Management

Assessment Plan

Objectives--The management curriculum focuses on those areas of human knowledge that concern the operation and control of business and nonprofit organizations. In addition to developing competence in analytical and core business areas, students majoring in the field are expected to learn to critically examine business and other institutions from a liberal arts perspective. Specifically, management students:

1. understand and use a variety of techniques to manage financial, human, and material resources
2. are able to critically conceptualize business problems and to develop appropriate strategies for problem solving
3. understand and use a variety of quantitative analysis techniques appropriate for business
4. develop collaborative skills
5. be competent in written and oral communication
6. develop competence in computer skills
7. are prepared for professional careers in business or public service, or for graduate studies
8. are able to see relationships between management and other liberal arts disciplines.

	Goals								Use of Information
Measures	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Review of the below information leads to adjustments in course and program design
Written exercises	x	x	x		x	x		x	Semi-annually, by course
Oral exercises	x	x	x		x			x	Semi-annually, by course
Problem sets	x	x	x			x			Semi-annually, by course
Group exercises	x	x	x	x	x				Semi-annually, by course
Course exams	x	x	x		x	x			Semi-annually, by course
Senior seminar	x	x	x		x	x	x	x	Annually, by section
Advising sessions				x			x	x	Semi-annually, by student
Internships	x	x	x	x	x	x	x		Episodically, by internship

The most recent assessment-guided action we have taken is a comprehensive revision of our design for the management major, in accord with the bi-annual program review needed to prepare the new two-year course catalog. We determined that the structure of the major was not well-serving the needs of our students.

Specifically, we concluded that we were not making appropriate use of our major comparative advantage as a strong liberal arts college teaching a relatively applied discipline: focusing on the role of formal and behavioral science-related content in providing a core foundation for more applied courses in management. As a result, we have significantly adjusted our management curriculum to make better use of our strengths in psychology and economics, and added some computer science, while maintaining a reasonable set of options for more applied work.

As a result, we have removed 2 credits of required coursework (half of one accounting course) and 4 credits of electives from the common core of the major, and also removed 4 credits from each of the emphases (Global Business, Financial Management, and Organizations and Human Resources). Instead, we have added the following three courses to the common core of the management major: (1) Economics 3113 Money and Banking (4 credits; basics of the monetary system); (2) a new course in Managerial Economics (4 credits; thus requiring a common course after Principles of Microeconomics focused on the economics of business), and (3) a new course offered by the Computer Science discipline (4 credits; on the basics of data management with both general and workplace-specific components). In addition, the required course in the Organizations and Human Resources emphasis has been changed from Human Resources 1 (2 credits, taught by an adjunct) to Organizational Behavior (4 credits, taught by a tenured psychologist).

As entering students begin to populate these new course we will over time assess whether they are having the desired results in terms of content and training for our management majors.