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MBA Program Created for Stay-at-Home Moms

Posted on: Sunday, 19 March 2006, 18:00 CST

By Mary Ann Milbourn, The Orange County Register, Calif.

Mar. 18--Mid-career moms who take time out to raise children will have a new route to upgrade their job skills to get back into the work force: a morning MBA program.

Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business will roll out the new two-mornings-a-week program in August at its Irvine and West Los Angeles campuses.

The program is believed to be the first of its kind.

Linda Livingston, dean of the business school, said it was created in response to stay-at-home mothers who said they were having problems getting back into the work force.

"We thought, 'What a great market for our program to help that population,'" Livingston said.

Stay-at-home dads and people whose lives best fit a morning class schedule also will be welcome in the program.

Classes will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The curriculum is equivalent to Pepperdine's fully employed MBA, but will run 28 months instead of 24 to allow for two seven-week summer breaks.

Students will go through the program as one cohort, graduating in December 2008.

Participants will be assigned an executive career coach to help them through their career transition.

"In Southern California, there are tens of thousands of women with bachelor's degrees and several years of business experience who left the work force to start a family," Livingston said.

"The morning MBA program will enable those women to re-enter the work force with their MBA and a new skill set focused on leadership and addressing real-world business problems." Because the women won't have the same advantage as employed workers, whose companies often reimburse their tuition, Pepperdine is seeking companies to provide scholarships for them.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Orange County Register, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Orange County Register

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