The Board of Trustees approved a new dual degree program on Thursday, according to Prof. Jon Chilingerian (Heller), the director of the new program, in an interview with the Justice. Chilingerian said the program will allow students to receive a Master of Biomedical Sciences from Tufts University Medical School and a Master of Business Administration from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management in six semesters. Students first must be accepted into the MBS track at Tufts Medical School, and then students can apply to receive an MBA from the Heller School. Students can apply for the Heller School MBA program any time after acceptance to Tufts.

According to Chilingerian, the dual MBS/MBA program will admit six to 10 students annually, and it will begin in fall 2011.

Students accepted into the dual program must complete a total of six semesters of courses.

The first two semesters are devoted to the MBS program, the third semester consists of classes for both the MBS and the MBA, and the final three semesters are entirely devoted to the MBA. This allows for the normal four semesters required to receive an MBA from the Heller School.

The curriculum for an MBS student is similar to that of an MD student, explained Chilingerian. For example, MBS students take courses in molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, clinical medicine, genetics and other science subjects, according to the proposed curriculum.

According to Chilingerian, students in the MBS/MBA program often go on to medical school and become doctors.

Chilingerian said that the program is significant because physicians "need to know health policy, they need to understand what fair process leadership is, they need strategic thinking, [and they need an] understanding [of] the physics of the hospital. . They need to think about what is the theory of medical decision making [and] how do we define best practices."

"This is an ideal program if, for example, you will be attending medical school and starting your own practice, or if you will not attend medical school but will assume a health management position in a healthcare or biotech organization," according to a Tufts memorandum about the program provided to the Justice by Joe Jabre, the Tufts director of MD/MBA and MBS/MBA programs.

Brandeis and Tufts also run a joint, 4-year dual MD/MBA program that began in 1995.

Chilingerian said the MD/MBA was the first "of its kind" to offer both an MD and an MBA in the same four calendar years.

According to the Tufts Medical School website, the management and health policy courses for the MD/MBA are "limited during the medical school year. Two-thirds of the MBA coursework is done in the summers before the student's first and second years in medical school."

"Our partnership with the Tufts Medical School goes back to 1995 when we first began offering courses in their dual MD/MBA program, and this new MBS/MBA is a natural extension of this successful collaboration," explained Dean of the Heller School Lisa Lynch in an e-mail to the Justice.