Curriculum
The curriculum is a combination of a required core in service management plus concentration courses. It also contains elective courses appropriate for the candidate's background and interests, and either a research thesis or a graduate project. Course offerings generally are scheduled on evenings or weekends, and also are offered during the summer and online to facilitate part-time students. Program requirements
The MS in hospitality-tourism management shares several of the same core courses used in the MS in leadership and innovation. These courses introduce the major concepts associated with all aspects of service management, whether they are applied specifically to the hospitality-tourism industries or the wider service amalgam. This commonality becomes even more evident when the nature of the concepts is depicted. Among the general concepts investigated are service strategy formulation and delivery (understanding and co-creating customer value, innovation and creativity, service leadership, service design implementation, and metrics development), customer-focused research (understanding what customers value, building service environments, and change in service organizations), and human resource issues (workforce development training and evaluation, human capital development, and metrics for evaluation).
The core courses facilitate the paradigm shift from manufacturing to service and move the focus from traditional organizational structures to an organization where employees must provide several functions, sometimes simultaneously. This multifunctional approach provides a new avenue to examine service organizations and explore such issues as teamwork, learning organizations, organizational change, performance metrics, and customer relationship management.