Johnson School Increases Emphasis on Sustainability and AI for Two-Year MBAs
Beginning with the class of 2027, students in the Two-Year MBA program at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management will be required to take 1.5 credits of sustainability courses, selecting from a broad, discipline-based selection of qualified options. In addition, the school will expand experiential learning offerings for the Two-Year MBA, ensuring students have access to a wide-ranging selection of courses and hands-on experiences.
These changes came about as a result of a year-long, comprehensive curriculum review of the Two-Year MBA led by Glen Dowell, Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and senior director of MBA and MPS Programs at Johnson. “Every year we look at what courses are succeeding, what courses are over-enrolled, what we need to add, and we need to refresh or even remove,” said Dowell. “The curriculum never sits still; it’s always evolving.”
In addition to an ongoing assessment, Dowell said, “Every so often, you need to step back and ask: ‘How is it doing in a broader sense?’”
To that end, Dowell and a curriculum review committee made up of faculty who represent different disciplines conducted conversations with a broad spectrum of Johnson School stakeholders, including faculty, students, Advisory Council members, and alumni. Committee members considered emerging markers of excellence for MBA programs in a changing business education landscape and also built on the strengths of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business across our three schools.
Dowell outlined the goals of the curriculum review:
- Assess whether there’s a gap between what students, recruiters, and alumni think are critical pieces of the curriculum and what we’re currently providing.
- Take a close look at the strengths of the SC Johnson College in delivering a strong curriculum.
- Consider not only what we offer, but how we offer it. Are we doing the best we can to engage the students? Are we giving the students the best chance to succeed, to be engaged, and to make the most of their time at Johnson?
One clear outcome: “Pretty much all of our stakeholders,” Dowell said, were asking the Johnson School to increase its focus on sustainability.
“This review focused on reimagining the second year of the MBA program, adding to the existing strengths of our core and immersion curriculum in the first year,” said Vishal Gaur, Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean of the Johnson School. “I am really excited about our faculty’s decision to emphasize sustainability and experiential learning in the second year. Additionally, our cross-disciplinary AI innovation awards reaffirm our mission to educate future business leaders and adapt to the evolving landscape for our MBA graduates towards sustainability, hands-on learning, and digital technology.”
An additional update to the curriculum came about as a result of Gaur’s call for proposals for innovative curriculum development. “Vishal wanted us to think of ways to incentivize faculty to engage with AI in a meaningful way in their courses,” said Dowell. Many faulty members responded and five proposals won Johnson School Faculty Curriculum Development Awards for their plans to incorporate applications of generative AI into their MBA and Executive MBA courses.
Integrating sustainability across disciplines
Rather than offer one required sustainability course for all to take, MBA students will have the opportunity to choose from a variety of courses in different disciplines to fulfill the new sustainability requirement, which will be implemented for students matriculating in fall 2025. “We want to meet the students where they are on the sustainability issue,” said Dowell.
The Johnson School already offers courses in sustainability that are popular with students, such as Strategies for Sustainability, taught by Dowell and Mark Milstein, clinical professor of management and director of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise. That course draws 35 to 40 percent of Johnson School students. Another is Topics in ESG Investing, taught by Antonio DeSpirito, visiting lecturer and a chief investment officer at BlackRock. Other existing courses include Organizational Change and Sustainability and a Finance and Sustainable Global Enterprise Colloquium, featuring in-depth presentations and interactive sessions with leaders on the cutting edge of sustainable finance.
The school will also develop new courses to expand its sustainability offerings. “I’m asking the chairs from multiple areas to develop courses that would fulfill this requirement,” said Dowell.
In addition, Dowell is looking to draw on faculty expertise within the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business’s sister schools to expand robust and diverse sustainability course offerings into new areas such as carbon accounting, climate finance, and traceability. The Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, for example, “has amazing sustainability expertise in sustainable food systems and financial markets,” he said.
Introducing GenAI into the curriculum
The five proposals that won Johnson School Faculty Curriculum Development Awards for incorporating AI tools and models into existing MBA and Executive MBA courses encompass various areas, such as finance, data ethics, coding using AI tools, and how to improve the accuracy and usefulness of GenAI models:
Arielle Anderer, assistant professor of operations, technology, and information management, and Yichun Hu, both assistant professors of operations, technology, and information management, will add sessions to the MBA core course, Data Modeling and Analytics, introducing the topics of predictive analytics using GenAI and data ethics in the context of GenAI.
Will Cong, Rudd Family Professor of Management, professor of finance, and founding director of FinTech at Cornell, will introduce applications of AI in fintech and digital economics to his MBA course, Demystifying Big Data and Fintech, and to his Executive MBA course, Introduction to FinTech, Finnovation, and Finalytics. In addition, he plans to have students work with a Large Language Model (LLM) that will become an “AI Economist” that allows the students to interact with the tool to get rigorous, referenced answers to critical economic questions.
Lutz Finger, visiting senior lecturer, has created a hands-on experience for students to build and fine-tune an AI tool that will grade them and their fellow students for his MBA and Johnson Cornell Tech MBA course, Designing Data Products. Students will discuss topics in ethics and human decision-making versus AI based on this exercise.
Sachin Gupta, Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Marketing, is incorporating resources such as ChatGPT and Google Trends into a widely used marketing analytics tool, the Marketing Mix Model, for his MBA course, Data-Driven Marketing, and Master’s in Business Analytics course, Analytics for Demand Management. In this way he will teach students methods for gathering data via application programming interfaces (APIs), coding using AI tools, using the data in statistical models, and critiquing findings.
Emaad Manzoor, assistant professor of marketing, is introducing students to the tools for leveraging private knowledge in GenAI through model fine-tuning and private data for his MBA course, Artificial Intelligence for Business Applications. His plan augments the course by showing how private knowledge such as transaction records, click streams, patient records, and other data can be used to improve the accuracy and usefulness of GenAI models.
New hands-on offerings for the second-year experience
A pioneer in performance learning, the Johnson School introduced its first semester-long immersion, a combination of coursework and real-world learning experiences focused on a specific field or industry, in the 1990s. Designed to deepen students’ expertise and prepare them for success, the school now offers five distinct immersions plus a customized immersion. All immersions include hands-on experiences such as field trips, competitions, client consulting projects, and global travel. Two-Year MBA students select an immersion for the second semester of their first year.
During their second year of study, students can opt to enroll in a variety of offerings to broaden their hands-on experiences and expertise—and the Johnson School plans to add more of these. “We’re expanding our second year experiential offerings so that students will be able to do a first-year immersion in, say, investment banking, consulting, or tech, and then in the second year do an experience in sustainability or operations,” said Dowell.
Dowell and his team are working with faculty who lead the immersions to construct second-year course offerings that will enable students to engage in “exciting experiential learning opportunities with live clients, with site visits, and the things that make those immersions so well received,” Dowell said.
“We’re excited about broadening students’ access to these critical areas,” Dowell said. “We think that offers a compelling outcome for students: They can spend the first year getting foundational skills in the core, then focus on their specific career path and internship success. In their second year, they can broaden and gain experience in a different area.”
Students also engage in experiential learning at the Johnson School by participating in leadership fellows programs and also through a variety of offerings, including expeditions like the Patagonia trek; coaching undergraduate students on Dyson Grand Challenges teams; and taking leadership roles in one or more of the school’s many student organizations.
“A lot of students do some really valuable experiential learning,” Dowell said. “Our next step is to actually track these, expand the offerings, and get as close as possible to 100 percent of our students to undertake an experiential learning opportunity.”