The Campaign for Sustained Leadership

Wharton has launched a groundbreaking series of initiatives on the West Coast, including a California-based executive MBA degree, courses for traditional MBA students, internships for undergraduate students, expanded executive education offerings, and faculty research projects.

The initiative, called Wharton West, includes the following:

• A San Francisco-based executive MBA (WEMBA) program is scheduled to begin this fall. The MBA will include a flexible schedule to accommodate traditional, full-time executive MBA students as well as fully employed ones.
• The opportunity for Philadelphia-based students to spend a semester in California as Wharton increases its course offerings. Philadelphia students will also have the option to complete their MBA requirements while relocating to California.
• Expanded West Coast MBA student summer internship opportunities that will give students hands-on leadership experience with West Coast start-ups and venture capital firms.
• Increased access to Wharton undergraduate students, including students from the Jerome Fisher Management & Technology Program, via stepped-up West Coast internship efforts for undergraduates.

Executive Education will also boost its West Coast offerings. Specifically, senior faculty will be available to conduct on-site, customized executive training for firms seeking the latest knowledge for successful practice in the new economy.

Additionally, Wharton has launched a new platform for executive training through the Wharton e-Fellows program. This initiative, which includes a week-long component in Northern California, offers focused study on electronic commerce in a format that allows students to continue their full-time management duties.

Wharton West will also heighten West Coast-based faculty research. Leadership development programs will be designed and presented by senior Wharton faculty, bringing focused expertise to practitioners in the region's fastest-growing and most-promising companies and providing faculty with opportunities to study management practice and test emerging theories.

The initiative also encourages direct partnership between Wharton faculty and West Coast firms. Individual faculty or multidisciplinary faculty teams will work directly with executives and managers to analyze data, product design and management processes to strengthen technology-based companies' performance.

"With Wharton West, the school is responding directly to market forces," says Dean Patrick Harker, "by bringing the best of Wharton's resources to emerging markets and developing industries. We recognize that our faculty, students and programs must be able to work first-hand on the West Coast, and this gives us a historic opportunity to expand our leadership in business education and service in one of the world's most important markets."