The already jam-packed International Business (INB) major may be going through a revamp in the near future.
After a recent visit, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the accrediting agency for collegiate business programs, highly recommended that Rollins’ INB department make a few changes to the program “or else.”
Professor of International Business Donald Rogers described the three main changes the program will be incurring due to the request of the AACSB:
First, Introduction to International Business, INB 200, will be the new introduction course to the program.
Second, INB 300’s course material will be reworked to provide more room for the development of writing skills as well as to integrate material from different business functions including finance, law and ethics.
Third, due to many student complaints about overlapping course material, particularly in INB 300, INB 345 and INB 350, INB 345 will become an elective course rather than a required course.
Rogers stated that by making 345 an elective, “this bought [professors] three extra sections to teach the 200 intro course. Between that and the returning faculty member from sabbatical, we can easily teach five sections of the course without adding any new faculty members.”
The second part of the revamp of the INB program involves the department trying to make its program more similar to the programs offered at the best business schools around the nation. Many of these schools do not require economic history. Therefore, the department is proposing either making Economics 202 an elective course and still requiring Economics 203 or simply making both courses electives.
When the INB major was created, courses were required in the modern language department as well as the economics department because of low enrollment in both areas. “Letting students choose what foreign language has worked well; letting students choose whether to take economics courses would probably work just as well.”
Currently, the INB major is structured into two parts; the 12 courses in international business, with nine in business and three in economics, plus a six-course area studies minor including four foreign language courses and two geographical history courses. If the economics courses are made electives, the total number of electives will increase from four to six courses, but the overall number of courses will remain the same.
Colby Loetz ’11 is glad that the number of courses is not changing. “I’m glad they aren’t making the major any more course intensive. If you don’t have time management skills, then you can’t be an INB major. The college and faculty are always telling the students to get involved on campus. I often felt that as a varsity athlete who likes to be involved in other extra curriculars (over the past four years I have been in the Rollins improve troupe, the wakeboarding club, a tour guide, I’ve written for The Sandspur, been a member of RTV, played intramural soccer and volleyball, been on RHA, and I am currently the house manager and pledge trainer for Chi Psi) but some of the INB faculty don’t care about what you are doing outside the classroom so they aren’t sensitive to just how much work they assign.”
The Academic Affairs Committee (AAC) has been debating the proposed changes at its last few meetings. No decisions have been reached at this time.
If the proposed changes are approved by the AAC and the faculty then the changes will most likely take place in the fall of 2012. Students in the classes of ’13, ’14 and ’15 would be able to fall under the new umbrella if they chose, or they could follow the current program instead.
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