A Model For Teaching Integration Of Business Disciplines To Freshman Business Majors

Abstract

The John L. Grove College of Business recently completed major revisions to the core curriculum as part of AACSB recertification efforts. A significant omission in the "old" curriculum came to light during focus groups and surveys of students. They revealed that the curriculum that had existed virtually unchanged for twenty years had no provisions for giving students an overview of how coursework fit together. In addition, students had virtually no exposure to finance, management, or marketing until their junior year, even though many had declared one of these as their major. A solution agreed upon by the business faculty was to incorporate a freshman business integration experience course, Foundations in Business Administration, into the new curriculum. The course is designed to expose students to various disciplines in business and present the basics of how these disciplines interact in businesses. In addition to the focus on business disciplines, the course includes numerous activities designed to help students develop a better understanding of how their goals and interests can be integrated into the process of planning academic and career goals with emphasis on relating their academic and extracurricular activities to those career goals.  The Freshman Business Experience, now referred to as the Business Integration Experience, has been in the curriculum for one academic year. This paper provides details about the development and implementation of the initiative, lessons learned from the first year's experience, and preliminary assessments of the program's effectiveness.