Curriculum Committee Report to the Faculty Ed Conlon January 15, 2001

Main items Business Trends affecting the Curriculum A Typology of Needed Skills General Conclusions to Date Where the Committee is Headed Several possible recommendations Future Steps Three questions

Trends affecting The Curriculum Business Environment –Velocity of change –Importance of Relationships Technology –Enables customization, speed and reach. New Job Creation –In Web Businesses –In Consulting

Free Form Creativity Innovation Collaboration Agile Thinking Adaptation Service Leadership Communication Discipline (Structure) Rigorous analysis: -Information search, organization, retention -Hypothesis formulation -Problem framing -Alternative framing -Alternative evaluation (metrics, risk analysis, behavioral issues) -Implementation / Project Management -Results assessment (metrics) -Adaptation Process design and management A Useful Typology of Skills

General conclusions so far Our curriculum needs to encourage a more active kind of learning than it currently does. Technology allows interesting new options for delivery which should fundamentally change how our students learn. Both the content and delivery of our courses need to develop independent thinking and problem solving skills.

Where we appear to be headed Evaluating the skill profile of our curricula Identifying the proper balance of skills –Use of benchmarks and external advisors Matching skill development to potential new pedagogical approaches Making recommendations for core courses and their content

Some possibilities Creation of courses that develop problem solving and discovery learning skills –Undergraduate: 1 hour course in 2 nd year –MBA: 2 week ‘frontstone’ and ‘capstone’ The introduction of additional content and pedagogy into other courses to develop selected skills Less lecturing, more ‘doing’ in the core course classrooms Development of technology tools as vehicles –‘myMendoza’ resource pages

Future Steps Formation of advisory groups –Alumni –Recruiters –Other experts Use of benchmarks –Best practice comparisons Use of departments Use of University Resources –Kaneb Center

Several questions on which I would like your guidance Are we (the Committee) correct in the general direction we are headed? How much change (in the curriculum) is enough? How should we go about implementing changes?