Centre College creates a business administration degree program

Updated, July 12, 2024: This post has been updated to correct the spelling of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

We read on a regular basis about programs that faculties and universities are terminating, but rarely can we have a good time the brand new programs they’re adding to their curriculum. At many colleges, the suggestion of introducing recent programs is generally met with quite negative reception, especially after they fall outside the boundaries of the very traditional liberal arts programs. Concerns range from the undeniable fact that this system is inconsistent with the faculty’s mission, to the undeniable fact that it’ll draw students away from already understaffed programs, to the necessity for brand new faculty in other academic areas, which is able to exacerbate concerns about resource allocation.

When Milton Moreland became president of Centre College in Kentucky in 2020, he suggested the faculty was losing potential students since it didn’t have an economics program. This proposal was met with little enthusiasm, especially from the economics department, which had the biggest program on campus. The assumption was that an economics program would cannibalize the economics program since it was expected that many economics students would transfer to business and there was no certainty that an economics program would increase the faculty’s overall enrollment. In addition, there have been concerns that an economics program would require recent faculty who were unfamiliar with the culture of Centre College.

In the spirit of open-mindedness, 4 business faculty members agreed to review the impact of adding a business program to the curriculum in the summertime of 2020. The business faculty members believed that the faculty was losing prospective students early within the admissions process since it didn’t have a business program, and that adding a business program could increase the faculty’s overall enrollment. They wrote a white paper proposing adding a business program. They went further and designed this system’s curriculum, which intentionally incorporated the humanities into the business curriculum and allowed for topics to be viewed from multiple perspectives. For example, they asked other departments to develop courses that became often called BLAPs—Business: A Liberal Arts Perspective—these courses included:

• “Creating Corporate America,” taught by the Department of History;
• “Art and Markets”, taught by the Department of Art History;
• “Religion and Money”, taught by the Religion Department; and
• “Fiction as Business” is taught by the English Department.

These are only among the courses offered by other departments to support the brand new business program. This strategy integrates the study of business with the opposite departments on campus and allows all departments to profit from the expected increase in enrollment.

The query still remained as to where the college for this recent major would come from. There were major concerns that the brand new economics faculty wouldn’t slot in, wouldn’t fully appreciate the faculty’s approach to the liberal arts, and could be very expensive to rent. The 4 economics faculty who wrote the white paper proposed retraining in order that they could teach each business and economics. They asked the faculty to cover the associated fee of them returning to the university to retrain and gain the needed qualifications to show the economics curriculum. The college agreed, and five economics faculty did indeed enroll in online programs to realize their qualifications. Two earned MBAs, one from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and one from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign’s Giles School of Business, while two earned Master of Science degrees in management from Illinois and in strategic management from Indiana, and a fifth faculty member received a graduate certificate in innovation and entrepreneurship from Harvard Extension School. Faculty felt this was not only good for the middle, but in addition “set a good example for students — learning never stops — we want our students to be lifelong learners,” said Ravi Radhakrishnan, associate professor of economics and business administration.

The result was that the business department was able to keep up its enrollment numbers and the business program attracted 42 recent students in 2023 and 80 students in 2024, becoming the biggest program on campus. According to Marie Petkus, Ewing T. Boles, Associate Professor of Economics and Business Administration: “Thanks to my MBA training, I am a better business teacher. I have a better understanding of the business applications of the business material I bring to the classroom. I also have a current overview of the challenges and opportunities facing companies on various fronts. I use these insights to better prepare students for their time after the Center.”

According to Ellen Goldey, vp for tutorial affairs and dean of the faculty, “The new economics program has been a great success; it has not ‘eaten’ the economics students, and the overall increase in enrollment at the Centre is largely due to the economics program.” This model is not going to work in all colleges or for all recent programs, however it is price fascinated about and examining where current faculty, particularly in under-enrolled programs, will want to retrain to show in one other area where there may be high demand. It also requires a certain level of trust between faculty and administration to have honest conversations about enrollment and academic programs and to be willing to explore alternative models for introducing recent programs.