Chicago Business School Brings its Highly Ranked MBA program to the Middle East

DePaul University’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business establishes its presence in the Middle East this fall when it opens an MBA program in Bahrain, becoming the first accredited U.S. business school to offer an MBA degree in the Arabian Gulf. The 16-month MBA program opens its doors on Sept. 7 at the Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance (BIBF), a leading executive training center in the region and DePaul’s partner in the educational endeavor.

A series of sixteen DePaul professors will travel to Bahrain to teach the program’s intensive courses to an initial class of 26 students. Bahrain, a nation encompassing an archipelago of 33 islands off the coast of Saudi Arabia, is known for its robust financial services and oil industry.

“The curriculum will focus on marketing and managing change, combining core MBA classes with courses in Internet marketing and e-business strategies; entrepreneurship and new venture management; corporate finance issues; and marketing research,” said Roger Baran, director of DePaul’s Asian and Middle East MBA programs.

Students who complete the program’s 16 courses—taught in two-week modules of 40 in-class hours each—will earn their MBA degree from DePaul. Class meetings and breaks between courses are scheduled to avoid conflicts with regional religious observances and holy days.

The first class of 19 men and seven women is composed of government officials from the ministries of commerce, health, and electricity and water, officials from the Court of the Crown Prince, as well as employees of the Bahrain Stock Exchange and numerous financial institutions. The average enrollee is 33 years old with nearly nine years of work experience.

The program is modeled after DePaul’s successful MBA offering at the International Bank of Asia (IBA) in Hong Kong. When it opened in 1997, this program, which focuses on banking and finance, was the first in-house MBA program in Hong Kong offered by a bank to its staff. The Hong Kong MBA program will open to the public as well as bank employees this fall.

The IBA is a subsidiary of Arab Banking Corporation (ABC), headquartered in Bahrain. Mike M. Murad, chief executive officer of the IBA and a DePaul trustee, introduced DePaul administrators to Michael Langton, director of the BIBF, thus forging the DePaul-BIBF partnership that created the Bahrain MBA program.

Kellstadt Dean Arthur Kraft said the partnership is a good fit. “There’s a tremendous need for graduate business education among Arabian Gulf professionals in high level management positions,” he said. “Bahrain’s financial services sector wants to increase the technological expertise of its managers. Business and government leaders are interested in nurturing an entrepreneurial mindset that will help the state develop new products and services. DePaul, with its global education outreach and highly ranked programs for working professionals, and the BIBF, a leader in continuing executive education in the region, are uniquely suited to launch this pioneering educational effort.”

Baran said DePaul’s students in Chicago benefit from the business school’s international MBA programs and alliances because they allow DePaul faculty to gain first-hand exposure to international business practices in a wide range of world regions.

“Our faculty has extensive understanding of the operations, trends and nuances of North American, European and Asian business markets,” Baran says. “The Bahrain program will widen the faculty’s perspective on international business to include the Middle East business culture, which they can then introduce into discussions in our Chicago classrooms, perhaps using case studies from businesses in the Gulf region.”