The Cornell-Queen's Executive Master of Business Administration (CQEMBA) program offered by the Johnson School may add its first site outside of North America this year, with plans to provide instruction to managers and professionals in Colombia.

The program was first launched in 2004 by Cornell and Queen's School of Business, Kingston, Ontario, and is now available in more than 20 cities in the United States and Canada. The program awards MBA degrees from both institutions.

"In 2008 we added a second section so we could extend the program to places like New England and California," said CQEMBA Director Danny Szpiro, Johnson School assistant dean for executive education. "For the last couple of years we've had about 120 students joining the program each year."

The 16-month program offers 60 percent of its classes via multipoint interactive video conferencing and the other 40 percent in traditional classrooms.

Three Saturdays a month, teams of six to eight students go to Boardroom Learning Sites and "are connected to a broadcast studio in Sage Hall where the professor conducts the class," Szpiro said. A typical day is four hours of instruction followed by lunch and a four-hour class in a different course.

About 115 students, divided into two sections of about a dozen boardrooms each across North America, currently take Professor of Finance Andrew Karolyi's core managerial finance course.

"I deliver my course to all the boardrooms in all the different sections," Karolyi said. "I see the boardroom screens rotating in front of me, and each student has the capacity to electronically put up his or her hand and participate in the discussion. ... It's an intriguing challenge from an instructor's point of view. Obviously it's different from being in the same room, [but] the conversation has been as lively as in a regular classroom."

One of four MBA programs offered by the Johnson School, the CQEMBA allows professionals to earn a Cornell MBA without disrupting their careers or moving closer to campus.

"We have been fortunate in all the markets where we offer the program to attract some very accomplished managers and professionals," Szpiro said. "The program also fosters a great deal of camaraderie among the participants."

All students in the program come to the Ithaca campus and to Kingston three times, at the beginning, middle and end of the 16 months. Two groups of students recently spent a week attending classes on each campus.

"This learning model was actually developed by Queen's School of Business in 1994," Szpiro said. "Well over a thousand people had graduated from the program in Canada by the time we launched CQEMBA in 2004. Accordingly, we had a strong base and a lot of experience to leverage our partnership in this program."

In addition to Colombia, new boardrooms are being proposed this year for Austin, Texas, and San Diego and Sacramento, Calif.

"It's a compelling model for future MBA programs," said Karolyi, who also directs the Johnson's Emerging Markets Institute. "We can basically get it to people all over North America. Our program is filling up with people who want the degree from Cornell and Queen's."

Financial assistance for Colombian CQEMBA applicants has been approved by Colfuturo, which normally provides scholarship and loan support to Colombian students enrolled in full-time studies outside of the country.

Szpiro, Johnson School Dean Joe Thomas and associate deans visited Colombia over the past nine months to develop the program there, and Szpiro recently returned from leading three information sessions in Bogota and Medellin.

"We had about 25 people at each one, a combination of people interested in their own candidacy and some interested in sponsorship for senior managers in their organizations," he said.