iMBA Degree Requirements

Preparation is key to your success in this program. For successful completion of this program, all iMBA students are required to:

Complete 72 Credit Hours
Complete 4 Core Specializations
Complete 2 Focus Area Specializations
Complete 2 Specialization Capstones
Specialization Capstones can be from any of the six specializations completed. All courses in a specialization must be successfully completed to be eligible for the Specialization Capstone.
Complete the Program Capstone
Students are not eligible for the Program Capstone until they have completed 72 credit hours or are concurrently enrolled in the final courses that will bring them to 72 credit hours after completion. No exceptions will be made.
Complete Degree within 3 Years
The clock starts in your first term as a degree student (time spent as a non-degree is not counted). Our program is designed to take 2 to 3 years to complete.
Earn a Cumulative GPA of 2.75
This is the minimum GPA required to maintain good academic standing in each term and to graduate. Students who fall below this standard will be placed on academic probation. You will be dismissed by the Grad College if this happens in two consecutive terms.

Core and Focus Area Specializations

As mentioned above, we break our courses down into core specializations and focus area specializations. Below, you can find a list of courses in each specialization. Please visit the Planning & Advising section to learn more about degree planning and when our courses are offered.

Core 1: Strategic Leadership and Management

Leadership and Teams – BADM 508

Illinois Component: Develops and integrates fundamental behavioral concepts and theory having administrative applications; initially focuses on the individual decision maker and ultimately includes interpersonal, organizational, and social structures and influences; and develops strategies and methods of research on behavioral applications in business
Coursera Components: Foundations of Everyday Leadership and Applications of Everyday Leadership
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Managing Organizations – BADM 509

Illinois Component: Examines and analyzes the organization as a social system and the impact of its various components on work attitudes and behavior; topics include the development of organizational structures, organizational effectiveness, decision making and policy formulation, leadership, and change.
Coursera Components: Designing the Organization: From Strategy to Organization Structure and Managing the Organization: From Organizational Design to Execution
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Strategic Management – BADM 544

Illinois Component: Introduces concepts useful in understanding marketing systems and buyer behavior in addition to developing skills in making marketing decisions; the orientation is primarily managerial and uses examples from both business and non-business contexts.
Coursera Components: Business Strategy and Corporate Strategy
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Core 1 Capstone – MBA 590

0 Credit Hours; 2 Weeks in Length

Core 2: Managerial Economics and Business Analysis

Statistics Management Decision Making – BADM 572

Illinois Component: The application of classical and modern statistics for business decision making. The level of the course assumes some prior knowledge of basic statistics as well as facility with elementary calculus.
Coursera Components: Exploring and Producing Data for Business Decision Making and Inferential and Predictive Statistics for Business
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Microeconomics for Business – ECON 528

Illinois Component: Microeconomics for professional business students. Shows relevance of value and distribution theories for business managers. Includes demand and supply theory, consumer choice, production and cost theory, industrial structure, and was and capital theory.
Coursera Components: Firm Level Economics: Consumer and Producer Behavior and Firm Level Economics: Markets and Allocations
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Macroeconomics for Business – ECON 529

Illinois Component: Development of short run macroeconomic models; analysis of private sector behavior foundations and government policy alternatives; extensions for open economy models and growth models.
Coursera Components: Country Level Economics: Macroeconomic Variables and Markets and Country Level Economics: Policies, Institutions, and Macroeconomic Performance
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length Core 2

Capstone – MBA 590

0 Credit Hours; 2 Weeks in Length

Core 3: Value Chain Management

Marketing Management – BADM 520

Illinois Component: Introduces concepts useful in understanding marketing systems and buyer behavior in addition to developing skills in making marketing decisions; the orientation is primarily managerial and uses examples from both business and non-business contexts.
Coursera Components: Marketing Management I and Marketing Management II
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Process Management – BADM 567

Illinois Component: Introductory course in decision-making problems in production; includes the theoretical foundations for production management as well as the applications of decision-making techniques to production problems in the firm; and considers production processes, plant layout, maintenance, scheduling, quality control, and production control in particular.
Coursera Components: Operations Management and Process Improvement
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Managerial Accounting – ACCY 503

