Executive Summary
The excerpts below are from the Executive Summary of the Report of the MBA Curriculum Committee, May 2012, which provided Business School faculty with key points and milestones in the curriculum revision plan.
Overview
The future needs of business school stakeholders are changing. Some of the drivers reshaping the skills managers need to be productive contributors to communities and society in the 21st century include:
- increases in global connectivity
- the availability of big data and growth in analytical power
- the emergence of new models of innovation and a renewed appreciation for the importance of entrepreneurship
- the interdependence of organizational growth and sustainability
- the ethical dimensions of business taking center stage as managers focus attention on building responsible organizations
To address these challenges, in January 2011, the LSB established an MBA Curriculum Review Committee to review the curriculum and develop a curriculum proposal. The committee's work was guided by two overarching goals: 1) to provide students with the knowledge and expertise to create opportunities by turning ideas into action, and 2) to strengthen the curriculum's alignment with LSB's primary points of distinction:
- Engagement with Silicon Valley
- Strong content related to Innovation (in both new and established firms) and Entrepreneurship
- Blending theory and practice to help students put ideas into action
- Commitment to the Jesuit ideals of ethics, integrity and corporate and individual social responsibility
Students leaving the program will be able to make and implement decisions, formulate and execute strategy at the appropriate level, and manage people and organizations to promote growth and prosperity.
Highlights
The proposal introduces a variety of innovations, including:
- Foundations Courses New Design: 20-week cohort‐based courses to enrich learning and provide a foundation for building student communities and networks
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- Accounting, Economics (Microeconomics & Macroeconomics in the Global Economy), Decision Making & Analytics, and Management
- New courses in: Innovation; and Communications (Oral & Written)
- Updated/Revised Content: Focused four unit courses in Marketing, Finance, and Strategy to enable innovation in curricula. In addition to academic content in Strategy, the Strategy course continues to support the integration of content in the core. Revised content in all courses to align with the LSB's points of distinction.
- A revised Concentration Structure: focused on building robust knowledge in an interdisciplinary and/or specialized content area
- A new Endcap experience
- A stronger emphasis on integration and coordination among courses in the core
Implementation
An implementation team will be established in summer 2012, to initiate activities for deploying the plan in support of a Fall 2013 introduction. The proposal includes suggestions for the implementation team addressing areas such as mechanisms for integration, responsibilities for course coordinators and concentration coordinators, and syllabi review processes.
