footprint, incorporation of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) into organizational cultures, and inclusion of healthcare management curricula as critical priorities for business schools in the future. Such changes will ensure their students are prepared for this ever-evolving world order.

As one solution to these difficulties, several business schools have formed the FOME Alliance, an initiative that unites like-minded institutions to collaborate on innovative teaching methods and learning solutions. For example, ESMT Berlin and Imperial College London have jointly introduced a virtual exchange program using Insendi as their cloud-based learning platform, allowing students to seamlessly move between virtual and face-to-face classroom environments.

The Tepper School’s Legacy

Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business provides undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees in business technology, global economics and business, analytics management leadership, and accounting finance. Students may pursue a Bachelor in Business Administration program full-time or part-time or choose from the various Master of Business Administration (MBA) options offered full-time or part-time.

The MBA curriculum is divided into four mini-semesters and provides core courses in analytics, leadership and communications, data science, operations management, and international business. Additional concentrations, such as Integrated Innovation for Products and Services, Leadership Organizational Effectiveness, and Computational Finance Business Technologies, may be added.

Students enrolled at the Tepper School of Business hail from various backgrounds, with approximately 16 percent hailing from financial services and 12 percent consulting, 10 percent having professional experience in new media, energy/clean tech manufacturing, and government, and six percent having studied or worked abroad. Furthermore, approximately one-quarter of the class has studied or worked abroad.

Although part of Carnegie Mellon University, the Tepper School of Business exists as its unit with its own admissions committee and faculty. Their selection process considers six factors to be “very important” when choosing students: high school rigor and GPA, as well as class rank, recommendations, essays, extracurricular activities, paid work experience, as well as legacy status (although this latter factor does not factor in).

Steidel attributes the change to their legacy policy to the fallout from last year’s Varsity Blues scandal, in which parents used bribery and testing fraud to influence admission decisions for their students. He stated that the university wanted to protect its reputation.

Contrary to many business schools that rely on case-method teachings for decision-making instruction, the Tepper School of Business pioneers analytical decision-making using management science models as its approach. This methodology plays to their strengths, while collaboration between schools and centers is integral to its academic philosophy.

Cornell’s revised position on legacy status brings it in line with some other top universities: California Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology do not use legacy status in admission decisions, while Cornell, Duke, and Stanford Universities still consider legacy status when making admission decisions – along with other colleges with longstanding alumni preferences.

The Tepper School’s Mission

The Tepper School aspires to develop individuals’ leadership and problem-solving abilities while increasing their value to organizations and society. This mission is accomplished through general management programs and academic research into improving business practice. Furthermore, experiential learning opportunities, community building among diverse learners, and connection building to alumni networks worldwide all play a part in its work.

The curriculum at our school focuses on five core areas of intellectual growth: analytical thinking, communication, decision-making, entrepreneurship, and teamwork. Students attend classes covering these five disciplines, such as organizational behavior and communications courses, that give an in-depth view into how people collaborate in various settings while honing soft skills necessary for business success.

Carnegie Mellon is well known for its groundbreaking research, and this innovation can be seen through its unique teaching methods. Instead of using case study methodology as its teaching approach, this school uses “management science” to teach its students how to make effective business decisions combining theoretical analysis with practical applications to discover what works and what doesn’t.

Tepper School students can tailor their MBA degree to fit their career aspirations through its various elective courses, which allow them to tailor it specifically. One such elective track, Carnegie Tracks, provides a curated selection of courses, experiential learning opportunities, and potential capstone projects focused on particular aspects of the business world – these may include Business Analytics which teaches how to utilize data effectively within business settings or Technology Leadership which equips graduates for 21st-century technological change.

Tepper School students benefit from its emphasis on entrepreneurship and teamwork to equip them for the real-world challenges they’ll encounter during their careers. Experience can also be gained via The Management Game program, which gives students three years to run a computer-simulated company from beginning to end. In addition, internship opportunities exist within its Transitional Economies Program and opportunities to study abroad through this school’s Transitional Economies Program.

The Tepper School boasts impressive employment and placement statistics for its graduates, many finding work in e-commerce, entertainment, finance, and technology industries. Furthermore, an expansive alumni network offers ongoing career support.