Illinois Component: Introduction to management accounting as part of the firm's information system, in terms of modern cost accounting and budgetary systems for planning and controlling business operations.
Coursera Components: Managerial Accounting: Cost Behaviors, Systems, and Analysis and Managerial Accounting: Tools for Facilitating and Guiding Business Decisions
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Core 3 Capstone – MBA 590

0 Credit hours; 2 Weeks in Length

Core 4: Financial Management

Financial Accounting – ACCY 500

Illinois Component: A managerial perspective of the nature and role of accounting in organizational measurement, reporting and control processes.
Coursera Components: Financial Accounting: Foundations and Financial Accounting: Advanced Topics
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Investment Finance I and II – FIN 511

Illinois Component: Introduction to investment analysis, including the theory and implementation of portfolio theory; empirical evidence on the performance of financial assets; evaluation of portfolio investment strategies; and the extension of diversification to international markets.
Coursera Components: Investments I: Fundamentals of Performance Evaluation and Investments II: Lessons and Applications for Investors
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Corporate Finance I and II – FIN 580

Illinois Component: Provides an understanding of the rich diversity of challenges that confront those creating new enterprises. Students will learn about managing growth while considering business models and cash issues, building the team with organizational and managerial issues
Coursera Components: Corporate Finance I: Measuring and Promoting Value Creation and Corporate Finance II: Financing Investments and Managing Risks
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Core 4 Capstone – MBA 590

0 Credit Hours; 2 Weeks in Length

Focus Area 1: Digital Marketing

Marketing in a Digital World – MBA 541

Illinois Component: This course will examine how digital tools, such as the Internet, smartphones, and 3-D printing, are revolutionizing the world of marketing by shifting the balance of power from firms to consumers.
Coursera Component: Marketing in a Digital World
2 Credit Hours; 4 Weeks in Length

Digital Marketing Analytics – MBA 542

Illinois Component: Theory and strategy behind marketing analytics for use in practical application
Coursera Component: Digital Analytics for Marketing Professionals: Marketing Analytics in Theory and Digital Analytics for Marketing Professionals: Marketing Analytics in Practice
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Digital Media and Marketing – MBA 543

Illinois Component: Learn the role of digital channels in an integrated marketing campaign and why you need a digital strategy. Interact with the content and learn from a variety of examples.
Coursera Components: Digital Media and Marketing: Principles and Digital Media and Marketing: Strategies
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Marketing in an Analog World – MBA 544

Illinois Component: This course will begin with an exploration of the key differences between the Analog and the Digital and then examine four ways in which the Analog World has been affected by the Digital Revolution: Domination, Resistance, Synergy, and Transformation.
Coursera Component: Marketing in an Analog World
2 Credit Hours; 4 Weeks in Length

Focus Area Capstone – MBA 590

0 Credit Hours; 2 Weeks in Length

Focus Area 2: Entrepreneurship and Strategic Innovation

Strategic Innovation – MBA 551

Illinois Component: Drawing from many of collective research in disruptions, this course will offer a set of frameworks, tools, and concepts in order to manage the unique challenges and develop innovative strategies while managing disruptive innovations so as to achieve leadership positions.
Coursera Components: Strategic Innovation: Building and Sustaining Innovative Organizations and Strategic Innovation: Managing Innovation Initiatives
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Fostering Creative Thinking – MBA 552

Illinois Component: Understand how to work effectively with other people to generate, evaluate, and pitch creative ideas so audiences are more likely to accept them.
Coursera Components: Creativity Toolkit I: Challenging Perspectives and Creativity Toolkit II: Creative Collaboration
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Entrepreneurship: From Startup to Growth – MBA 553

Illinois Component: Provides an understanding of the rich diversity of challenges that confront those creating new enterprises. Students will learn about managing growth while considering business models and cash issues, building the team with organizational and managerial issues.
Coursera Components: Entrepreneurship I: Laying the Foundation and Entrepreneurship II: Preparing for Launch
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Focus Area Capstone – MBA 590

