The last time Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management completed a total curriculum review, it was preparing to open a new, state-of-the-art building on the corner of Marshall Street and University Avenue.

Now, 10 years later, the school has a plan in place to make several “high level changes” to its curriculum that will affect which classes business students take and when they take them. The review involved making changes that many faculty members saw as necessary and beneficial for the school’s reputation.

“Business certainly isn’t the same as it was 10 years ago, so in my view you have to keep updating and continually improving,” said Susan Smith, a marketing professor in Whitman. “I don’t know many companies doing the same thing 10 years ago as they are now.”

The main changes include making the curriculum more structured, which will open up the opportunity to take a minor or a foreign language, and increasing the number of specialized classes needed to get a degree in a certain major from four to five. The changes are now awaiting approval from a campus review board after taking only a year to be reviewed and voted on within Whitman.

The changes were set in motion when Ken Kavajecz arrived on campus as the new Whitman dean in the fall of 2013.

“Whenever you take a new position, you want to take a look at everything,” Kavajecz said. “When I got here, I realized the curriculum had not been reviewed or changed in 10 years and I thought it needed to be reviewed at a minimum.”

The review of the curriculum began shortly after Kavajecz arrived, and Whitman faculty voted to approve the changes in the spring of 2014, he said. The changes were moved to the campus review board in November, and the school is awaiting approval so the new curriculum can be implemented starting with the next freshman class.

For the most part, faculty members were overwhelmingly supportive of the changes, said Alexander McKelvie, chair of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises. There were town hall type forums and formal committees that worked on the changes, he said. In order to get any of the changes passed, the school’s undergraduate board, which consists of representatives from every department, must approve the changes.

One of the best things about the new proposed curriculum is the structure it provides students, McKelvie said.

“A lot of people before kind of fell through the cracks because of the looseness and over-flexibility of things,” he said. “There might be some pushback in the sense that it’s more rigid, but it’s more rigid for a reason.”

MaryAnn Monforte, an accounting professor, said she used to teach a class where she was an adviser to students for their first two years at Whitman. She echoed McKelvie, saying she found that although the old curriculum gave students flexibility in scheduling, it would sometimes make it difficult for them to meet certain graduation requirements in a timely fashion.

Part of the structure of the updated curriculum comes from the addition of two “integrated cores,” or a package of three courses that students will take during the same semester. For example, students will take courses on marketing, supply chain management and finance simultaneously, with a focus on how those areas are integrated, McKelvie said. Another integrated core will have courses focusing on “the people side and the strategy side,” he said.

Though he’s unsure when exactly the campus review board will formally approve the changes, Kavajecz said completing the entire process in about a year is an accomplishment in itself, and he credits the speedy completion to faculty members and their commitment.

“I don’t know if any other school I’ve ever been attached to could ever do a full curriculum review in one year,” he said. “I don’t know if any other school has ever done that.

Smith said having new leadership in Whitman provided an opportunity to take a look at the curriculum, but added that it’s a time consuming process.

“I think a lot of why it doesn’t get done more frequently is it’s a massive undertaking,” she said. “It took us two full semesters of hard work to do it in addition to what we’re teaching and everything.”

However, faculty and administration agreed that the ultimate purpose for the curriculum update is to benefit students.

McKelvie said that he believes the changes are going to help take the school’s undergraduate program “to the next level.” He said some rankings are based on recruiter opinions, but ultimately providing a better experience for students is what’s important. Whitman is currently ranked 55th by Bloomberg Businessweek on its list of Best Undergraduate Business Programs, and the school’s full-time MBA program was ranked 69th by Bloomberg Businessweek.

“We want to move up in the rankings and continue to improve the school and improve the university,” McKelvie said. “We weren’t doing poorly, but not as well as we should. We should be top 40 or even top 30.”

Kavajecz said ensuring that Whitman students are successful is the first step to making the school more successful as a whole.

“Success breeds success,” he said. “If our students are securing job opportunities and being successful in those opportunities, then we’ll be successful. Then more students will come, and they will be successful.”

Published on January 21, 2015 at 12:01 am

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