DePaul University's Kellstadt Graduate School of Business is launching two new technology- related areas of study in its highly ranked Master's of Business Administration (MBA) program.

     Kellstadt, the seventh largest business graduate school in the country with 2,500 master's degree students, began offering an MBA concentration in Electronic Business in January and will offer an MBA concentration in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in the fall.

     "The new MBA concentrations in E-Business and ERP are part of Kellstadt's efforts to offer innovative programs of graduate business study that prepare students to work in an economy forever altered by the technology revolution," said Arthur Kraft, Kellstadt dean.

     The need for MBA students to become technologically savvy is underscored by the U.S. Department of Commerce's June 1999 report, "The Emerging Digital Economy II." The report estimated that by 2006, almost half of the U.S. workforce will be employed by industries that are either major producers or intensive users of information technology products and services.

     The new MBA concentrations build on DePaul's already solid reputation as a provider of practical, cutting edge graduate degree programs for working professionals. Last fall, DePaul's School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems (CTI) launched a Master's Degree Program in E-commerce Technology, believed to be the first graduate program of its kind in the nation. While CTI's master's degree trains students in the technologies that support Internet commerce, the business school's new E-Business MBA concentration teaches students to solve business problems involving the emerging digital economy and to define E-Business global strategies.

     Sasa Dekleva, an accountancy professor who oversees the new E-Business concentration as administrator of Kellstadt's Management Information Systems programs, said the new program responds to the needs of MBA students and their employers.

     "Many of our MBA students work for large corporations and are being put in charge of defining electronic business strategy for their companies," he said. "Others are migrating to start-ups and they want to know how to develop new business models that will make them successful doing business on the Internet. As a result, more students are seeking knowledge and competencies in E-Business. Our goal is to educate students for this new digital economy."

     The other new concentration, Strategic Management Using ERP, will "prepare students to use state-of-the-art decision making tools that rely on real-time data to help their firms stay competitive," said DePaul Economics Professor Thomas Donley, who oversees the new concentration. Students take core MBA classes and a sequence of ERP concentration classes in value chain and introduction to ERP systems, customer relationship management and E-Business, business engineering and change management, and strategic enterprise management.

      Donley was appointed Jan. 1 as director of the Kellstadt's new Business Technology Center and will guide the future direction of the school's technology initiatives, which also include plans to expand the use of distance learning technology at the school.

     DePaul's part-time MBA program was ranked fifth in the nation in U.S. News & World Report's most recent graduate school rankings and its entrepreneurship program was ranked No. 2 in the country by Success magazine.

     For more information about Kellstadt MBA programs and applying online, see: Kellstadt web site or e-mail mbainfo@wppost.depaul.edu.