Community is key – K-State’s Professional Master of Business Administration uses community building as a strength of the program
By Tim Schrag '12
Editor's note: This story originally appeared in the summer 2026 issue of K-Stater magazine. The K-Stater is delivered quarterly to K-State Alumni Association members.
Is it possible to build community through an online master’s program in business administration?
It is at Kansas State University.
The Professional Master of Business Administration Program at K-State has continually fostered a personal touch even though its coursework is designed for working professionals and offered online.
“We adapt to what they need,” said Suzy Buyle Auten ’86, ’05, PMBA program director. “We want them to feel successful.”
The courses are offered in eight-week sessions, which allow students to take two in a semester if they choose; however Auten said many only take one a semester. Most students can finish the program in two years.
The program attracts a wide variety of candidates ranging from recent graduates to mid-career professionals to those looking for an additional element to advance their career. Auten said the students come from a variety of backgrounds including engineers, attorneys, business professionals to even educators and musicians.
“When I enrolled in the PMBA program, I was still practicing in Texas running my own law firm and two other small businesses with my husband,” said Alexandra Serra ’08, ’24. “I got into the program because I love K-State, I bleed purple. That's where I went to undergrad, but I needed that addition. I needed the theoretical and doctrinal foundation for the things that I was seeing in the wild.”
Serra went to law school at SMU, but needed some additional skillsets to run her firm.
“They teach you how to be a lawyer in law school. They don't teach you how to run a business. And as a solo practitioner, I really needed that help,” she said.
What stood out to Serra was the professionalism of the program which mixed the community building she got at K-State as an undergraduate with the academic rigor of an MBA program.
“When you're in this professional community, the faculty treats you like an equal in the intellectual conversation,” she said. “And even though I didn't have as much experience in in that educational component of business, they valued me as a business owner. They valued me as a professional. They valued me as someone who had legal experience outside of their realm of experience.”
Along the way students are asked to participate in many message board discussions. They’re also required to come to campus one time. Additionally, students must participate in a 10-14 day international study abroad experience to observe the application of business concepts they are learning in an international business setting.
“We're a small staff, but we are able to support our students very well,” Auten said. “I think it speaks a lot about the K-State way, that our students don't feel like a number. We require students to also come to campus for orientation one-time while they're in the program. Some come right when they're supposed to at the beginning. Some put it off to the very end, for various reasons, but the visit also makes them feel tied to the campus if they're not a K-State grad. They also get to meet other students in the program. Plus, they get to travel with some of them internationally, so that solidifies those relationships even more.”
Auten advises approximately 180 students at any given time. As of April, students hail from 28 states and one international student based in Belize. When the program was launched in 2013 it had five students (plus four students seeking graduate certificates). That’s more than a 1,900% increase over the last decade. In fact, the PMBA program has a higher enrollment than the traditional on-campus counterpart program offered by K-State.
"Delivering high-quality online graduate business education is demanding, and we are proud of the academic rigor of the PMBA program and the strong career outcomes our graduates achieve after completion,” said Kevin Gwinner, dean of the College of Business Administration. “The program has been consistently recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the nation’s top online MBA programs. Combined with our personalized approach, this creates a distinctive and impactful learning experience for our students."
A large part of why Rob Nagle ’24 chose K-State for his MBA was because of these personal
touches. Nagle, an IT Executive by trade, has spent most of his life in the Northeast
and had never been to the Midwest prior to joining the program. He’d been to plenty
of other spots around the country and traveled extensively internationally. After
talking to Auten and some of the professors in the department Nagle felt K-State was
the right fit. It also offered him an opportunity to engage with a part of the country
he’d never been exposed to.
"One thing that I really love and care about is the understanding of diversity of thought, diversity of opinion, diversity of culture,” he said. “I think one thing to point out is that most cultures in the U.S., let alone the world, there's a lot of similarities. There's a lot of shared core values.”
Through the PMBA program, Nagle gained not only an education in business administration, but also a community of colleagues and friends he still keeps in touch with. He said his biggest surprise from the experience was the connections he made with his classmates.
“We were all in different industries, we all had different levels of experience and we all had different ways that we operate,” he said. “All of those different things coming together, it did a good job letting me know that there's multiple ways to attack a problem and there's different philosophies and schools of thought out there.”
Coming from an urban campus at Temple University in North Philadelphia, Nagle was immediately struck by K-State's environment. The grass, trees and limestone were not what he experienced in undergrad.
"Our buildings go up, not out,” he said. “The physical campus is a beautiful combination of modern and historic architecture. You can really see and feel the tradition that grounds K-State.”