Isobel Madigan never pictured herself studying business.

Madigan graduated in the spring with a liberal arts degree from the University of New Hampshire, but that didn't exactly lend itself to a full-time job. Now she's giving a master's in business administration a whirl in hopes of landing something better.

"I wasn't psyched about going right back to school, but it just seemed like I needed these skills," said Madigan, an anthropology major.

Madigan isn't alone. For the first time, women outnumber men in the full-time MBA program at UNH -and many of them have no business background. The university restructured the MBA program this year, morphing its traditional two-year program into one rigorous year that students even without an undergraduate business education can take.

"The program is geared to students who are graduating from non-business programs who have passion in some other discipline, but who want to provide themselves with greater job opportunities," said Steve Bolander, the dean of the Whittemore School of Business at UNH. "It's a very intensive program designed within that context."

Only four other schools in the country offer a similar program. Business school administrators at UNH assessed 50 different MBA programs to develop the one-year strategy they rolled out this semester.

To compete with some of the country's largest business schools, UNH had to take its relatively small program in a new direction, Bolander said. They decided to compete more in the niche market - matching the fields students are interested in with businesses that need employees with those qualifications.

Once a week, students in the fulltime MBA program meet with faculty outside of class to discuss what their career goals are and how their studies are working toward those goals, he said.

When the university was planning the new program in the spring, administrators recruited top students graduating in liberal arts at UNH. They drew from a pool of honors students and liberal arts majors - which are both heavily populated by women.

At UNH, the general student population is 57 percent women and 43 percent men. This fall, 61 percent of the full-time MBA students are women, more than double the number last year. National trends shows roughly 30 to 35 percent of MBA students are women.

Students enrolled in the program who came from liberal arts backgrounds said they were used to classes stacked with women. Some who came from other business schools in the country said they noticed right away that there are more women than they're used to.

Bolander said the program will take into consideration that more women are signed up - and invite more women business executives to talk about what the field is like and what challenges they face.

But the bigger challenge, Bolander said, was developing a one-year curriculum for students who have never taken a business class before.

"It's very intensive," Boland said. "They will hardly have time for anything else."

Honors Program Director Lisa MacFarlane said the one-year MBA program is just what some graduating liberal arts students are seeking. Despite the initial horror at the mention of course work like accounting and finances, the prospect of being able to take an extra year and leave with a better shot at a job holds great allure for the some of the university's brightest students, she said.

"At first blush, getting a business degree for some is like going to the dentist, because you really want to chew," MacFarlane said. "But then they realize, 'Oh, this is about how you manage people and resources.' What they (liberal arts students) do know how to do is think."

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