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Paving the Way
by Pam Losefsky
As an integral phase in the development of a new strategic plan for the McCombs School, Dean George Gau invited leaders from some of the nation's top business schools to conduct reviews of McCombs' major programs and disciplines. "At this point in our development it is imperative for me as the new dean of the McCombs School to act as an outsider by taking a fresh look at all of our programs and services," explained Gau. Reviewers visited the school this winter, meeting with faculty, student and staff representatives and thoroughly considering McCombs' programs and disciplines, organizational structure, and resource allocations.
With the reviews now complete, a strategic planning committee, comprised of faculty and members of the Advisory Council, has reviewed the reports and has proposed a number of recommendations to establish a new strategic direction for the school. Based on those recommendations, Dean Gau will establish a strategic plan this summer to take the school to the next stage in its development.
"My goal is simple: the McCombs School should become the best public business school in the nation. We just have to lay a clear and measurable path to get there," said Gau. "While we have made significant progress in recent years in some areas, these program reviews reveal that we still have a way to go before we can be considered the best public business school." The new strategic plan will include a number of outcome metrics, by which the school will measure progress toward its goal.
McCombs School constituents will be interested in reading some highlights from the program reviews, summarized on the next page.
The BBA Program
Submitted by Thomas Dunfee, vice dean of the Wharton School, and Frederick Choi, dean of the Stern School Undergraduate College, the review of the undergraduate program offers many exciting recommendations for improving the quality of the BBA experience, an area where Dr. Gau sees great potential. "We have the difficult challenge of continuing to enhance the quality of our MBA program while at the same time giving more attention to our undergraduates," he noted. "Because of our mission as a public institution, we have broader responsibility than most private schools."
The high capability of the students in the McCombs undergraduate program, say the reviewers, demands that the quality and rigor of the program be ratcheted up. Assigning more tenure-track faculty to the undergraduate program and better managing and incentivizing all faculty, including lecturers, will go a long way toward increasing the quality of the BBA program.
The reviewers believe that the quality of the program can also be enhanced by finding specific ways to strengthen the core, adding an ethics component, better coordinating multiple sections of classes, improving the flexibility of teaching assignments, combining MBAs and BBAs in mutually beneficial situations, and increasing meaningful research opportunities for undergraduates.
Specialty programs like the PPA and the MPA may be competing for scarce resources, warn the reviewers, thus causing friction. "The PPA/MPA program seems highly specialized whereas recent financial scandals suggest the need for a broader education for accountants, not less," the report reads. "Also…the integration of the MPA program with some graduate courses [is] not seamless…. Whatever the reasons, they should be examined and dealt with in a forthright manner."
The MBA Program
The report on the MBA program, submitted by Donald Jacobs, dean emeritus, Kellogg School of Management, and Paul Danos, dean, Tuck School of Business, urges that the MBA program take steps to create its own identity. "The MBA students are a special group…and the MBA program has to be distinct from the undergraduate business program," say the reviewers.
The reviewers believe that expertise in the functional areas of business-such as finance, marketing, organizational behavior, accounting-should be the focus of the program. Those areas on which the school's reputation has been built over the past decade-entrepreneurship and technology, in particular-should support rather than define the school's strengths.
Most importantly, a shift in the school culture will be necessary to bolster the quality of the graduate program-a culture pervaded by open communications, broad administrative access, and a strong sense of ownership of the MBA core. The reviewers also stress the need for more faculty involvement at every level, from career services to student services to advising. "A dedicated faculty taking ownership of the program is the crucial element in making this the best MBA program in the nation at a public university," concludes the report.
Individual Disciplines
Reports on each of the seven disciplines (finance, accounting, marketing, information systems, operations management, organizational science and strategic management, and quantitative methods and modeling) offered in the McCombs School's five departments found areas of both strength and weakness.
Almost all disciplines at the school enjoy collegial environments that encourage research collaboration, the reviewers found. Fundamental faculty strength was also noted in most departments, but the reports indicate that more faculty are needed in most areas, both to increase the depth at the most senior levels and to bolster the core of junior faculty who will eventually move into leadership roles.
The reports indicate that uneven resource distribution throughout the school must be addressed through a broad strategy that looks at the school as a whole and not as a conglomeration of individual departments. While the research center structure has brought in valuable funding and allowed researchers to focus on differentiating projects, say the reviewers, those that are not fully integrated into their departments or that have not proven to be broad sources for summer support, research ideas, and data should be eliminated. The McCombs School's continued upward trajectory depends upon its ability to create a competitive research environment institution-wide.
Finally, improvements in teaching will come about when the school reduces the numbers of electives offered and adopts more
efficient means to allocate the teaching load. "We have a faculty who cares deeply about their teaching," said Gau. "We need to insure that our undergraduate and graduate curricula are well organized and expose students to cutting-edge ideas."
While moving toward completion of the strategic planning process, Dean Gau has already taken steps to address some of the operational concerns voiced by the external reviewers and MBA students during the review procedures. Issues able to be resolved ahead of the strategic plan include implementing a plan to interview all MBA candidates, modifying the departmental incentive structure to encourage high-quality instructors to teach core classes, creating an Advisory Council task force to look at ways to improve the Ford Career Center, and holding monthly town hall meetings to improve two-way communication with MBA students.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
