Accredited diploma
Offered by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Taught in English
Engage in group discussions with professors and peers
12-24 months
9 courses total, 36 credit hours of graduate coursework, 10-15 hours per week, per course
100% online
Hands-on learning from anywhere, no travel required
under $13,000
Total cost of the program. Learn about your payment options
Program Overview
The MS in Management curriculum provides students with a relevant set of business management skills designed to open new career pathways. Delivered by Gies’ expert faculty with decades of industry experience, the iMSM helps students grow as professionals and get the kind of know-how that’s been shown by research to resonate with employers. The iMSM is designed to be a versatile degree. A student will gain confidence and use this degree to develop the capabilities to advance ideas and make a bigger difference in the workplace.
The curriculum is divided between core business and management courses and also electives. The core coursework includes leadership and teams, marketing management, strategic management and process management, as well as foundational classes in accounting and finance. Students will then have the opportunity to customize their degree by taking elective courses focused on business value and project management, global business challenges, or business data management and communication. Learning takes place in several modalities: online self-paced lecture content, high-engagement live classes, and practical mastery through hands-on projects as well as in everyday job responsibilities at work.
When you graduate, you'll be able to:
High-engagement Live Courses
Learn more about the iMSM high-engagement courses on the Gies website. You can explore the Core and Elective courses and discover how Gies can build your business and management knowledge.
Try a course before you apply
Courses
Ready to sample a course from the iMSM program? The following Specializations are open for anyone to enroll in. If you are admitted to the full program, your coursework counts towards your degree learning.
Managerial Accounting
Introduces management accounting as part of a firm's information system, with a focus on modern cost accounting and budgetary systems for planning and controlling business operations
Managerial Accounting: Cost Behaviors, Systems, and Analysis
Managerial Accounting: Tools for Facilitating and Guiding Business Decisions
Leadership and Teams
Develops and integrates fundamental behavioral concepts and theory that have administrative applications. An initial focus on individual decision makers expands to ultimately include interpersonal, organizational, and social structures and influences, and is oriented toward developing strategies and methods of research as they pertain to behavioral applications in business.
Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader
Leading Teams: Building Effective Team Cultures
Marketing Management
Introduces concepts useful for understanding marketing systems and buyer behavior, and supports the development of skills for making marketing decisions. The orientation is primarily managerial and uses examples from both business and non-business contexts.
Developing a Winning Marketing Strategy
Developing a Marketing Mix for Growth
Strategic Management
Addresses policy construction and planning of policy implementation at the executive level, and features case studies of company-wide situations from a management point of view. An additional focus is on the integration and application of material from previous courses.
Introduction to Finance
Provides an introduction to finance for students who have little or no background in the discipline, and details how managers and investors use key finance principles to make investment and financing decisions.
Introduction to Finance: The Basics
Introduction to Finance: The Role of Financial Markets
Process Management
Offers an introduction to decision-making problems in production, with a focus on the theoretical foundations for production management and the applications of decision-making techniques to production problems in a firm. Production processes, plant layout, maintenance, scheduling, quality control, and production control in particular are all covered.
Operations and Supply Chain Decisions and Metrics
Graduate Certificates
These graduate certificates stack directly into the online Master of Science in Management (iMSM). Each of the high engagement courses that comprise these certificates carry University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate credit.
Graduate Certificate in Strategic Leadership and Management : Become a confident all-around leader and learn in-demand skills for managing people and teams and developing and implementing organizational strategy.
Learn more about this certificate
Graduate Certificate in Digital Marketing: Build the skills to uplevel your marketing campaigns and make data-driven decisions.
Learn more about this certificate
Graduate Certificate in Value Chain Management : Learn to recognize what different customers value, measure inputs and outputs to assess value, and generate higher value for customers and greater surplus for organizations.
Fall 2025 Deadlines:
- Fall Priority 1 Deadline: April 3, 2025
- Fall Priority 2 Deadline: May 1, 2025
- Fall Final Deadline (August start): June 5, 2025
- Fall Final Deadline (October start): August 7, 2025
Upcoming Events:
- Mock Class | March 12, 2025 at 6 PM CT - Register here
- LinkedIn Live with Gies Online | March 20, 2025 at 12 PM CT - Register here
- iDegrees Program Webinar | March 22, 2025 at 9 AM CT - Register here
Have questions?
Please contact Gies College of Business at giesonline@illinois.edu.
Upcoming Events
The full Gies Online Events Calendar can be found here.
Fall 2025 Deadlines:
- Fall Priority 1 Deadline: April 3, 2025
- Fall Priority 2 Deadline: May 1, 2025
- Fall Final Deadline (August start): June 5, 2025
- Fall Final Deadline (October start): August 7, 2025
Upcoming Events:
- Mock Class | March 12, 2025 at 6 PM CT - Register here
- LinkedIn Live with Gies Online | March 20, 2025 at 12 PM CT - Register here
- iDegrees Program Webinar | March 22, 2025 at 9 AM CT - Register here
Have questions?
Please contact Gies College of Business at giesonline@illinois.edu.
