BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Richard C. Thompson, PhD
To All Students of Business Administration:
Hello folks. With the arrival of the new year, I thought I would recap the highlights of 2005 and give you a glimpse of what’s coming in 2006.
In our never-ending quest to bring you the best education possible, we spend a lot of time with the faculty reviewing the quality of our courses and programs. We also pay careful attention to the information that you provide us in the end-of-course surveys and through other communications. Let me summarize the results:
- Four faculty members who were not living up to the JIU Gold Standard will not be returning.
- Four new faculty were hired:
- Dr. Maura Abrahamson – Geography
- Dr. Tricia Devin – Business and Management
- Professor Sharon Meyer – Mathematics
- Dr. Domingo Salgado – Business and Management (Dr. Salgado has taught numerous courses in the International Programs department, but has just joined us in Business Administration)
- Four new specializations were created:
- Accounting (BBA)
- Sales and Marketing (BBA)
- Accounting (MBA)
- Information Security Management (MBA)
- Ten new Courses were built, seven in the BBA and three in the MBA, to support new specializations.
- Twenty-eight courses were revised and updated with new materials and/or texts.
- The following professional alliances were formed:
- JIU was recognized by the Project Management Institute as a Registered Educational Provider through our Project Management specialization in the MBA program.
- The American Academy of Financial Management (AAFM) determined that it would recognize JIU graduates with the MBA in Finance degree as educationally qualified for AAFM’s Master Financial Professional designation and board certification.
All of this has had a very positive effect on JIU.
- Since mid-2005, in-course retention has increased to more than 90 percent.
- In a recent survey of our students, 100 percent of respondents said they would refer a friend or relative to JIU.
- The number of admitted Business Administration students grew by 62 percent from 2004 to end-of-year 2005.
From where I sit, these results are very impressive. The word is spreading about the quality of JIU’s educational offerings.
Now let’s take a quick look at new developments for 2006:
- All core courses in both the BBA and MBA are being reviewed for timeliness and relevancy. Do they serve the needs of the students and meet the Program and Institutional Learning Outcomes?
- Course building for the new specializations mentioned above will be completed by the end of spring.
- New technologies are being explored to enhance the in-course learning experience and student community building.
- Audio components are being added to the course platform (think podcasts).
- Asynchronous video—“CourseTalk”—is being added to audio for faculty and student messaging.
- We are expanding the use of the JIU BizBlog to provide up-to-date Business Administration news.
And these are just a few indicators of things to come.
So, thank you to one and all for a successful and exciting year! I look forward to the rest of 2006.
Respectfully,
Richard C. Thompson, PhD
Academic Chair, Department of Business Administration
rthompson@international.edu