Organization Development: MA, San Francisco and Los Angeles

As today’s business environment becomes increasingly complex and competitive, organizations are striving to discover more effective ways to increase their performance. A truly sustainable competitive advantage lies in continuously increasing an organization’s capabilities. This has been the core competence of the field of organization development for over four decades—whether the focus is on developing individual competencies, increasing team effectiveness, and/or realigning culture, management structures, systems, and practices to improve enterprise wide performance. 

Experienced organization development practitioners know that the optimal way to gain proficiency with the complex array of skills required for effective practice comes from experience and learning from more experienced practitioners.   This highly applied masters program leverages how professional practice competencies are acquired and applies it to the academic preparation and training of OD professionals. A 12-month progressive mastery supervised field work training component serves as the core educational component. Students progress through three phases of supervised field work in which they assume increasing responsibility for client facing and interventionist work. This supervised field work experience is augmented by a course curriculum that is delivered in a “just-in-time” strategy to increase relevance and optimize applied learning.  

This 38 unit MAOD program is designed for experienced, working adults. The principal goal of this program is to develop competent values-based organization development practitioners who are ready to perform effectively in professional roles as internal or external organization development consultants, human resources business partners, human resource development consultants, and/or leadership development specialists. It is delivered in an “accelerated format” on a year round basis and can be completed in 15-16 months. Coursework is scheduled primarily on weekends and week nights. Our MAOD students have 3-5 years of work experience and include early career human resource professionals, organization and management consultants who want to increase their professional practice competencies, as well as entrepreneurs, business leaders, and managers who desire to assist their organizations to perform more effectively and become better places to work. This program is also an excellent educational option for those working in fields like information technology, clinical psychology, social work, human services and business operations and who are seeking a career shift, or simply want to increase their effectiveness in their current roles.