On Sunday afternoons on Carrollton Avenue, students watching the streetcar rumble by might have noticed a full advertisement for Loyola’s master of business administration open house stretch across the side of the car.

This is the largest of the ads the master of business administration program bought in October as a minor publicity campaign directed by Stephanie Mansfield, assistant director of the business school’s graduate program, to get their name out there.

The school spent $5,700 on three Times-Picayune ads, a banner in front of their building and the streetcar ad. Mansfield said the MBA program had not done much promoting in the past except for one Times-Picayune ad and word of mouth.

“We want to be more aggressive about telling the Loyola story,” College of Business Dean William Locander said.

The business school will also circulate about 11,000 copies of a new promotional magazine called Loyola Executive around Thanksgiving to business faculty, staff, alumni, students and the general New Orleans business community, he said.

Mansfield said the MBA program hopes to bring in 35 to 50 more students than the 80 they had this semester by fall 2009.

“They’re looking at Tulane, they’re looking at UNO and sometimes we get overlooked,” she said. “We want to make sure that the community realizes that Loyola does offer a flexible MBA program. It’s a little bit different than what Tulane and UNO offer.”

Loyola classes are smaller, Mansfield said, with an average size of 16 students. They all take place during the evening, part-time and full-time, whereas full-time Tulane MBA students must take classes during the day and part-time students must take classes at night, she said. UNO offers part-time and full-time students evening and afternoon classes.

The MBA program held two open houses this semester, Oct. 22 and Nov. 5, for the first time.

“After they see what we have to offer, we do pretty well,” Locander said. It’s the drawing in that they need to focus on, he said.

Mansfield said the school would like to get up to 180 students in the fall, but doesn’t want to grow too fast so all students can continue to take advantage of all their resources.

Katie Urbaszewski can be reached at [email protected].