re: LSUS Online MBA Reviews

I am now 2 classes away from finishing, so I figured it is time for me to contribute to this forum. This forum is one of the major reasons I chose LSUS. To my knowledge (searching google), most other schools don't have a resource as good and active as this forum. I was already taking MBA classes at a Big 10 school, but got frustrated by not having any resource to evaluate which professors to take. It was always a total shot in the dark.

So here's my thoughts on the teachers I have had so far:

ECON 705
Fawaz, Fadi
One of the best teachers I have ever had. Watch his zoom sessions and you will be fine. I had never had any type of econ class before this. Class was only tests, no papers, no discussion. Wish he taught a stats class, so I could take it. This guy is a stats/math genius and knows how to teach it to people like me that struggle with numbers.

ACCT701
Ambrosio, Fabio
He had some really professional looking videos. He must be a big-shot teacher at some other bigger school to have such nice and well-produced content featuring himself. Learned a lot, really good teacher. From what I remember, it was only tests, and you were allowed to have the open pdf document during the tests. This class was zero fluff. I doubled it with ISDS 705, no problem.

ISDS 705
Gibbs, James
This is one of the few teachers I had in the course that taught some real-world stuff alongside the academics. Really good teacher. This class is more about learning excel than anything. If you have a valid Microsoft excel certification, he will let you out of the busy work portion of that. It was well worth it for me to go take the cert test, since I was also taking ACCT 701 at the same time. There was a quiz from the book every week, and some homework which was just finding the answers to the review questions in the book. No papers/no discussion.

FIN 710/FIN 720
Hsiesh, Chengho
I think this guy was the only option for these classes. Both classes are identical setup. You will have 4 really big/time consuming exams. No homework, no papers, no discussion. You are allowed the pdf materials, excel, and financial calculator during tests. Tests can be so long he allows bathroom breaks. He is a really good teacher. Some people complain about his accent, but everything you need is in his pdf books that he provides. He has zoom sessions if you need help, and I have found him to be very responsive and helpful. His course materials were so well-written that I never needed any additional explanation, and that is rare for me since I am not great with numbers. The content for all the tests are covered in his practice problems in the readings and the practice exams. If you do not actually work through ALL of his practice problems ahead of time, you might run out of time during the exam trying to figure it all out. Most of his exams give 2 hours, so that's a lot of time. If you prepare for the exams, they are no big deal. I am taking FIN720 and FIN740 at the same time with no issues.

FIN740
Kim, Sung
This class is more of a R programming class than a finance class, but there are some basic financial concepts scattered throughout. Some of the quiz questions also refer to basic finance knowledge (bond valuation, net present value, etc.). There is a homework project and a quiz every week. The homework is no big deal. It was fairly easy to find examples of previous students' work on coursehero.com, but be aware that he changes the assignments every class. Copying/pasting will get you nowhere. The quiz can get tricky. He allows you to have the book during the quiz, but some of the questions cannot be answered from the book alone. You will need to actually work with the code in R studio every week to understand some of the quiz questions. If you read AND run the code that is being taught every week (not just the homework), you will be fine. It was not time-consuming. He even supplies the code to you in a script file every week. The 2 projects required a little more work, but nothing horrible. The thing I struggled with most in this class was ARIMA modeling. I do not have a stats background, so I had to get help.