Course Information

Service leadership and innovation is a cutting-edge graduate program designed to provide graduates with the capability to transform their service organization. Service is no longer a subset of manufacturing era thinking. Today, it is a new thinking system that examines and produces change across the totality of organizational environments and the economy. The global environment imposes huge responsibility on leadership. Leaders at all levels of an organization must be capable of creating and innovating new service ideas, practices, and policies; building and utilizing sophisticated human capital assets wisely; designing, aligning, and implementing new strategic focus; building experiences that produce value for the consumer; and producing performance outcomes second to none through overall service leadership. Trends, which drive the need for changes, include connectivity, information access, other technologies, globalism, new sources of revenue, customer experimentation, networking, customer activism, and more. In all, customers expect to receive value in all their service experiences. As such, the MS in service leadership and innovation fills an emerging need in the many service businesses and industries that focus on understanding various customer relationships. The program is flexible.

Five core courses (20 quarter credit hours) are required. The choice of professional electives and concentrations from a wide array of disciplines—including information technology, quality and applied statistics, business, project management, and human resources—respond to individual student needs.

Both full- and part-time study is available and scheduling is flexible with courses offered in the evenings and on weekends, and both on campus and online. Full-time students may complete the MS program within three quarters (one academic year). The program also is offered in the executive leader format. This is a broad-based, cross-disciplinary program. Careful selection of courses can provide unique educational preparation for individuals in varying service industries. An individualized, professional concentration might include courses from human resource development, computer science, information technology, project management, or the MBA program in the E. Philip Saunders College of Business.

The student may choose to earn a graduate certificate in statistical quality through the Center for Quality and Applied Statistics in the Kate Gleason College of Engineering. A research thesis project that provides a capstone to the program is guided under the mentorship of faculty and/or working professionals in the various disciplines represented in the professional concentration.

Most individuals working in service-based industries will find no need to take bridge courses to fill any course work they are lacking from their undergraduate preparation..

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