Inside a Negotiations Class at the Oregon Executive MBA

The University of Oregon’s weekend MBA makes it convenient for students to learn skills they can apply in real time, and helps them build and find community.

By Jacob Moore

This story is published in cooperation with Willamette Week and University of Oregon Executive MBA in Portland

You’re locked in a business negotiation and you have two options: make a big profit at the expense of the other side, or extend an olive branch and risk a loss. What do you do?

This is the question a second year cohort of Oregon’s Executive MBA students in Portland battled with on a Friday evening in January in an activity that pitted classmates against each other. Like a Shakespearean drama, alliances formed and backs were stabbed.

The exercise was used to introduce students to one of the current term’s courses: Negotiation. It’s also a great snapshot of the University of Oregon’s Executive MBA program; a solid mix of theory and application with cooperation at the center of everything.

The classroom is full of second-year postgraduates balancing coursework with full-time jobs, many with the added responsibilities of parenthood. So, time management and motivation are required skills. The current second year cohort of students in Negotiation, exemplify some of the greatest reasons for enrolling in the University of Oregon Executive MBA Program.

Marches Armstrong, 35, knows exactly why he’s in the program. It’s the people, and it shows when he’s at the dinner table with classmates chatting during meal time.

“My biggest reason [for enrolling ] was the networking opportunities,” says Marches. “Your network makes up your net worth.”

Marches already has a wealth of experience in and out of the classroom. He’s a father of three, served in the US Navy and eventually ended up in Hawaii. After leaving the service he decided to go to college and earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in management information systems.

“I got a bunch of IT certifications and things like that. I went out and got a master’s degree in information systems. So I felt pretty well rounded.” says Marches. “The one thing but I didn’t have is a solid network of people that were driven and looking to aspire to do things greater.”

In the last few years he relocated to Portland and took a job in IT with the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board. The non-profit is working toward providing 43 federally recognized tribes in the Pacific Northwest with reliable public health services and data.

Marches was promoted to director of IT for the organization in 2024 and now helps them to modernize their data reporting, using skills he’s learned in the Oregon Executive MBA program.

For Rachel McGinn, 47, being in the program is about investing in herself and embracing the opportunity to grow. Her family has always been her priority, and her journey has unfolded on her own timeline. While continuing education may have seemed delayed to some, she never measured her progress against others. “There is no timeline to continuing your education,” says Rachel. “Pursuing the Oregon Executive MBA program was the right step for me when it fit into my life and my goals, and it aligns with where I am now in my personal and professional development.”

“It was a now or never kind of moment for me.” Says Rachel. “I felt at the time that this program would help me propel even further in my career.”

Rachel has more than 25 years of work experience and currently works for Stantec, a design and engineering firm, as a Principal Operations Leader. She has about the same amount of parenting experience being a mother to two full grown children. Her daughter will graduate with her bachelors around the same time that Rachel will leave the program carrying an MBA.

While graduation day has yet to arrive, Rachel feels like she already sees the benefits of the program. Much like Marches, she saw advancement in her workplace during her first year in the program.

“What really has been great is taking the concepts that we are learning and applying them in my everyday [life],” says Rachel. “I’m in classes constantly thinking, ‘How does this apply to my job? How does this apply to what I’m doing now?’ and I’ve seen it be so fruitful.”

Morgan Garritson, 45, is a parent to two young sons. It was her family and her love of all things business that brought her to the program.

“I desperately wanted to start a company of my own, and I want [my] two boys to see an empowered strong female role model,” says Morgan. “I think that they’ve already seen the commitment that it takes to work really hard and follow through.”

When she started the program Morgan was working with Persefoni, a climate accounting platform. She felt well rounded and confident, but was looking to fill in some gaps. Morgan wondered if she was going to build a net of new skills or mostly enhance what she already knew. But she recognized the value of the program within the first term.

“I feel like you learn a lot of new things, and I think it has to do too, with the context [in] which you learn it in. And what the professor brings forward in their experience.”

After starting the program Morgan founded her own consultancy called New Move Consulting.

She brings 20 years of experience in tech, software and carbon accounting — among other management and leadership skills —to the business, which is focused on sustainability consulting in tech and product management.

“Now I’ve got my first company up and running. It gave me a little confidence and the right resources to keep moving,” says Morgan. “And I loved that that happened when I was in this program.”

To learn more about the University of Oregon’s weekend MBA, visit business.uoregon.edu/programs/executive-mba.

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