[Photo provided by David Henahan]
SARATOGA SPRINGS – On September 12 SUNY Cobleskill Presidents Marion Terenzio and SUNY Empire State College President Merodie Hancock announced an agreement to open a “seamless new pathway for business students to earn a graduate degree,” according to the official statement.
This agreement streamlines the process for qualified Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) students at SUNY Cobleskill to transfer into the Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Business Management program at SUNY Empire. Upon qualifying, SUNY Cobleskill BBA students are able to cross-register for up to nine credits of SUNY Empire MBA coursework. To qualify for cross-registration, BBA students must have completed 75 credits and have a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher.
“SUNY Cobleskill is dedicated to creating learning pathways tailored to continuous and suitable student progress from secondary school through to their desired goals. This new partnership with SUNY Empire State College gives our business students a valuable opportunity to continue seamlessly to a graduate degree program” said Terenzio.
“Today’s agreement with SUNY Cobleskill is all about getting students to complete their MBA in the most convenient, time and cost efficient manner possible, while at the same time, ensuring students receive the high-quality SUNY education they expect, need, and deserve,” said Hancock.
As to how this agreement came to be, Rosalyn Rufer, Ph. D. and interim associate dean of SUNY Empire State College explained, “Former SUNY Chancellor Zimpher repeatedly spoke about shared resources and ‘systemness’ at our SUNY University Faculty Senate Meetings. During one such meeting, I was sitting with Chuck Moran, department chair of Cobleskill’s business program; he was speaking about his business programs at Cobleskill. It gave me the idea of how we could partner and provide an accelerated program for this BBA students through our MBA program, similar to what we do with our BME (Business Management and Economics) students.”
With this accelerated program, full-time Cobleskill students can finish their master’s degree in two semesters. Aside from being a streamlined program, Cobleskill students are able to remain on their campus and avoid traveling to SUNY Empire and scheduling conflicts. All of the MBA classes are online.
“What makes this feasible is the 100 percent online delivery of the Empire State College MBA program,” Rufer said.
