The Course Books

I originally meant this blog to focus not so much on me, but on the program. I meant this blog to be a resource for perspective students and new students in the program. Instead my posts have tended to focus on my own experience and feelings. While I find this interesting, you might not.

So let’s get back to basic information about what students actually experience in the program. First, let me talk about the class course books . . .

At the start of the semester, the program gave us a big, sturdy plastic bag containing everything we need for the semester. This included a large 3-ring binder to store class notes and such. It’s professionally done with that trademark burnt orange color on the cover.

Also in the bag were all the text books needed for that semester’s courses plus a course book for each class.

Each instructor makes up the course book for his or her class. The course book is spiral bound and also has that burnt orange cover. It includes the course syllabus plus any articles or other materials the instructor wishes to give the students. For each course the syllabus includes things like the instructor’s contact information, the grading system, the topics of each session, and maybe homework assignments.

The course book for Dr. McCann’s project management class is thin, only 40 pages or so. It has a single article, which is from the Harvard Business School. But Dr. McCann’s class also includes 3 actual text books.

Prof. Haunschild’s organizational management class had no actual text books, but its course book is pretty big. It contains reprints of literally dozens of articles on management. Look for an entire post just on the materials for her class in the near future.

That 3-ring binder is great for holding the hand-out material from each class session. Prof. Haunschild passes out copies of all her materials and slides, already 3-hole punched. Dr. McCann posts .pdfs of his materials to Blackboard and if we want to have hard copies he expects us to print them out on our own.

The executive masters program at UT does everything they can to make the logistics easy. By providing all the books and materials for us, they really have helped us out tremendously. There’s no need to go digging through a book store and there’s no extra expense for books. It really couldn’t be any easier unless they provided everything in .pdfs on a thumb drive, and that’s really probably expecting too much.