The College of Business and Economics
With the help and encouragement of J.P. Morgan, the DuPont Company, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), Accenture, and other members of our corporate community, the College of Business and Economics is developing innovative undergraduate programs that integrate information technology and business knowledge. These programs will involve:
- Strengthening the curriculum for all business majors by integrating the use of information technology to solve unstructured problems, and by achieving the important educational goals of encouraging cross-disciplinary integration, teamwork, globalization and ethics.
- Implementing a new major in Information Systems at the undergraduate level and a new major in Information Systems and Technology Management at the graduate level.
- Expanding the Management Information Systems (MIS) minor and incorporating a required internship experience.
- Providing an abbreviated business certificate program for non-majors, particularly for engineering and computer science majors, and developing a new joint major with the Department of Computer and Information Sciences.
Over the next two years, the MIS program will triple in size to graduate more than 150 students each year. All of these students complete five courses culminating in senior-year team projects and graded internships with local companies. The projects involve solving real problems for real-world clients, from gauging customer satisfaction for an electrical supplier, to updating a quality assurance program for a bank, to recommending cost-effective upgrades and networking capabilities for a nonprofit agency’s computer system. For a nominal fee, clients receive the equivalent of a year’s work by a full-time employee. The projects and internships will continue to be directed and monitored by faculty members to ensure the client and the student receive the most from the experience.