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As a part of a new strategic plan, the Daniels College of Business is redesigning undergraduate business curriculum to include new courses, a secondary admissions process to reduce class size, revamping the MBA program and hiring 12 new faculty members.

“Just as any good business does, we needed a new strategic plan,” said Christine Riordan, dean of Daniels College of Business.

Entitled “Daniels Tomorrow,” the plan introduces seven goals in an effort to achieve the schools goal to be a globally recognized, premier private business college. The goals include:

• Delivering exemplary market-relevant programs.
• Engaging in research-driven knowledge creation.
• Strengthening college-wide areas of interdisciplinary collaboration.
• Developing as a community of choice.
• Building financial and resource strength.
• Creating a leading-edge infrastructure.
• Advancing the school’s reputation capital.

DCB plans to achieve these goals by taking several key steps.

Beginning fall 2010, students will enter Daniels as pre-business students, then they may apply for formal admission their sophomore year. This will reduce the number of undergraduate class sizes from the current 2,200 to around 1,800.

This will not affect students already enrolled at DU.

This goal will help to emphasize academic rigor and integrity within DCB, said Christine MacMillan, director of strategic planning and rankings at DCB.

In 2005, the class size was 1,400. Although the number of undergraduate students will be scaled back considerably, the number of graduate students will grow by 1,000 to 1,200.

Although some believe grade inflation issues were a cause for the new plan, Riordan disagrees.

“Grade inflation was never a reason for the strategic plan,” she said. “I haven’t heard it from any employers and I have been meeting with CEOs of all the major companies and they have not brought that up as an issue. Are we looking at grades? Absolutely. But it’s only one quality.”

Even though the plan does not directly address the issue of grade inflation, it hopes to increase the program’s rigor.

“Our plan is that we also increase rigor, part of that is to increase the quality of students coming in, therefore we can increase the rigor,” MacMillan said. “Grade inflation is a bigger, broader issue. We haven’t put anything in place, but we will be tackling it in the next year.”

The graduate MBA program is expanding into five-distinct areas, some of which are already in place. The five areas include:

• One-year MBA program launching fall 2010.
• The full-time MBA program for students with a minimum of two to three years work experience.
• The international MBA program, with heavy focus on international business.
• A professional MBA for mid- career professionals.
• An executive MBA program for senior-level professionals.

DCB also will hire 12 new faculty members, funded by DU. 

With retirement, Riordan expects to hire four or five new faculty each year for the next five years. The redesigned undergraduate business curriculum will include two new “gateway-to-business” courses and a new undergraduate business minor for non-business students.

Next, DCB will launch the Carl M. Williams Business Ethics partnership and Institute for Enterprise Ethics. The school hopes this will advance the focus on ethics, sustainability and corporate social responsibility.

Among the additional faculty members, two new directors will be hired. The director of globalization and a director of alumni relations will also be filled.

The plan also calls for the creation of a “Corporate Partners” program, with nearly 30 companies that will launch this month.

“We’re strengthening our relations with our recruiters, we’re putting a lot more resources and energy into placement, especially with the undergraduates,” MacMillan said. “It’s pretty challenging in this economic environment, but we’re really doubling our efforts to help students.”

Development of the plan began in summer 2008 and included meetings with more than 350 faculty, staff, alumni, current students and local business leaders. This is DCB’s first strategic plan since 2001.

To read the complete strategic plan visit daniels.du.edu.