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密歇根大学商学院介绍系列之五 - Changes in the MBA Curriculum (7-week terms and 2.25 credit hour courses)
In Fall 2002, Dean Dolan appointed a committee of faculty and students to review the MBA core curriculum (exclusive of MAP) with an eye towards aligning the core with the School's new strategy, identifying high priority areas for improvement, and developing a set of recommended changes to be discussed and voted upon by the governing faculty.
The committee approached this important task very deliberately: benchmarking peer programs; seeking input early and often from students, faculty, recruiters, alumni, and staff; keeping the community informed as proposal ideas were developed and tested; and so on.
MBA’s from the Classes of 2003 and 2004 were instrumental in serving on the committee and in providing extensive feedback to the committee members throughout the process. The input we received was extremely helpful in ensuring that we developed the soundest possible set of proposals for the faculty to consider. The faculty approved the final proposal by a vote of 79-10.
The major benefits of the new core curriculum include: a stronger analytical and quantitative foundation; a balanced, general management core; room for an optional elective prior to internship recruiting; and flexibility for students to reduce the conflict between academics and recruiting in Winter A.
We made several very significant changes to help us achieve these benefits:
Whereas we formerly had four 3.0 credit hour courses and six 1.5 credit hour (plus MAP) courses required in the first year, we now have nine 2.25 credit hour courses (plus MAP). So, now all of our core courses have sufficient ‘bandwidth’ for each to make its needed contribution to the whole.
We also re-sequenced the core courses to allow for more topics to be learned in the appropriate order, allowing ‘downstream’ courses to better leverage what’s taught ‘upstream’ and opening up new opportunities for synergy across courses taught at the same time.
Finally, we ‘frontloaded’ the core curriculum by asking students to take an overload of 9 credit hours in Fall A – the main pedagogical benefit being to jumpstart the MBA1 academic experience and give folks the core analytical and conceptual tools from the basic disciplines that they’ll need as they move into the functional courses in Fall B. Taking four courses in Fall A also has the important effect of reducing the number of required credit hours in Fall B and Winter A. While it is a pretty intense start to the program, it does make it possible for students to have reduced load of just two required core courses during Winter A. And, for those students that feel they can handle four courses two sessions in a row, the opportunity to take an elective in Fall B.
All of these changes were made directly in response to student needs and concerns expressed during the core review process.
I know that many students are particularly excited about having a reduced course load during the Winter A internship hunt. We know of no other peer school that offers students the option to reduce their load during the internship search or the option to take electives prior to January. Schools on quarter systems are unable to offer this type of model. The few schools on semester systems like ours such Fuqua, Harvard, and Wharton, do not have such a model and would need to go through a difficult curriculum review process in order to do so. If it works out as well as we hope, this change should help us with prospective students and draw more recruiters to Michigan as the market discovers how much better prepared our students are during internship interviews.
Of course, these changes affect more than just the core curriculum. In devising the new core, we created 2.25 credit hour courses for the first time and allowed electives to adopt this new format on a voluntary basis. As many of you now know, these classes meet twelve times for two hours and ten minutes, with a ten-minute break during each session. This course length is equivalent to that of core courses at peer schools on quarter systems, such as Chicago, or half-semesters, such as Duke. The hope of the students and faculty involved in designing the new 2.25 credit hour format is that the longer class meetings will allow a better mix of case & lecture, depth of topic coverage and more discussion than is presently possible in the 90-minute format used for 1.5 and 3.0 credit hour classes. Faculty are offering 9 different classes in the 2.25 credit hour format (27 sections in total) during the Fall, including Finance 580 (Options), Finance 615 (Valuation), and Management of Organizations 512 (Negotiations). Early feedback from both faculty and students on this new format has been quite positive so far, although we will continue watching this one closely as the year goes on and make necessary refinements as we move forward.
The new format for the electives also allows students to focus on fewer courses during a given half-semester. A normal load of 3 2.25 credit hour courses gives students an opportunity to focus more deeply on subjects of interest and avoid having to switch back-and-forth between subjects quite as much.
This innovation should also help students better spread their course load throughout the year. For example, many MBA2’s would prefer to take a lighter course load during Fall B’s heavy recruiting period. These students may choose to take a slightly heavier load in Fall A, Winter A, or Winter B by taking 1 or more 2.25 credit hour classes in place of a 1.5 credit hour class.
The end result of these changes should be both a better classroom experience and greater flexibility for students in planning their courses to better balance recruiting, club activities, and personal life.
So, we’re really implementing quite a lot of change based on the feedback we’ve received from students over the last couple of years. While there are certainly challenges we’re coming across as we roll each new innovation out, I know that we’ll end up in a great position if we continue working together to fine tune these changes.
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发表于 2004-10-8 03:46:00
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