Erik Hollander, MBA, Director of Strategic Growth and Business Development, Assistant Professor of Business, Healthcare Administration Lead
In April 2018 Concordia University Wisconsin broke ground on the Robert W. Plaster Free Enterprise Center’s 41,000 square-foot academic building to promote the future of where entrepreneurial collaboration and health care innovation can unite. This space will include a functioning medical clinic accompanied by incubator and collaboration space for business start-ups.
The three-story space will be opening in Fall 2019 and house the Batterman School of Business as well as the Next Generation Healthcare Leaders (NGHL) student group supported by the Wisconsin Chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives. The business school has been atop the list of largest MBA program (within 100-mile radius of Milwaukee) for the past several years and is continuing with those efforts to support students and the community to ignite opportunity for collaboration.
In addition to Concordia’s engagement and participation in start-up and accelerator competitions focusing on solutions in health care, Concordia also hosts an annual Healthcare Economics Summit focusing on the business of health care with participation from key stakeholders and leaders from around the state, region and country. More recently the past keynotes includes former Governor Scott Walker and the President of the American Medical Association, Dr. Barbara McAneny.
The building will host a variety of mixed-used space including the cross-disciplinary “collaboratorium”, a medical clinic involving a collaboration of staff, faculty, and students from Concordia’s School of Health Profession’s and Batterman School of Business, and meeting space for the Rx Think Tank. Of the over 800 students in CUW’s MBA program, almost 100 of them are pursuing a degree in the health care administration track – a number that has significantly increased over the past few years.
If this wasn’t exciting enough the Batterman School of business has recently accepted its newly revised Healthcare Management major for traditional undergraduates. This comes at a time where the growth of traditional undergraduate students pursuing this major has continued to increase. With this revision comes the opportunity to revisit, revise and enhance the current associate and graduate level curriculum offerings to ensure what is being offered to students maintains a high level or relevancy and rigor to best prepare students for their career aspirations in healthcare.
