Pensare, meanwhile, has teamed up with the Fuqua school at Duke University. Collaboration between U of Texas and Dell Computers Pensare, in Los Altos, California, delivers guided online courses that also use chat rooms and dedicated workspaces to allow students to collaborate on projects. Its courses were designed with academic partners Harvard Business School Publishing, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, and the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for Communication. Pensare's finance topics include asset and liability evaluation, risk management, and global financial management. For example, a conference suite in Durham, N.C., will link the dean of the U.S. campus to the dean of Fuqua Europe in Frankfurt.
Deans can walk into a private environment and talk on a regular basis.
That should help them manage the school's Cross Continent MBA, which will launch in the fall of 2000 in the U.S. and Germany.