In early 2002, the Lally School of Management and Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was in a rut. The program was lost in the shadows of bigger, more recognized schools, and enrollment was declining. The bucolic campus had its charms, but being a stone’s throw from Albany, in Troy, N.Y., just didn’t have the draw of a big city like New York or Boston. It was time for a change.

That’s when administrators at Rensselaer decided to tear apart the traditional MBA curriculum. In its place they began building a new program from scratch — and when the dust settled, what emerged last year was an MBA unlike any other. Rather than relying on conventional texts and case studies in standard courses like marketing and finance, educators, led by Iftekhar Hasan, Rensselaer’s [then] acting dean, designed a brand-new program teaming up professors to teach together and guide students through real-world business problems in a holistic way. “This is not your father’s MBA,” Hasan says.