Business Making a Top-Level Business School In 1998 the School of Business received a mandate from President Peggy R. Williams to grow. Two interesting and very important questions were raised by the mandate and initiated a self-study: How large should the school become, and what could we do to achieve the desired growth? At the time, there were 1,241 collegiate business programs in the United States; they ranged in size from a few hundred students to 7,566 full-time undergraduate students (at City University of New York’s Baruch College). Where should IC’s business school fit in that company? We expected that the College’s overall full-time undergraduate enrollment would remain stable at fewer than 6,000 students and that the School of Business would remain in proportion with the other schools at IC. Growth in the number of business students would allow the College to maintain its desired overall size while shifting enrollments out of some of the more expensive, labor-intensive majors. Student enrollment is determined, first of all, by the size of a faculty. Because we want to keep our school relatively small and at the same time bring it into the top level of undergraduate business schools in the country, we looked first at how many faculty we would need to do so. The national rankings of business schools provide an indication of the minimal faculty size needed to achieve excellence in collegiate business education. The smallest school among the top 25, Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business Administration, has 35 full-time faculty members. Generally, business schools offer instruction in seven or eight different fields --- accounting, marketing, finance, international business and several others. So then, 35 full-time faculty members would mean four or five professors in each field of study, which is just about the right minimum number needed to provide the breadth of knowledge expected from an excellent business education. By the Numbers So we determined target numbers for growth: If the School of Business were to develop a faculty numbering in the low 30s (from the current 22 full-time and 6 part-time faculty in seven specialized fields) while maintaining the student-to-faculty ratio of 12:1, the number of baccalaureate business and accounting majors could grow to approximately 700. That led us to the second question. How could the school expand its enrollments to reach that number? And that made us look closely at the history of enrollments here and in colleges and universities across the nation. As the number of American 18- and 19-year-olds hit a low (the "baby bust") in the early 1990s, higher education was faced with the problem of having excess capacity. What was once a sellers’ market became an increasing competitive marketplace. The obvious answer to the question of how to gain market share is to offer educational programs that compete more successfully. For the School of Business, that meant creating courses and programs that prospective students would find attractive. Among the first efforts along these lines was the inauguration in spring 1999 of the Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series. The lectures bring to the classroom the experience of many of our alumni in various fields, and they give the school a chance to showcase the accomplishments of its graduates. At the same time, the faculty was developing a series of new courses that would be introduced that fall. These included courses in entrepreneurship, Internet marketing, leadership, marketing of innovations, and principles of electronic commerce. We also hired an internship coordinator, Karen Gorewit, who has been successful in placing students in organizations such as the American Stock Exchange, Arthur Andersen Consulting, H. J. Heinz of Canada, and Ogilvy and Mather. Last fall we launched a one-year M.B.A. program intended primarily for IC accounting and business majors. We also created an undergraduate concentration in electronic commerce and built a computer-equipped classroom in which the courses could be taught. This fall will see the introduction of an honors program for freshman business and accounting majors. The faculty has been deeply involved in curriculum planning and will introduce a revised baccalaureate curriculum in fall 2002. A committee of faculty members from the business and communications schools has developed a curriculum for an interdisciplinary major in integrated marketing communication, which is likely to be offered in 2002. We have set a target date of fall 2004 for the introduction of an undergraduate concentration in information technology. The results of these plans and accomplishments? Increased enrollments and increases in the academic profile of entering classes. One hundred freshmen entered the school in 1998. By 2000 the entering class had grown to 173, with a 37-point increase in the average total SAT score. This fall we expect more than 180 students, which will bring the School’s total undergraduate enrollment to nearly 600 --- well on the way to our goal. Business School Undergraduate Majors Offered Accounting, B.S. Business Administration, B.S. Concentrations in: Accounting E-Commerce Finance Human Resource Management International Business Legal Studies Management Marketing
	Table of Contents | ICQ | ITHACA

A. Ozolins, Ithaca College Office of Publications, 27. Nov. 2001