Master of Human Resources (MHR)

The mission of the Huntsman School Master of Human Resources programs is to develop highly-skilled, emerging human resource leaders with the expertise to help solve the unique human capital challenges facing organizations.

We achieve this mission by partnering with high potential students to help them develop foundational and cutting-edge HR skills, cultivating their leadership potential, and socializing them to succeed. We accomplish this primarily through team-based projects, challenging experiential learning, and an intense focus on achieving the right results that are consistent with the values of the Huntsman School of Business. Companies view our graduates as a premier source of mature, hardworking, and mobile HR business partners who immediately add value upon joining their organizations.

Learning Goals and Objectives

While the courses of study for the campus and professional MHR programs are nearly identical, the learning goals and objectives are customized to the students enrolled in each program.  Listed below are the learning goals and objectives for each program.

MHR On-Campus

L1: Collaboration and Teamwork

  • L1.1: Students will demonstrate competence as facilitative and competent team members, as assessed by supervisors, peers, and others.

L2: Communication and Influencing

  • L2.1: Students will develop the ability to effectively utilize communication, negotiation, and influencing skills in a professional setting.

L3: Employability and Placement

  • L3.1: Rising second-year students will work in paid summer internships in the field of human resource management.
  • L3.2: Within three months of graduation, students will place into full-time jobs that require a master’s degree in human resource management.

L4: Ethical Behavior

  • L4.1: Students will demonstrate a high degree of integrity and honesty in their professional interactions.

L5: HR Analytics

  • L5.1: After completing the first year of the campus Master of Human Resources (MHR) program, students will, during their summer internship, demonstrate the ability to use statistics and data management software to conduct basic statistical analyses, interpret their findings, and present them to others.

MHR Professional Program

L1: Students will demonstrate competence in HR Analytics.

  • L1.1: Students will demonstrate 1) an understanding of statistical procedures (descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, regression analysis, t-tests, ANOVA, and Cronbach’s Alpha),  2) the ability to appropriately conduct these analyses in an HR context using Excel and SPSS with employment data, and 3) the ability to correctly interpret the findings of their analyses.

L2: Students will demonstrate their understanding in the design and structure of organization compensation systems.

  • L2.1: Students will develop hands-on skills in developing pay practices, including job evaluation, establishing pay grades, market pricing, determining pay levels, and designing incentive systems.

L3: Students will demonstrate the ability to work collaboratively in teams.

  • L3.1: Students will demonstrate competence as a facilitative and competent team member, as assessed by supervisors, peers, and others.

L4: Students will demonstrate the ability to effectively influence others within the contexts of negotiation, mediation, and difficult conversations.

  • L4.1: Improve skills and competency in negotiating and mediating.

L5: Students will demonstrate ethical leadership.

  • L5.1: Students will demonstrate a high degree of integrity and honesty in their professional interactions.

Outcomes Data

We have gathered data to evaluate the achievement of our learning objectives from a wide variety of sources. This includes 360-degree survey evaluations, survey responses from summer internship supervisors, archival internship and full-time placement data, and performance on a class assignment. We feel our comprehensive measurement strategy allows us to more accurately measure our progress and helps us set goals that drive us toward learning and placement outcomes.

Links to outcome data are provided below. Users can also hover over each display to obtain more details on the assessments.

MHR: On-Campus Program
MHR: Professional Program

Closing the Loop & Continuous Improvement

For the campus Master of HR program, our results show we are consistently achieving our learning objectives in terms of developing teamwork and collaboration skills among our students. To further our teaching effectiveness in this space, we are strengthening the diversity and inclusion content of the Managing Individuals and Groups course (MGT 6500).

We are showing mixed results in our performance of ethical behavior. Given the importance of ethics, we set very high goals. We will continue to seek out students with strong ethical frameworks and will encourage greater discussion of ethics in and out of the classroom.

We also saw mixed results with respect to internship supervisor reports of human resource analytics skills. The instructors for the two analytics courses will be informed of these less desirable results and will be encouraged to help students translate their classroom learning into on-the-job performance.

Finally, there is much room for improvement with respect to full-time job placement. Special effort will be dedicated to developing job search skills and connections for those that struggle to find employment through the usual channels.

Also note that when assessments of program objectives are submitted, the submission form provides an opportunity to add “closing the loop” discussion, including changes that could be made.

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