Undergraduate Minor in Consulting

This minor is designed to provide students with the solid foundation needed to succeed in a consulting-oriented environment, as well as an introduction to a variety of possible contexts for consulting work. Consulting skills are essential work skills for many roles beyond the traditional management consultant.

Many technical positions demand that consultative skills be used within the firm even in early career positions (e.g., business analyst)-in this respect, a consulting minor can complement a student's technical training. Required courses cover the fundamentals of both management and strategy consulting, as well as a framework of consulting activities that can be applied to many types of consulting and consultative roles.

Electives provide students an opportunity to gain deeper knowledge in a specific consulting skill and to explore a context in which they could apply their consulting knowledge.

Consulting Minor Curriculum

Below you will find a sample curriculum for the Undergraduate Minor in Consulting. You can find the full set of Consulting Minor requirements in Northeastern's Course Catalog. Please consult the Course Catalog appropriate to your class year and your academic advisor to ensure your coursework is on track.

Requirements

Complete one of following:

MGMT 4550. Management Consulting in Organizations. 4 Hours.

Offers students an opportunity to gain practical experience in finding appropriate solutions for complex and dynamic client organizational issues using a structured curriculum and frequent in-class coaching sessions. Students work as pro bono consultants both onsite and virtually with organizations to help solve real client challenges in the managing and leading of an organization. Students employ management consulting as a framework in demonstrating proficiency in a wide range of knowledge and skill areas in both management and consulting. Structures course deliverables as challenging goals to be achieved within a set time frame by working with students' chosen consulting (Pod) group and through individual assignments.

MGMT 3520. Consulting Fundamentals and Frameworks. 4 Hours.

Introduces students to a framework of consulting and to the core managerial skills that are useful in all consultative roles, not only as a consultant. Content includes design of a basic consulting engagement and template for use in future business or consulting ventures. Offers students an opportunity to learn critical and analytical thinking, how to challenge assumptions in an ongoing business, how to gain and exercise influence within both consulting firms and clients, as well as the business rationale for consulting (from a client company perspective).

And Complete:

BUSN 3110. The Consulting Environment. 4 Hours.

Seeks to provide students with a framework and the fundamentals that allow them to understand the field of consulting in addition to a way of thinking for jobs in the consulting and other highly competitive careers. Focuses on the analysis of complex business situations using caselets and cases and provides frameworks as the basis for analysis and critical thinking in pressure situations. In addition, various articles, white papers, business case studies, and other consulting practices are shared with the students enrolled in the course as well as professionals with industry experience providing insights as visiting guest speakers.

Electives

Consulting Skills

Complete one of the following:

COMM 4533	Consultation Skills
ENTR 3220	International Entrepreneurship and Innovation Consulting
ENTR 3330	Lean Design and Rapid Prototyping
MGMT 3302	Negotiating in Business
MGMT 3305	Power and Influence
MGMT 3315	Managing Organizational Change and Disruption
MGMT 3530	Project Management
MGMT 4410	Workforce Analytics

Consulting Contexts

Complete one of the following:

ACCT 3403	Advisory Services and Emerging Accounting Systems
ACCT 3416	Strategic Cost Analysis for Decision Making
CS 3200	Database Design
CY 2550	Foundations of Cybersecurity
DS 3000	Foundations of Data Science
EMGT 5220	Engineering Project Management
ENTR 3401	Consulting Operations Growth in SMEs
ENTR 4510	Management Consulting Abroad
FINA 4420	Mergers and Acquisitions
FINA 4514	Investment Banking
FINA 4602	Turnaround Management
IE 3500	Introduction to Healthcare Systems Engineering
IE 4525	Logistics and Supply Chain Management
IE 4625	Facilities Planning and Material Handling
IE 5400	Healthcare Systems Modeling and Analysis
IE 5640	Data Mining for Engineering Applications
INTB 2501	Competing to Win in Emerging Markets
MGMT 3340	Healthcare Management, Innovation, and Design
MGMT 3420	Managing Human Capital
MGMT 4310	The Management Practices of Great Organizations
MKTG 3301	Marketing Management
MKTG 4506	Consumer Behavior
PHMD 5575	Pharmaceutical Industry
POLS 2340	Business and Government
STRT 4301	Strategic Analysis and Decision Making

Interested? Next Steps

To declare a minor in the D'Amore-McKim School of Business, including as part of the BS in Business Administration and the BS in International Business, students should complete the online minor registration form:

Business Minor Petition

Students will be required to log in using their MyNortheastern credentials. Once the form has been submitted, the student will receive a confirmation email to their husky email account and the student record will be updated within 10-14 business days.

To declare a minor, students must have a 2.0 GPA and be a full-time undergraduate student at Northeastern. To graduate with the minor, students must attain a 2.0 GPA in the courses taken for the minor. No classes for the minor may be taken for a pass/fail grade. The minor is posted on the official transcript within one month of graduation.