New Curriculum Shows Students ‘Big Picture’

Businesses depend on a variety of departments and expertise. But sometimes those marketing people just never understand what the accountants are trying to tell them.
The Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas is trying to resolve these interdisciplinary disconnects by running students through a new curriculum, and so far, the college couldn’t be happier.
Bill Curington, senior associate dean, said the notion behind the program is to give students a broader perspective of business.
He said business issues aren’t one dimensional, and students need to know how different department can affect each other.
“Our employers told us that our students, and this is all business students, had a very good understanding of their functional areas,” said Molly Rapert, associate professor of marketing & logistics. “So our accounting majors understood accounting and our marketing majors understood marketing, but that no business school’s students were coming out understanding the big picture.”
Only one course of the old curriculum examined interdisciplinary relationships, and that was only offered near the end of the program. So the college flipped it around, putting freshman through seven integrated courses.
The first new courses were implemented in spring 2003, but it was a four-year process to get the curriculum into the classroom. The Walton College faculty formed a committee and talked with employers, alumni and other colleges.
A $230,000 grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) through the U.S. Department of Education helped the process. The money allowed release time for faculty, but would also put the program to the test, literally.
The FIPSE grant required the Walton College to develop a test to measure the program’s success. Faculty created a standardized test of business concepts. The test was balanced, not biased toward either curriculum, Rapert said, and was administered in the fall of 2005 and spring of 2006.
Rapert noted the students of the new curriculum only had two years of course work, while the students of the old curriculum had nearly four years of curriculum.
Despite fewer courses, the results showed significantly higher scores for those students of the new curriculum.
The curriculum was working the way the Walton College intended.
“Our thought is that it’s a combination of teaching integrated courses, and also the courses were just so much more challenging that it really brought our students up to speed more quickly than it had in the past,” Rapert said.
The first graduates to complete the new curriculum will graduate in May, but the College said it has already received accolades from the business community.
“We see anecdotal evidence in terms of companies with our interns, being very happy,” Rapert said.
“It’s a very positive influence,” Curington said. “And as these students graduate, employers will come to see these positive influences.”
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