Expanding with Intent

Purdue University Fort Wayne’s Doermer School of Business now offers a Master of Business Administration concentration to students and professionals.
Jan 3, 2024
Heather Herron
Tim Brumbeloe

Purdue University Fort Wayne’s Doermer School of Business is already well-known for its rigor, broad curriculum and student-centric approach. Offering degrees ranging from accounting to hospitality management to marketing, the school currently serves more than 1,030 undergrad and graduate students. 

“We’re actually the only school of business in northeast Indiana accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business,” PFW Director of MBA Programs Chadi Braish says proudly. “It’s the highest level of accreditation that a school of business can receive. Only 6% of schools in the world have achieved it. Our peers are places like University of Michigan, Purdue West Lafayette and Indiana University Bloomington.”

Starting with the spring semester, PFW has added to its offerings within the Master of Business Administration program. In addition to finance, business analytics, human resources management and engineering management, students can now earn an MBA with a concentration in health care management. It’s especially ideal for people already working in the health care industry who want to take the next step in their career. 

“There’s this common misconception that students have to have an undergraduate degree in business to go for an MBA. That’s not true at all. It’s a degree for everyone,” says Braish. “This allows someone who has a degree in nursing, for example, to pick up business acumen, good decision-making skills, critical thinking skills, and a little bit of the health care administrative side of things with some hands-on experience in finance and analytics. They get to bridge their technical knowledge with some of the business knowledge. Especially in a health care environment when decisions need to be made quickly and efficiently — that’s where this MBA comes into play.”

“When we’re looking at this specific area in health care, it makes perfect sense to offer this since there’s a strong demand for health care-related jobs in the area,” adds Doermer School of Business Dean Nodir Adilov. “We have observed that many of our business students are interested in health care as a career path because it offers an expansive range of employment opportunities.”

In addition to providing opportunities for students, Adilov says this program will help meet the needs of northeast Indiana employers as well. He sees it as a win-win situation.

“As an educational institution, we serve the region in a way that contributes to its economic development of the region. We develop talent and help our students reach their potential in terms of their educational goals, career goals and their knowledge. As we’re doing it, we need to take into account that today’s world is changing all the time. The demands are changing, so we systematically review our programs and match what our students want with what the workforce needs,” stresses Adilov. 

Braish, who himself earned an MBA from PFW, says the quality of faculty members and small class sizes allow students to learn in an environment where they get not only a classroom education, but real-life experience. 

“There’s something really special about being able to raise your hand and ask a question of someone that has a Ph.D. in their specialty; and when they answer it spurs a new discussion for the class,” he says. “Someone who’s just graduated with any undergraduate degree has a lot of the theory ready, and then you put them in the same classroom as someone who has 10, 20, 30 years of professional experience — that conversation becomes really fantastic. Experience and theory come together and that’s where the MBA thrives. It’s about building those networking connections and having really 

frank discussions of how it should be done versus how it is actually done.”

The hybrid classes will typically meet on campus during the evening every other week. As enrollment increases, so will course offerings. University leaders expect demand to grow as more people learn about the new degree concentration and PFW’s commitment to developing future business leaders.

“The way we measure success will be reaching the objectives that we’re trying to achieve. Are students successful? Are they getting the necessary knowledge and skills that make them successful not just in the short term, but in the long term? Will they be progressing at the rate that they hope to progress? We believe that as long as we are helping our students to reach their goals, we’ll be seeing its impact in the region,” Adilov says. “We believe that we already have a positive economic impact on the area, but always want to amplify that impact and continue to increase our contribution to the region.” 


Purdue University Fort Wayne

Address: 2101 E. Coliseum Blvd., Fort Wayne, Indiana 46805

Phone: (260) 481-6472

Website: pfw.edu/business

Email: busadvisor@pfw.edu

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