“Our MBA programme has changed to become more practice focused”

Dr Marisa Smith is the Director of Strathclyde Executive Education and Development (SEED), and responsible for all Strathclyde’s MBA programmes and executive education. She shares her role and responsibilities and how the history and current ethos of Strathclyde Business School combine to make the Strathclyde MBA stand out from its competitors

What’s your role and what does it involve?

I am the Director of Strathclyde Executive Education and Development (SEED). This entails looking after our MBA offerings as well as Continuous Professional Development, short courses and tailored corporate executive programmes.

What changes have you seen in the MBA?

I have been involved in the MBA programme for over 13 years. Through this time, it has changed and evolved so much to keep up to date with the changing needs of businesses as well as to keep at the forefront of academic research. While the foundational elements of good management practice are everlasting, the way in which we do it changes – for example, how we respond to the rapid development of AI and how that impact on businesses, ethics and society or how to make meaningful change considering the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Our MBA has gone through some recent changes to make it more practice focused, including the introduction of two challenge-based modules. The Consulting Impact Challenge allows students to develop their consulting skills and work on several real-life company-based problems. We work closely with our business communities to help them solve problems within their organisations while simultaneously allowing students to gain relevant authentic consultancy experience. The Boardroom Challenge explores a more strategic level challenge that organisations may be facing. Students not only get to consolidate their consulting skills but also develop competencies in the communication and influencing skills required to make change at board level.

What else does SEED offer?

We also work with organisations to design bespoke corporate MBAs. Our previous corporate MBAs have included Iberdrola, William Grants and Sons, and the Weir Group. A key part of our approach to corporate MBAs is that we collaborate and co-create with our corporate partners to design, deliver and develop programmes that support the organisation to realise their goals. SEED also runs open specialised MBA programmes such as our MBA in Sustainable Energy Futures, which was developed with leading academics working with industry partners to tackle some of the key issues facing the industry right now. We also offer short courses specific to organisational needs and have designed custom-made solutions for organisations such as Leonardo (defense), Enable (third sector) and Johnstone Carmichael (finance).

What makes the Strathclyde MBA special?

The Strathclyde MBA stands out due to it being one of the longest running MBAs with over 50 years’ experience in the development and teaching of MBA students. We have been AMBA accredited for over 40 years and the Business School, as a whole, was the first business school in Scotland to achieve triple accreditation. We have always been innovative in our approach to MBA development and delivery, for example, being the first one year full time MBA in the UK in 1966 taking in a diverse cohort of students. We also won the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement in 1993 as a result of our international expansion with our international centres.

What else makes SBS stand out as a business school?

Our MBA students benefit from our innovative Global Practitioners initiative: our Global Practitioners are a new class of colleagues who connect the academic and commercial worlds. They come from a diverse range of industries and backgrounds, reflecting the broad nature of subjects addressed in our general management programmes and the rich variety of students and colleague profiles in our learning environment. Our Global Practitioner initiative was shortlisted for AMBA’s Best Innovation Strategy Award in 2024.

This award was introduced by AMBA to recognise and reward game-changing new practices, risks and creativity around a school’s programmes, so we were especially delighted to be recognised in this category.

The Global Practitioners work across all MBA centres, but our international centres also have Local Counsellors who support the Strathclyde Faculty in contextualising the learning for the local environment. On our MBA we have Strathclyde Faculty who travel to our international centres to teach face-to-face. The Local Counsellors support students in-country to allow further consolidation and reflection on their learning.

Our MBA also allows students to personalise their learning through our electives and Summer School. The electives allow students to gain expertise in additional topics or they can deep dive into a subject that they found interesting in the core MBA.

Our electives are refreshed annually and are available at our main Glasgow campus and across our international centres, including Dubai. The Summer School, hosted each year in Glasgow, is a particular highlight for our UAE students.

We also recognise that many of our MBA students undertake their studies alongside their full-time jobs so we have a degree of flexibility in our programme to allow completion of the MBA. Our staff are very skilled in meeting the needs of students who are managing competing demands on their time.