UVA Darden Branching Out to Washington DC

The University of Virginia Darden School of Business (UVA Darden) has announced plans to offer its two executive MBA program offerings in the Washington DC area in a bid to increase the program’s accessibility.

Students accepted onto either the executive MBA (EMBA) or global executive MBA (GEMBA) programs at UVA Darden will have the option to base their studies at a new location situated just across the Potomac River from Washington DC in Rosslyn, Virginia, subject to approval from regional governing bodies in higher education.

“The new location’s proximity to Union Station and the DC-area airports, and the once-a-month residencies from Friday to Sunday, make the program easily accessible to executives commuting in from most US metropolitan areas or international gateway cities,” said UVA Darden’s dean, Scott Beardsley.

The school has also moved to reassure interested parties that opting for DC-area study will not see students compromise on the regular EMBA experience available on UVA’s main campus in Charlottesville, Virginia – the heart of which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. All executive MBA students will spend time at both locations regardless of where they choose to base their studies and the programs’ international residency components are to be unaffected.

Differences between Darden’s executive MBA offerings

UVA Darden’s EMBA encompasses at least one week-long residency overseas in Brazil, China, India or Europe, whereas its GEMBA allows students to spend a week in each of these four locations. Both programs run across a period of 21 months in total, but come with slightly different learning structures.

There are currently twice as many students set to graduate from the EMBA program at UVA Darden this year than the GEMBA, with 62 and 31 enrolled participants in each, respectively. However, the proportion of international students is 23% on the global EMBA, as opposed to 11% on the traditional EMBA. The average age on both programs for the class of 2016 is 36 and each class has an average of over 10 years of prior work experience. One global EMBA student in the class of 2016, journalist Mayra Rocha, was recently awarded an Emmy for her role as a producer in a Spanish-language report concerning a spate of student murders in Iguala, Mexico.

“The specific reason I really wanted to do this was I felt like I needed my mind to expand. I sincerely needed to learn different things and be challenged,” Rocha said by way of explanation for her desire to pursue an executive MBA.