0 Credit Hours; 2 Weeks in Length

Focus Area 3: Global Challenges in Business

Global Business Horizons – MBA 546

Illinois Component: This course focuses on understanding subsistence marketplaces and designing business solutions for the billions of people living in poverty in the global marketplace. To develop understanding of subsistence marketplaces, we use exercises to enable participants to view the world from the eyes of subsistence consumers and entrepreneurs, facilitate bottom-up understanding generated by participants, and provide insights from extensive research
Coursera Components: Sustainable Innovation for Subsistence Marketplaces and Sustainable Business Enterprises
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Global Impact – MBA 547

Illinois Component: Enables students to understand how globalization changes consumers at a psychological level, and provides tools for imbuing brands with cultural meanings that can resonate with global consumers. Examines the ethical bases of corporate decision making using critical ethical analysis, educate and create sensitivity about ethical issues in business.
Coursera Components: Global Impact: Cultural Psychology and Global Impact: Business Ethics
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Global Strategy – MBA 548

Illinois Component: Understand the forces of globalization and the importance of cross-cultural management in the relationship of a multinational organization; how firms adapt to, react towards, and shape the global economy.
Coursera Components: Global Strategy I: How the Global Economy Works and Global Strategy II: Doing Business in the Global Economy
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Focus Area Capstone – MBA 590

0 Credit Hours; 2 Weeks in Length

Focus Area 4: Business Analytics

Introduction to Business Analytics: Data and the Firm – MBA 561

Illinois Component: This course examines how the various styles of analytics, the differences between basic business intelligence and more advanced forms of analytics, data visualization methods and metrics design, a discussion of analytics collaboration, governance, and ethics. Students learn about how analytics is and can be used to optimize supply chains, improve sales and marketing, and improve talent effectiveness, financial performance, and IT operations.
Coursera Components: Introduction to Business Analytics with R
2 Credit Hours; 4 Weeks in Length

Introduction to Business Analytics: Communicating with Data – MBA 562

Illinois Component: Introduction to the science of business analytics while casting a keen eye toward the artful use of numbers found in the digital space.
Coursera Components: Introduction to Business Analytics: Communicating with Data
2 Credit Hours; 4 Weeks in Length

Data Toolkit: Business Data Modeling and Predictive Analytics – MBA 563

Illinois Component: Students will gain an understanding of the basic methods of business analytics by working with different tools and data sets. The course will emphasize applications over the mathematics of the methods. Students will get to apply methods using JMP, a menu driven software.
Coursera Components: Data Modeling and Regression Analysis in Business and Predictive Analytics and Data Mining
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Applying Analytics Across Business Functions – MBA 564

Illinois Component: Reviews applications of analytics and the changes that analytics can bring to the specific functional division of the firm. The main theme of this course is that subject matter expertise matters to framing the correct data problem, collecting data, analysis, performance metrics, and operationalization. The overview in each area will be followed by an in-depth project-based application and analysis exercise.
Coursera Components: Applying Data Analytics in Finance and Applying Data Analytics in Marketing
4 Credit Hours; 8 Weeks in Length

Focus Area Capstone – MBA 590

0 Credit Hours; 2 Weeks in Length

Other Courses

Program Capstone – MBA 591

0 Credit Hours; 4 Weeks in Length

Degree Planning

Your degree plan is an important step that will give you a road map toward graduation. Our dedicated Student & Academic Success Specialists will work with you throughout your iMBA journey to help you plan a degree path that will meet your professional and personal needs. Because you will need to budget 10 to 15 hours per week per course to complete the work, you should not take more than 1 to 2 courses at a time. Additionally, there are certain courses we recommend you not take together. For this reason, it is always a good idea to submit your degree plan to a specialist for review.

iMBA Resources

Fall Admit Sample Plans and Spring Admit Sample Plans
These documents cover options for a 2-, 2.5-, or 3-year plan. If you want to complete the program in 2 years, you must take 2 courses every 8-week session. Students on the 3-year track can take one course every 8-week session. However, you must double up on courses at least 4 times during the program.

Gies Online Programs Student Portal
Create a degree plan, view your completed courses and grades, and link out to commonly used platforms and resources. Schedule an appointment with a specialist to review your plan.

Annual iMBA Course Offerings
For your convenience, we provide you with an Annual View of iMBA Course Offerings to give you a good idea of when our courses are offered throughout the year.