This is not your father's MBA

What did you do last weekend?

Since January 1997, Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. have meant back to school for Lon Hagerup, a network engineer at research and engineering firm Science Applications International Corp., in Vienna, Va. Throw in the occasional Friday night class, weekly team meetings, classwork and presentations, term papers and finals, wife and child, weekend Reserve duty and his job, and you might bet good money that he relies heavily on caffeine. "No, strictly decaf," Hagerup insists.

Colin Callahan, on the other hand, confesses to drinking lots of real coffee. Most nights you'll find him studying from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. Callahan, vice president at the information and engineering technology division at Dyncorp, a management consultancy in Fairfax, Va., found that the wee hours were better spent studying than sleeping.

In June, Hagerup, Callahan and 18 other classmates will be the first class to graduate with a Master of Science degree in technology management from George Mason University, in Fairfax. The 18-month program isn't just another advanced engineering degree - it's more like IT's answer to an M.B.A.

Tailoring management basics

With a curriculum geared toward the IT professional services and telecommunications industries, the program trains students to make long-term, strategic business decisions incorporating the IT perspective. The program also helps instill the kind of project management skills employers are clamoring for. Students must complete 36 credit hours in courses such as Technology Assessment, Evaluation and Investment; Research Methodologies; Planning and Control of Projects; and Global IT Management.

Evan Anderson, founding professor of the program, built a consortium of local high-tech companies to help design and implement the curriculum. Consortium members include Bell Atlantic Corp., Electronic Data Systems Corp., PRC, Inc. and Boeing Co. Each student accepted into the program must work for a consortium company willing to foot the $22,000 tab.

Jeanine Mercer, a program manager at Fairfax-based systems integrator and reseller BTG, Inc., successfully vied with six of her colleagues for one of the two spots their employer sponsored. Now upper management is taking more interest in her newly developed managerial skills. "Face time increased in the corporate ranks," Mercer says. Her bosses now include her in long-term projects and strategic goal discussions.

Paper is not the rule of thumb in this cutting-edge IT management program. Outfitted with the laptop computers provided as part of their tuition, students connect to a Windows NT LAN during class. The LAN gives students access to an electronic whiteboard and the World Wide Web.

Tackling issues as a team

Teamwork is just as essential to the program as it is to real-life IT issues. Group presentations are an important component of almost every class. Because each student has a busy schedule, negotiations among team members began from day one just to find a free evening to meet.

Harez Sadozai, a network engineer at Cable & Wireless PLC, in Vienna, Va., says the emphasis on team-building and interpersonal dynamics had an immediate impact on his professional life. "Now it's easier to identify different types of people - character types, issues and how to approach them," he says.

Sadozai used what he learned about team building to get a stalled Cable & Wireless project back on track. The project involved his management team, end users and an outside development team. Rather than going head to head with each group, "I sat down and looked at what were the wins for the developers and end users and [how] to quickly get these together," he says.

But face-to-face team dynamics and management make up just one aspect of the program's emphasis on teams. Mercer's favorite classes on team building and interpersonal dynamics also covered assembling dynamic, virtual teams via e-mail.

Because virtual teams lack face time and in-person feedback, the class found the e-mail topic a hot one. Speakingabout the uncertainty caused when the sender doesn't get a reply, Mercer says, "The class joke is now, 'What's the meaning of silence?"'

Although many classmates come from competing companies,"there's a high respect within the group," Callahan says. "We'd love to work with each other." Strategic partnering between classmates is not that far-fetched. As a result of the camaraderie and respect the students hold for each other, Mercer has started discussions with another classmate's company on business teaming.

"My hope and belief is that we have built friendships and professional relationships that will continue to grow and develop," Hagerup says, summing up most students' feelings.

What do the consortium companies expect from these students? Leadership. "A fair number will be presidents and CEOs," Anderson says. That's why the consortium invested in this program and in their employees' futures. It's also why giving up Saturday for 18 months is not a lot to ask for a lifetime of possibility.

Prencipe is an attorney and freelance writer in Springfield, Va. She can be reached at LWPrencipe@aol.com.