Upcoming Events
The full Gies Online Events Calendar can be found here.
Curriculum
ITM 705 Microsoft Windows OS: In this introductory graduate course, students will explore the basics of computer architecture and use of contemporary operating systems and networking. Covers hardware requirements, components, software compatibility, and system configuration and administration as well as other key operating systems functions. Popular and business-focused desktop and mobile device operating systems will be examined, as well as enterprise and open-source server implementations.
ITM 706 Linux OS: In this introductory graduate course, students will explore the basics of computer architecture and use of contemporary operating systems and networking. Covers system installation topics as well as other key operating systems functions. Networking, virtualization, cloud computing, and security concepts are introduced. Popular and business-focused desktop and mobile device operating systems will be examined, as well as enterprise and open-source server implementations.
ITM 707 OS Security: Explores the basics of computer architecture and use of contemporary operating systems and networking. Covers software troubleshooting, security implementation, and operational procedures and best practices. Documentation, communication, and professionalism are addressed. Popular and business-focused desktop and mobile device operating systems will be examined, as well as enterprise and open-source server implementations.
ITMD 504 Programming and Application Foundations: This course covers creation and deployment of modern, standards-compliant web pages written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the context of the client-server architecture of the web. Fundamentals of programming in a modern programming language is covered. Basic data modeling concepts are also introduced, including hands-on database design, implementation, and administration of single-user and shared multi-user database applications using a contemporary relational database management system. These topics are taught in an integrated hands-on manner, where students will learn how frontend, backend, and database systems are written and deployed to work together in a full stack web application.
ITMD 513 Open Source Programming: Contemporary open-source programming languages and frameworks are presented. The student considers design and development topics in system, graphical user interface, network and web programming. Dynamic scripting languages are covered using object-oriented, concurrent and functional programming paradigms. Concepts gained throughout the course are reinforced with numerous exercises which will culminate in an open-source programming project.
ITMO 540 Introduction to Data Networks and the Internet: This course covers current and evolving data network technologies, protocols, network components, and the networks that use them, focusing on the Internet and related LANs. The state of worldwide networking and its evolution will be discussed. This course covers the Internet architecture, organization, and protocols including Ethernet, 802.11, routing, the TCP/UDP/IP suite, DNS, SNMP, DHCP, and more. Students will be presented with Internet-specific networking tools for searching, testing, debugging, and configuring networks and network-connected host computers. There will be opportunities for network configuration and hands-on use of tools.
ITMO 556 Introduction to Open Source Software: This course will cover the fundamental concepts and philosophy behind free and open source software (FOSS). The course will discuss open source and free software licensing; open source business strategies and impact; FOSS utilization in the enterprise; and development methodologies. Students will learn to set up and configure an industry-standard open source operating system, including system installation, and basic system administration; system architecture; package management; command–line commands; devices, filesystems, and the filesystem hierarchy standard. Also addressed are applications, shells, scripting and data management; user interfaces and desktops; administrative tasks; essential system services; networking fundamentals; and security, as well as support issues for open source software. Multiple distributions are covered with emphasis on the two leading major distribution forks.
ITMO 554 Operating System Virtualization: This course will cover technologies allowing multiple instances of operating systems to be run on a single physical system. Concepts addressed will include hypervisors, virtual machines, paravirtualization and virtual appliances. Both server and desktop virtualization will be examined in detail, with brief coverage of storage virtualization and application virtualization. Business benefits, business cases and security implications of virtualization will be discussed. Extensive hands-on assignments and a group project will allow students to gain first-hand experience of this technology.
ITMO 544 Cloud Computing Technologies: Computing applications hosted on dynamically-scaled, virtual resources available as services are considered. Collaborative and non-collaborative "cloud-resident" applications are analyzed with respect to cost, device/location independence, scalability, reliability, security, and sustainability. Commercial and local cloud architectures are examined. A group-based integration of course topics will result in a project employing various cloud computing technologies.
ITMS 564 Cloud Computing Security: You will learn how to effectively secure cloud-based services and infrastructure in an enterprise setting. Areas addressed will include design principles of secure cloud computing, data security, platform and infrastructure security, application security and the Secure Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and DevSecOps processes, and security operations. The course will cover the legal, risk, and compliance aspects of cloud computing, all in the context of a set of industry-standard learning domains.
ITMO 563 Software as a Service: Software as a Service (SaaS) allows consumers to use a provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure, accessible from client devices over a network through either a thin client interface, such as a web browser, or a program interface. Students will explore different approaches, techniques, tools and technologies to build, deploy, and manage cloud native applications.
ITMO 564 Platform as a Service: Platform as a Service (PaaS) allows developers to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure developer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the cloud provider. Students learn to develop applications and services using popular platforms and service tools, and to manage deployed applications as well as configuration settings for the application-hosting environment.
ITMO 565 Infrastructure as a Service: Infrastructure as a Service (SaaS) allows users to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources which then allows them to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. Students will learn how to provision, deploy and manage operating systems, storage, and deployed applications as well as virtual networking components such as switches, routers, and firewalls in a cloud environment accessible remotely through a network.