Curriculum | ABA Stonier Graduate School of Banking

Stonier prepares today’s banking leaders for tomorrow’s opportunities through a comprehensive program that combines aspects of strategic planning, leadership, economics, and financial management. Extension work and projects round-out the curriculum and continue your development between the yearly on-site sessions.

Leadership represents an important segment of the Stonier program. As faculty from the Wharton School move you through a wide range of topics in this area, they will help you develop skills to effectively motivate and mentor others, and collaborate and network across divisions within your organization to meet high-priority goals.

Course work between Years 1 and 2 includes two written assignments in the areas of bank performance analysis, and either economics or marketing. A high-impact Capstone strategic project between Years 2 and 3 provides a unique opportunity to address a major initiative within your own organization. 

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Year 1: Launching Your Leadership Experience

The first-year curriculum focuses on key aspects of strategy, planning, marketing, risk management and performance measurement. It provides an overview of the current economic and financial environment and its implications for achieving competitive advantage. Students gain an enhanced appreciation of the drivers of success and learn how to leverage their organizations’ competitive strengths.

Students work in teams as they address business, crisis management and strategic issues that help develop leadership skills working through real-world scenarios.

Year 2: Applying Leadership Skills to Team Performance and Risk Management

The core of the second-year curriculum focuses on strategies for enhancing shareholder value and risk management. Students assimilate the factors that affect the profitability and value of their organizations. They learn to apply risk management tools in a fashion that goes beyond a compliance mentality to an appreciation of how these techniques can be a source of competitive advantage and value creation.

Students participate in an innovative bank management computer simulation, ABA BankExec™, making key decisions on product pricing, risk management, investments, asset sales, and treasury management in a competitive “tournament” with fellow students. The operating environment mimics the dynamics of the real-world banking market and students gain quick feedback on how their decisions affect their relative performance. Students also choose from a menu of elective courses in the second year. 

Year 3: Becoming a Leader in Your Organization

The third-year curriculum focuses on ethical leadership and driving organizational change. Leaders need the right mix of skills to inspire, motivate, create a vision, ensuring implementation and plan for and influence change. Through case studies, role play, and extensive class discussion, students gain action-oriented tools and concepts to take back and apply in their banks. Students also present overviews of their Capstone projects to a group of peers who provide feedback and share the benefits of their research and analysis. Students choose from an elective course menu once again in the third year. 

Stonier students receive both a Stonier Diploma and a Wharton Leadership Certificate upon graduation.

Electives

To aid students in meeting their personal and professional development needs, the curriculum includes a broad selection of elective classes in Years 2 and 3. Students select four electives during both Years 2 and 3 from a broad menu of options. Students can create an individualized course of study consistent with their professional development goals, choose courses that seem particularly relevant to the career-path in their institutions, or select offerings that seem especially valuable for their sponsoring institution.