Experiential Learning courses share three overarching learning objectives:
- Navigate Complexity: Take initiative to drive work forward without a roadmap; framing, scoping, and analyzing complex problems and adapting based on new information and evolving circumstances.
- Manage Teams and Stakeholders: Build and maintain productive working relationships through trust-building, active listening, and effective collaboration—facilitating positive team dynamics, navigating diverse perspectives, and engaging stakeholders with professionalism throughout the project lifecycle.
- Deliver Compelling Solutions: The ability to synthesize research and feedback into clear, actionable recommendations and communicate them in a compelling narrative that informs decision-making and earns stakeholder buy-in.
Stern Solutions
Each year, Stern Part-time MBA students have the opportunity to start, advise, and invest in real businesses. We call this Stern Solutions, Stern’s approach to experiential education, which brings together teams of students and faculty to solve real, complex business challenges.
Sample Courses & Projects
- Stern Consulting Corps (SCC) – A semester-long experiential learning course in which students work in teams as MBA consultants for a client organization. Students apply a structured consulting process to define and analyze a business problem or opportunity, conduct qualitative and quantitative research, develop recommendations, and plan for implementation.
Read how Nancy Lu (MBA ’25) and a team of Stern MBAs partnered with NBCUniversal through Stern Consulting Corps to develop stronger value propositions for the company in a rapidly evolving streaming and advertising landscape. - Consulting Lab: Branding + Innovation – A semester-long experiential learning course in which MBA students work in teams on a branding or innovation challenge for a client organization. Students conduct research, develop a strategic framework, generate and evaluate concepts, and present recommendations to the client.
- Tech and the City – A semester-long experiential learning course focused on early-stage technology companies and digital entrepreneurship. Students work with a New York City startup to examine its business model, product-market fit, growth, funding, and customer needs while gaining exposure to how venture capital investors evaluate early-stage companies.
- NYU Impact Investment Fund (NIIF) – A year-long, interdisciplinary experiential learning course that brings together students from NYU Stern, Wagner, and Law. Students act as investors and participate in the impact investing process by sourcing and evaluating social enterprises, conducting financial and impact due diligence, and developing investment recommendations. Investment sectors include financial inclusion, environment, health &, aging, education, food systems and culture, media, and democracy.
Read how Maya Johnston (MBA ’25) gained hands-on experience through the NYU Impact Investment Fund, investing real capital in companies pursuing both financial returns and measurable social impact. - Stern Signature Projects (SSPs) – Semester-long experiential learning projects in which teams of 3–5 MBA students can work with external organizations on business challenges or with a faculty member to explore a research question. SSPs provide a flexible format for examining specialized topics and emerging business issues that span industries, disciplines, and geographic regions, with some including international travel or collaboration with student teams from partner universities.
Read how NYU Stern MBA students partnered with Brazil’s impact investing ecosystem to tackle real-world challenges, mobilize capital, and turn classroom learning into actionable recommendations. - NYU Stern Golub Capital Board Fellows – An experiential learning course in which teams of 3–4 MBA students work with a nonprofit organization on a strategic project that advances its organizational priorities, while also gaining firsthand insight into board leadership and dynamics. Students attend board meetings, meet regularly with a board mentor and organizational liaison, and participate in a site visit to support organizational context building. Students present to the board at least twice to share their findings and recommendations and receive advising from a dedicated faculty advisor. There are three tracks, which reflect the project’s focus:
- Nonprofit Board Governance (year-long)
- Nonprofit Strategy (year-long)
- International Nonprofit Strategy (semester-long, includes international fieldwork)
NYU Stern is one of twenty-three business schools participating in the Golub Capital Nonprofit Board Fellows Network, launched November 2024.
To learn more about opportunities and how to participate, please visit the Experiential Learning page.
