Discover the Difference
Leadership to Cultivate Cultures of Trust
This graduate degree program combines core leadership topics with the knowledge professionals need to assume management roles and influence cultures of trust and respect within their organizations.

MSM at a Glance
Admissions Requirements
Educational prerequisites for this program include an undergraduate degree from an accredited college or university.
Along with a completed admissions application, prospective students must also submit a current resume and an unofficial transcript from the accredited institution that awarded your bachelor’s degree.
To receive the MSM, you must:
- Successfully complete 11–12 courses within seven years from date of admission
- Students without a major in business or the appropriate professional experience must also complete MSMT 502, Foundations of Management

Tuition & Scholarships
Program tuition can be paid on a per-course basis. Tuition covers your course fees, final exam, and course materials.
Individual course: $3,300
Program: $36,300 (tuition may vary)
Scholarship opportunities for active-duty military personnel, veterans, and their spouses, African American financial professionals, women, and other qualifying groups are available. Discover scholarship opportunities.

What You'll Learn
Advanced degrees meld academic rigor with gained insights. Make a shift to become an effective organizational manager by enhancing your business skills, putting yourself in a position to rise to the next level of trust and leadership within your organization, and transforming high-valued teams.
The MSM Program’s deep focus develops masters in the management concepts, tools, techniques, and processes that equip professionals to evaluate and apply current strategies.
Your learning outcomes include:
- Reinforce interpersonal and leadership communications
- Integrate research skills with practical leadership applications
- Reinforce contemporary leadership in a dynamic team environment
- Align organization's core competencies to improve performance
- Model ethical leadership decision-making

Course Delivery
Complete the hybrid program in 18 months.
The program includes modern, dynamic e-learning with presentations and graphics, practice exams, and knowledge checks to both engage and help you retain the material.

The MSM is Right For You If:
Inside the MSM Program
Courses to Complete:
11-12
Typical Completion Time
18 Months
MSLS 510 Leadership Development Experience
This course examines two tracks. The first track is a foundational understanding of leadership. The second track is a review of the challenges of graduate student work and studies versus undergraduate work.
Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:
- Apply foundational knowledge to begin a journey into leadership
- Address any time management, research challenges, and technology skills, and learn policies regarding academic integrity/plagiarism
MSLS 511 Dynamic Organizational Leadership
Designed to help leaders understand and influence human behavior on an individual, interpersonal, and institutional level.
Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:
- Gain a knowledge of individual differences and how those unique characteristics affect each person’s thoughts, actions, and motivations
- Discern how it is not enough to simply understand people on their own, separate from others and their environment
- Examine how teams and groups have a powerful impact on their members, and people behave differently around others than they do alone. Similarly, organizational structures, systems, and cultures have a strong, but seemingly invisible, effect on what people believe, what people say, and what people do
- Determine how effective leaders know how to analyze and manage all these complex factors in order to achieve the organization’s objectives
MSLS 512 Ethics in Leadership
Explores four topics: ethical awareness, ethical analysis/ethical decision-making, current ethical issues in the financial services industry, and ethical management in an organization.
Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:
- Learn the skills required to make reasoned responses to ethical dilemmas, navigate daily and long-term ethical challenges, and build an ethical culture in an organization
- Explore the emotional influence on behavior and decisions
- Understand how you can learn from success and failure
MSLS 513 Law, Compliance, Benefits, Social Resp.
Investigates the basic legal and socio-ethical framework within which companies operate today. The course enables students to place their developing leadership skills within the practical context of business law, compliance and ethics.
Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:
- Understand ethical frameworks relating to business management and organizational effectiveness
- Examine corporate governance and stakeholder theory
- Explore government regulation of business, including constitutional law, product liability, and employer/employee relations
- Identify social issues impacting corporate strategy, such as consumer protections and internet law
MSLS 514 Communications and Leadership
Designed to help leaders communicate effectively by developing the credibility necessary to persuade and influence others.
Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:
- Demonstrate competence in verbal communication in a variety of situations, such as individual conversations, small group meetings, and large presentations, both face-to-face and virtually
- Demonstrate competence in written communication using text, instant messaging, email, social media, letters, proposals, and formal reports
- Possess emotional intelligence, a willingness to listen, as well as the courage to tackle crises and difficult conversations
MSLS 515 Personal and Interpersonal Lead. Skills
Focuses on leading and managing teams, thereby creating teamwork throughout the organization.
Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:
- Understand dysfunctions within a team that include absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results
- Demonstrate skills to plan, prepare, practice, review, analyze, assess, and strategize for expected and unexpected events as a team
MSLS 516 Management by Leadership
Students prepare and execute a project demonstrating in a real-world context the techniques learned within the program through leadership crisis management.
Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:
- Evaluate tools and a framework to guide the leader, organization and protect the core assets of the business through a crisis
- Explore crisis communication techniques, research-based methods to assist in preparing, prevention of and recovery from crises
- Develop a range of tools to increase competencies and confidence in an organizational crisis context
MSLS 517 Classic and Cont. Lead. Studies
Examines a wide range of leadership research and theories using a practical perspective.
Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:
- Apply and practice different approaches of leadership using case studies and questionnaires to gain knowledge and measure the individual’s leadership style
- Evaluate challenges from their prospective as the leader to determine how the theory contributes or fails to contribute to the leadership process or the organization
MSLS 518 Leading Strategy Development
Approaches strategic management from a practical perspective.
Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:
- Develop an understanding of business strategies along with formulation and implementation of major goals to better identify organizational initiatives
- Discuss real world examples to communicate important stages, components, and major roles of exceptional managers to gain and sustain a competitive advantage
MSLS 519 Decision-Making Leadership Skills
Focusses on the ability to gather and analyze data to form a strategy is essential in management.
Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:
- Examine two levels of analytics from a descriptive and predictive viewpoint
- Develop a working knowledge of analytics as it applies to business decisions within the field of management using spreadsheets, visualizations, and research
- Discuss database analytics, data visualization, forecasting techniques, and data mining
MSLS 520 Leadership Capstone Experience
This capstone course introduces tools and a framework to guide the leader and organization to protect the core assets of the business through a crisis.
Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:
- Prepare and execute a project demonstrating in a real-world context the techniques learned within the program through leadership crisis management
- Explore crisis communication techniques, research-based methods to assist in preparing for, prevention of, and recovery from crises
- Evaluate and apply a range of tools to increase competencies and confidence in the context of an organizational crisis
MSMT 502 Foundations of Management
This class is required for applicants whose bachelor’s degree is not in business and without any business experience. This foundational course includes nine online learning modules designed to equip students for success in the MSM program.
Modules include: Foundations of Communication; Foundations of Business Integration & Strategic Management; Foundations of Organizational Behavior; Foundations of Human Resource Management; Foundations of Finance; Foundations of Marketing; Foundations of Statistics; Foundations of Ethics; and Foundations of Academic Writing.
Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:
- Demonstrate mastery in topical key concepts and skills through post-tests
- Students may repeat each post-test an unlimited number of times during the 5-week session to earn a passing grade
- Students must pass every assigned module in the Foundation courses with a score of 70% in order to proceed to later courses in the MSM program
Learn From the Who's Who of Leadership Training

Daralee Barbera
EdD, CFP®, CMFC®, ChFC®, CPBC®, CLF®
Program Director, Master of Science in Management—Leadership
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Barbara A. Alston
DBA, MBA, SHRM-CP
Adjunct Professor, Master of Science in Management-Leadership
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Alfonso Cobb
EdD, MSPFP, MSAT, MSFA, CPBC®, CFEI®, MPAS®, CSM®
Adjunct Professor
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Jose Perez
EdD, MBA
Adjunct Professor of Organizational Leadership & Human Resource Development
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Jim Petersen
PhD, MSM, MSFS, CFP®, CLF®, ChFC®, CLU®, CASL®, RICP®, WMCP®, CRPC®, CAP®, ChSNC®, AEP®, CPMBC, CPBC
Roger Hull/James S. Bingay Chair of Leadership, Chartered Leadership Fellow (CLF) Program Director




Natasha M. Webster
PhD, MSHSA, MHA
Adjunct Professor of Organizational Leadership
Connect on LinkedIn1 Bureau of Labor and Statistics. 2022.
2 OfficeVibe.com. Four shocking statistics that every manager needs to know. December 1, 2022.
3 SHRM.org. Survey: 84% of U.S. workers blame bad managers for creating unnecessary stress. August 12, 2020.