Gadgetory

warden West the University of Pennsylvania's San Francisco campus has been turning out MBAs for a decade but in order to attract Silicon Valley's elite the university is giving itself a facelift so we're here in the historic Hills brothers Plaza we are we've just taken over the space in December so here we have our dining room which houses just over 100 of our current students which we bring in every weekend for the MBA program for executives and the curriculum has entrepreneurial flavorings we do a number of workshops for entrepreneurs and we draw folks who have been successful from different parts of entrepreneurial ventures and also invite venture capitalists and folks from private equity and it folks who have had successful startups into our space but there are challenges to deepening your roots in the competitive valley environment opening on the west coast Wharton is basically in the backyard of Stanford and Berkeley which are sort of the two incumbent MBA brands at least on the west coast so some of the challenges that Wharton is facing and probably face for a you know some more time around brand image and getting more people to know about Wharton as a West Coast Business School Wharton unlike Stanford offers an Executive MBA that's designed for working students with classes occurring on the weekends with total two year tuition at almost one hundred and seventy four thousand dollars the school is banking on the Wharton brand and the wow factor we have state-of-the-art technology within the classroom again using natural light including our skylights to help balance the use of energy in the classroom for students the move from the old location was a welcome one it's a much bigger space and there's a lot of open areas which really facilitates discussions and faculty members to who fly out from the east coast campus to teach a wharton west are betting the b-school can capture a new wave of MBAs there was quite an entrepreneurial spirit that's really picked up and I think one thing that happened a couple of years ago with the big collapse and finance is a lot of those very very good students who might have gone to a Mackenzie or Goldman Sachs now are getting more excited about starting their own companies I'm Sumi das for cnet news com