MS in Human Resource Management and Development

Our curriculum aligns with the SHRM professional body of knowledge, science, and field tested competencies targeted for a successful human capital management career.

Our curriculum incorporates real-world trends and solutions, allowing students to effectively integrate learning from the classroom into the workplace.

Since its inception, our student chapter has won the SHRM Superior Merit award for the past five years due to their professional outreach, programming, and networking events.

All students take a set of eight core courses, which provide a solid foundation of business knowledge and skills.

Students will take one elective course as part of the degree program. This elective can be in any subject matter within the four concentrations or an internship course (if applicable).

Some students choose to pursue internships for academic credit (conditions apply). This provides them the opportunity to acquire professional experience and add a real-world perspective to their studies. The course complements on-site work at a corporation, nonprofit or governmental organization, educational institution, or small and medium sized company that provides an educational experience for the student, under faculty supervision. Students apply the knowledge acquired through their coursework to industry practice and explore career options.

Students apply knowledge from the core curriculum towards one of four areas of concentration. Selection is based upon a student’s personal interests and professional goals.

The Capstone experience allows students to synthesize the knowledge which they have acquired either through an extensive business simulation conducted in the Special Projects course or by completing a thesis.

This requirement will consist of an intensive exploration of the applied aspect of human resource strategy. Students will be assigned to teams each of which manages an organization that competes against one another in a Human Resources Management simulation. This affords students the unique opportunity to make decisions, assess outcomes, and make adjustments when necessary. The simulation can be programmed to simulate a profit or nonprofit organization that is in manufacturing or service. Typical decision variables involve wages, replacing employees, hiring, promoting from within, training costs for promotions, fringe benefits, budget for other activities, safety, employee participation programs, grievances, human resources information systems, performance appraisal programs, affirmative action program, production levels, overtime, employee morale, turnover, and absenteeism. Finally, students will be required to submit a detailed, written report on a case study analyzed over the course of the semester.

For students who intend to work for start-ups or small organizations and aspire to advance their HR generalist skills and competencies.

For students, especially those who currently work for, or intent to work for, multinational companies, and wish to develop competencies in global talent management processes and techniques.

For students who aspire to advance their skills in qualitative and quantitative data analysis, assessment and analysis planning, organizational alignment and development, and alignment of HR metrics with strategic corporate objectives.

For students who intend to aspire to advance their skill-sets in adult learning theory for the workplace and creating internal or external executive coaching programs.