MBA program comes to WKU's E'town campus

A Master of Business Administration program that requires no travel soon will be available for Hardin County and area residents.

Western Kentucky University’s campus in Elizabethtown will begin offering an MBA program this fall. The program was brought to the university’s Owensboro campus three years ago, and officials have decided to expand it to this satellite campus, said Bob Hatfield, associate dean of graduate programs and research at Gordon Ford College of Business at WKU.

“We’ve gotten pretty good at that, it’s been pretty successful,” Hatfield said.

HardinCounty residents have requested a local program over the years and there usually are one or two who drive to Bowling Green for the classes, he said.

The program is on a “professional” model, which means it has a weekend meeting schedule. Classes are every other Saturday, with one meeting in the morning and another in the afternoon.

There is a three-part delivery system for the 11 classes in the program, Hatfield said. Classes in Elizabethtown will meet with the students and instructor in Bowling Green through a high-definition video system. Students also meet with other students outside of class, and the classes will have an online component as well.

Faculty occasionally will travel to the Elizabethtown campus so local students can meet them in-person, he said.

WKU has 12 other graduate programs offering courses at the Elizabethtown campus in addition to online offerings, according to WKU’s website.

Applications for the fall semester are being taken now and interested students can visit www.wku.edu/mba for information.

Kelly Cantrall can be reached at (270) 505-1747 or kcantrall@thenewsenterprise.com.