History and Mission
Sloan Program in Health Administration
Excellence in Innovation Since 1955
Cornell University is a world-renowned research university and one of the eight members of the Ivy League. Cornell’s mission, vision, and values serve as a guiding light for the University and its 16 colleges.
The Sloan Program in Health Administration offers two tracks:
Residential – a 64 credit hour management curriculum designed for early careerists enrolled at Cornell’s Ithaca Campus
Executive – a 36.5 credit hour management curriculum offered virtually for experienced healthcare professionals (includes two executive cohort weeks in Ithaca and one weekend in Boston)
During the Sloan Program in Health Administration’s seven decades at Cornell, we have always maintained a commitment to delivering a rigorous business and management-based curriculum that prepares the world’s future leaders of the health care industry. It is this steadfast commitment that propelled the Sloan Program in Health Administration to be a key part of one of Cornell University’s most important current initiatives — the founding of the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy in September 2021.
To be tapped as one of the anchor programs of the new Brooks School of Public Policy, Sloan drew upon its rich history in two previous colleges at Cornell. These colleges served Sloan well for nearly 70 years. While housed in these colleges, Sloan gained both the solid underpinnings of a business curriculum, and the appreciation that the United States health care industry is the largest sector of the economy, and is driven by federal and state public policies. In 2022, Sloan joined other academic units at Cornell to launch the new Brooks School of Public Policy.
In the Brooks School of Public Policy, the Sloan Program’s goal is to be a premier health care management education program so that we can help generate positive outcomes in the health care industry. Our students are employed is every sector of health care.
- 1955-1985 Johnson Graduate School of Management
- 1985-2021 College of Human Ecology, Department of Policy Analysis and Management
- 2022 – present Brooks School of Public Policy
At Sloan, our degree programs have their own missions, visions, and values that define what we stand for and what we hope to accomplish:
MHA Program Founded in 1955
- Mission: To provide highly-motivated recent college graduates with a health care business management curriculum that allows them to develop the skills, knowledge, and leadership attributes to obtain early-career positions in a variety of health care organizations and eventually to help lead those organizations to improve health care delivery and population health.
- Vision: “To improve the operation of health care systems and the health of the community, and to be recognized as an outstanding healthcare management program by virtue of faculty scholarship and student achievement.”
- Values: “Critical Thinking, Integrity, Leadership and Teamwork, Services Excellence, Evidence-Based Research, Sense of Community, and Experiential Learning”
- We collaborate with other colleges at Cornell for dual-degree programs: BS/MHA, MHA/MBA, and MHA/MPA
Executive MHA (EMHA)
The Executive MHA (EMHA) program, which trains health care professionals with 5 or more years of experience, was founded in 2019.
- Mission: To provide experienced health care professionals with a health care business management curriculum that allows them to develop the skills, knowledge, and leadership attributes in order to drive a variety of health care organizations to improve health care delivery, population health, and the efficiency of the system.
- Vision: “To improve the operation of health care systems and the health of the community, and to be recognized as an outstanding healthcare management program by virtue of faculty scholarship and student achievement.”
- Values: “Critical Thinking, Integrity, Leadership and Teamwork, Services Excellence, Evidence-Based Research, Sense of Community, and Experiential Learning”
When the Sloan Program was founded in 1955, it became the nation’s first health care administration program with a two-year graduate curriculum. Since then, the CAHME-accredited Master of Health Administration program has been at the forefront of innovation in the field.
It is driven by preeminent faculty, engaged alumni, and bright students who want to leave their mark on a dynamic, vital, and growing health care industry.
The MHA degree curriculum will position you to become a future leader in health care because of the knowledge and skills you will develop in management, health care organization, and policy. You will be equipped to manage in a variety of settings — including health systems, long-term care organizations, pharmaceutical companies, health insurers, physician practices, start-ups and government agencies —with an emphasis on promoting quality, access, efficiency, and innovation.
The MHA Residential curriculum combines rigorous coursework with a robust practical training component, including a required summer internship, a colloquium series that brings industry experts to campus, Practitioner-Led Intensive Courses (PLICs) that build specialized skills, a health policy trek to Washington, D.C., a trip to Boston to study health care innovation, field trip immersion, workshops, a mentorship program, and a second-year capstone project.
All program courses and activities are designed to help a student achieve these competencies (listed below) which the Sloan Program has identified as crucial to success in the healthcare industry: