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MBA ISSUES

C. THOMAS HOWARD, Feature Editor, MBA Roundtable Co-Director, Director of MBA Programs, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver

This is the second in a five-part series dealing with the changes sweeping MBA programs worldwide. In the first article, Bruce Allen discussed the value created through MBA curricular Innovation at Wharton. In this second article, Tom Watkins, who championed MBA change at the Daniels College of Business, describes the lessons learned in implementing a dramatically new curriculum.


Implementation Challenges in Curricular Change

by Thomas L. Watkins, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver

Over the past several years nearly all management programs have gone through or are going through some sort of fundamental curriculum reform. Our own effort, begun in 1988, had four key features:

  1. The replacement of 20 free-standing discipline-focused courses with six "functionally integrated" mega-courses plus a capstone internship, all of which were sequenced;
  2. The use of multi-disciplinary faculty teams of two to five persons each, to deliver the courses;
  3. Imbedding within those courses several experiential learning elements we felt were essential but which as faculty we were not prepared to deliver; and
  4. The rigid use of student cohorts for the first two terms.

As the model emerged, six implementation considerations became critical challenges as we moved from concept through delivery: communication, design and delivery group structures, the reward systems, core course coordination, infrastructure and resource support, and the management of student needs.

Communication

We found it necessary to engage in a full-fledged communication campaign which had as its foundation a piece entitled "A Discussion of Issues Regarding the Integrated MBA Concept." This document contained answers to 21 questions regularly asked by faculty, such items as: Why are we doing this? What happens to the disciplines? Should we beta test the idea? What markets are at risk? The document was derived from and contributed to healthy faculty discussions.

From there we moved to a series of meetings designed to outline a curriculum. We also created a mapping matrix that had our former courses along one axis and a proposed realignment along the other. Into the cells we wrote and continuously updated and communicated the topics from various disciplines that would be taught, or not taught, in the new model.

We also found it necessary to prepare multiple documents for the central administration designed to show that the program would be at least revenue neutral in terms of head counts, length of program, number of persons seeking a concentration, part-time vs. full-time ratio, etc., and also the extent to which costs would rise because of necessary faculty development, infrastructure support, and team teaching.

Delivery Teams

We included students and business persons in our course design teams, but expected to have only faculty delivering the courses. Considerations in the initial phases focused upon essential topic inclusions, a rough structure, and program length. The design outcomes were fed to a small coordinating group to move us to a concept stage. This was interactive with faculty groups for several months until courses were fleshed out, then course delivery teams could be formed.

A key consideration here is whether the design and delivery teams should include the same faculty members. There are plusses and minuses to either possibility; we opted to reform all of the teams: it gave us bold creativity at the front end and gave us manageable team sizes, but it made teamwork and implementation more difficult later. There is also the issue here of how many faculty can or will meaningfully participate in design or delivery.

Reward Systems

Curriculum reformation is likely to jolt a rather stable teaching environment. First, any new curriculum is initially going to be far more labor intensive, which has two implications: each faculty member may have to perform at a higher level of teaching commitment; and in a cross-functional core there is a need to balance a desire to have team teaching wherever necessary against the prohibitive cost of having several persons in each class concurrently, all of whom wish full credit for being there.

For us, the norm of two-courses-per-term had become inadequate as a measure to determine threshold levels of faculty teaching expectations. It took nearly a year of debate to establish a working model of a "unit contribution" scheme that the faculty agreed to adopt on a trial basis. It is a point system that provides established credit for various types and levels of activity in the teaching area. Still, it remains unclear how this new level of teaching commitment relates in importance with other academic activities, especially since they are outside the point structure.

The recognition of effort, and a system to deal with it, is as critical as the curriculum design itself and must be developed concurrently.

Continuous Central Coordination

Any integrated effort will precipitate a need for core champions, centralized scheduling decisions, and coordinated delivery decisions. Such centralization is contrary to the departmental movement of the past four decades.

We have an "MBA Core Coordinating Committee" consisting of course coordinators from each core course, which meets monthly, whose task it is to assure smooth topical transition from one course to the next, eliminate redundancy, assure that essential topics are not being omitted, and agree upon common policies. The group is also the clearing house for multi-course cases.

Another key role is scheduling and faculty teaching assignments. The new core courses created a tension between the course coordinators and the department chairs. Scheduling meetings involving both groups are long, begin much earlier in the academic year, and bear a remarkable resemblance to an NFL draft.

Infrastructure and Resource Support

Some of the most vexing problems associated with a cross-disciplinary course involving several professors are the absence of an infrastructure or teaching resources to support it. First, appropriate course materials are almost impossible to obtain, so professors may end up creating their own. In any event, the necessary lead times expand exponentially. There are lesser difficulties with getting materials ordered, having syllabi prepared, having secretaries know where a question should be directed, how a grade is appealed, and so forth, but they are real. So are questions about who buys a film or compensates a guest lecturer. Cross-functional courses are orphans that academic units shy away from, so an early critical decision is whether to eliminate or realign the departments, or how the college or school will support the changes in terms of human and financial resources.

Student Needs

Any curriculum change affects at least three groups of student customers: those who are continuing in the former program, those who are entering the new one but are often in class with earlier entrants, and those who are considered prospects to attend the new program. To successfully appeal to the last group it is necessary to overhaul all marketing materials, a process that may have to occur even before final decisions about structure are made.

Continuing students need to be intimately involved with the process so that they understand course substitutions, and so that they do not feel disadvantaged by completing the program under which they entered. For the new students we had to prepare for an overhauled orientation that dealt with the many new effects of team teaching, and "surprises" like the increased costs of texts. And for all groups, we needed to reform our marketing to potential employers unfamiliar with integrated courses.

Conclusion

Movement to a fully integrated curriculum will surely be gratifying: students and faculty alike will find it more realistic, more challenging, more exciting, and ultimately more educational. But it will have a chance of survival only if critical implementation issues are anticipated early and squarely faced.