From young adults who are fresh out of undergraduate school to working professionals with years of experience, the students who enroll in Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs make up a diverse group. For MBA program professors and administrators, trying to meet each of these students’ needs can be a herculean task.
But for Kelly Riesenmy, PhD, a professor, MBA program director, and School of Business chair at Mid-America Christian University, rising to that challenge is one of the most rewarding parts of her job. And she knows her colleagues feel the same.
“MACU has the nicest, sweetest people you’d ever want to work with,” Riesenmy says. “Our instructors will work with students. … We want people to succeed and we want to be a part of it, because it brings us joy.”
Riesenmy has been with MACU since 2013 when she started as an adjunct professor. But even then, helping many types of professionals meet their goals was nothing new. She has spent her whole career doing just that.
Finding Purpose at the Intersection of Business and Psychology
Riesenmy’s love for business administration started at an early age, after her father launched a family heating and air conditioning business in their hometown of Joplin, Missouri. Riesenmy’s brother now owns the company, but she frequently advises the firm’s leadership on human resource operations, employee benefits, and other areas where she has expertise.
“I saw from the ground up how business worked,” Riesenmy says. “But my other interest is in people, how they work, and all the nuances of motivation.”
Driven by that passion, Riesenmy earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology, discovering the appeal of industrial-organizational psychology along the way. As her studies continued, she found even more to love about her new field.
“As God would have it, I was also interested in the clinical aspects of psychology, human behavior, and research,” she says. “So when I graduated with my undergrad, I wanted to start working in the area just to get to know it better.”
Riesenmy enrolled in a Master of Arts in Psychology program in 1987. She wouldn’t jump into business administration quite yet, but the work she did at this point in her career would come to shape her approach to organizational leadership.
Gaining Perspective on Leadership in the Healthcare Industry
While she pursued her master’s studies, Riesenmy worked as a research coordinator and clinical assistant at a Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center in Kansas City. She supervised research technicians, helped secure grants, ran support groups, and conducted psychiatric interviews and other clinical tasks. On any given day, she could be found supporting everyone from those struggling with substance use disorders to patients who had recently had their larynxes removed.
Navigating a Public Health Emergency With Compassion
Around this time, the world was just a few years into the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic. The stigma attached to AIDS was at an all-time high, and many treatments were in their infancy. Delivering care and education to those battling the disease was a major challenge. Given her background and interests, Riesenmy was asked to serve on the VA’s AIDS task force.
“That led to some administrative roles, because we had to develop HIV pre- and post-test counseling and develop some protocols and processes,” she says. “I really enjoyed the administrative side of that role.”
Riesenmy quickly moved up to become coordinator of the VA medical center’s entire HIV/AIDS program. In this role, she worked to ensure patients received high-quality care and medical professionals received the training they needed to be able to provide it. For Riesenmy, this was a powerful lesson in empathy and cooperation.
“I think God used it to get through to me and get me to where I have the mindset I do today,” she says. “God’s faithful in that way. He loves to shape us. I would have been a totally different person had I not had some of those earlier experiences.”
The Pivot to Consulting and Education: Riesenmy’s Impact on MACU’s MBA Program
Equipped with a strong sense of mission and a new set of administrative skills, Riesenmy pivoted to a career in consulting, primarily within the healthcare sector. Over the years, she’s helped organizations big and small implement new training programs, conduct gap and leadership analyses, and manage their human resource operations.
In 2011, Riesenmy further expanded her skill set and earned her PhD in Organizational Leadership. Since then, she’s focused her efforts on passing on her wisdom to the next generation of business leaders in the classroom, teaching higher education courses on topics that include organizational behavior and human resource development.
Riesenmy continues to help organizations provide top-tier services through consulting work and by contributing to research articles on a range of leadership topics. And as a program director at MACU, her administrative acumen has been essential in keeping the MBA program up to date and focused on students’ success.
Streamlining MACU’s MBA Program
Recently, Riesenmy and her colleagues completed an effort to streamline the MBA program and reduce its credit hour requirements for graduation. Now students can earn their MBA in just 14 months.
“We really wanted to focus on adult students who have adult issues in life like a career and kids,” Riesenmy says. “The idea is to be effective in delivering a high-quality program of study in the shortest amount of time and for the least amount of dollars.”
To strike that balance, Riesenmy and her colleagues designed an 18-hour core curriculum that, while accelerated, is built around the rigorous standards set forth by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC).
“The core covers economics, finance, accounting, strategic business management, operations management, and management science, all those things that are essential to an MBA,” Riesenmy says.
To fill out the rest of their schedules, students take 12 to 15 credit hours in their chosen area of emphasis for a total of 30 to 33 credit hours. The seven emphasis options are AI-Enabled Management (30 credit hours), Communication (30 credit hours), CPA Accounting (33 credit hours)/Management Accounting (30 credit hours), Healthcare Management (30 credit hours), Human Resource Management (30 or 33 credit hours), International Business (30 credit hours), and Strategic Business Management (30 credit hours).
On the CPA Accounting track, students take the additional three credit hours to prepare for the CPA Exam. Students on the Human Resource Management track can do the same to prepare for the Society for Human Resource Management’s certified professional (SHRM-CP) and senior certified professional (SHRM-SCP) exams.
“Our scheduling wizards did a great job,” Riesenmy says. “Students begin with their first two emphasis courses before they start their core. The fun thing about graduate school is you get to focus on the topic you really love. This way, students start with courses they are most interested in for their graduate studies.”
A New Degree Emphasis for the AI Economy
One of the other recent changes Riesenmy and her team have made is the creation of a new area of emphasis: AI-Enabled Management. This track helps managers and other leaders learn how to leverage artificial intelligence to improve decision-making and streamline operations, all while keeping ethics, biblical principles, and human judgment at the forefront.
“At the heart of it is a lot of upskilling and reskilling, because people are going to start finding many entry-level jobs replaced by AI,” Riesenmy says of the new track. “If we can help people acquire the knowledge, skill set, mindset, and concepts behind AI, we can give them an opportunity to use it and be fluent with it.”
Despite making these recent large changes, Riesenmy says MACU’s commitment to its students keeps her and her colleagues always looking for new ways to improve.
“We are very concerned about continuous quality improvement,” she says. “Our heart is in seeing people succeed in life.”
Invest in Yourself and Your Career at MACU
Overseen and fine-tuned by passionate faculty members such as Kelly Riesenmy, PhD, the Master of Business Administration program at Mid-America Christian University teaches students the skills they need to navigate tomorrow’s business landscape. And with the option to complete your degree 100% online or by taking one evening class per week, you can invest in your future on your own schedule.
To find out more about enrollment, the curriculum, or either the certified public accountant (CPA) or the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) certification option, reach out to MACU today.
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