Darden School. Commission/Schools/Darden/November

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1 Darden School The Darden School of Business recently celebrated its 50 th anniversary, reflecting the strong base on which to build toward its centennial. While the world in which the School operates has changed over the last 50 years, the fundamental mission on which it was founded remains relevant and guides today s decisionmaking. This coupled with Darden s vision drive the strategies outlined below. Mission - The Darden School of Business is a professional school that works to improve society by developing leaders in the world of practical affairs. We create and deliver educational programs and conduct and publish research to advance the knowledge and practice of the business community. We are an international leader in management education, widely recognized in the business and academic communities. Vision Over the next ten years Darden will set the standard among business schools for outstanding education and will rank among the leading schools for the creation and dissemination of practical ideas for business. Darden will be a sustainable community of excellence where students, faculty, staff, alumni, corporate partners want to be. It is a community of impact in the world, a community that does well and which creates good through: Offering superb management education with a distinctive leadership cachet; Commanding a strong and distinctive position in the global field of management education; Assuring a compelling, energizing environment; Balancing resources consistent with our aspirations in areas of financial, human, intellectual and social capital. Commission/Schools/Darden/November

2 When this vision is achieved, Darden will have transformed itself from a Charlottesville-based provider of MBA education to a school with an international presence offering a full portfolio of management and leadership education through exclusive and joint-venture offerings. Darden will partner with companies to support their efforts to hire and develop talent through the life-cycle of their employees career. The School will have impact through its robust research program that influences the practice of business. The strategy to achieve the vision is built on the following elements: Deliver excellent classroom instruction. Darden s signature expertise will remain a core strategic process in the future. Other business schools that traditionally focused on research are now investing in the quality of the student experience. This requires Darden to continually invest in this competency so that the School sets the standard that others must meet. Innovate to produce redesigned, market-focused educational programs. This will include an expanded set of offerings to address lifelong learning needs of graduates, prospective applicants, alumni and the organizations Darden partners with. As in all disciplines, managers need to refresh and update their skills as they progress through their career and become leaders. As more options are introduced to obtain this expertise, Darden needs to remain creative in how it delivers its programs. Increase selectivity and diversity of students and corporate partners through expanded outreach, high admissions standards, and strategic use of financial aid. Strengthen clusters of research excellence to attain thought leadership in areas of strategic choice. Darden will add to its research centers in ethics and entrepreneurship. Specific areas for expansion will reflect the alignment of faculty interest and a market interest as evidenced by financial support to fund on-going research. Areas under active review Commission/Schools/Darden/November

3 currently include investment management, the extended enterprise, lifelong learning, and leadership development. Promote the professional development of faculty and staff. Being a leader requires that faculty and staff continue to stretch and gain new insights that can be incorporated into their daily activities. Implement the best administrative practices to manage the School and its resources. Darden is a business school and needs to follow the best practices that it teaches. This will assure that the School is effective in the use of its limited resources. TWO-YEAR PLAN Darden has achieved positive momentum related to many of its goals. Over the next two years, strategies to solidify its position as a premiere business school include the following. Deliver programs of world-class quality in the MBA full-time, MBA for Executives and Executive Education programs. Darden will retain its distinctive advantage as a school that is student-centered and based on high engagement between students and faculty and among students. Innovation will continue in curriculum design to ensure that programs are market-facing and integrate new technology. A more explicit focus on leadership development will be evident in the curriculum and in communication about the Darden experience. Strengthen recruitment efforts and strategic deployment of financial aid to achieve higher selectivity of students. Tactics that have proven effective over the last year, and resulted in a stellar first-year class, will be expanded. This includes a focus on building personal relationships with top applicants and alumni, faculty and staff. A refinement of the Commission/Schools/Darden/November

4 admissions calendar will ensure that top candidates throughout the season are motivated to select Darden. More effective yield management efforts will also help achieve this goal. Selectivity will also be served by allocation of financial aid to admitted candidates in order to compose stronger classes. Expand Executive Education programming, including more conference options, selected partnerships with specialist organizations (e.g. Direct Marketing Association), utilization of new technology to extend educational experience, and experimentation of off-site delivery. Identify opportunities to connect Darden faculty with clients to facilitate field research opportunities. Improve awareness of Darden among key stakeholders, and position the School as a high-end boutique that offers a transformational learning experience. We will enhance our programs in advertising, media relations, communications, and missionary outreach. Recruit world-class talent to replace faculty members who are expected to retire. Invest in building relationships with a wide variety of prospective candidates to assure a diverse applicant pool as vacancies occur. Accelerate expansion of program offerings and delivery locations: o Solidify delivery of Partnership for Leaders in Education (joint venture with Curry) and expand as appropriate; o Determine feasibility of joint degree programs e.g. MBA-MPH, expansion of MBA-JD, and as appropriate begin implementation; o Extend program delivery locations via selected offerings in executive education and MBA for Executives. o Evaluate additional formats for obtaining an MBA, and as appropriate begin implementation. Enhance international focus of the School: Commission/Schools/Darden/November

5 o Execute additional partnerships via the Tayloe Murphy Center with universities outside the United States. Offer educational programs for international students at Darden, leveraging proximity to Washington DC. o Expand international content in the curriculum and assure that students are international ready via coursework and diverse opportunities for international exchange programs. Increase the annual investment in research. We will dedicate additional resources to support faculty efforts to extend research output and publicize breakthrough ideas. Promote diversity among students, faculty and staff. Darden s goal is by 2010 to rank in the top quartile of its peer group in terms of African- Americans, Hispanic-Americans and women within our student body and teaching faculty. Initiatives in this area will focus on enrolling a diverse student body and raising visibility on this issue and its impact in the classroom and in business. Tactics to achieve these goals include: o Admissions Continue engagement with diversity partners e.g. Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT), Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, National Black MBA Conference and the Forte Foundation. Systematic marketing to underrepresented minority GMAT takers. Hosting Discover Darden weekend visits to increase applications. Support minority pipeline projects such as the LEAD program. Identify mechanism to fund scholarships for top minority and women candidates. Commission/Schools/Darden/November

6 o Faculty recruitment Identify and recruit from diverse pools via the PhD project. Cultivate relationships with senior diverse scholars so that they might be encouraged to join Darden when there is a vacancy. Require searches for new positions to include a diverse candidate pool. o Darden will take the lead among business schools to develop programs that promote diversity given current legal constraints. This will occur by bringing together leaders from other schools within the University to create a diversity agenda and set of action plans to continue to foster diversity. Engage alumni via life-long learning programs. Graduates need on-going education as their careers progress, and Darden will offer targeted programs to meet this need and solidify alumni relationships with the School. Examples include building on the success of initial conferences held in NY and Washington DC, offering discounted access to Executive Education programs, and dissemination of information via pod casts, webinars, etc. on best practices and thought leadership published by Darden faculty. Implement best business practices, as taught at Darden, to ensure that the School s management processes are effective and efficient. Realize the opportunities for revenue growth and cost savings identified from the recent outside review of the Schools cost structure and benchmarking with peer schools. Over the next two years we will transition to a strategic human resource management system that will include more thorough feedback and development for current managers and more extensive development programs for leadership and staff. Commission/Schools/Darden/November

7 Meet interim goals of the capital campaign to assure that the School has the resources to fund key priorities. Establish a strategic alliance between Darden and McIntire to promote coordination in educational programs, research, recruitment, etc. SIX-YEAR PLAN Much of the activity initiated in the two year plan will be amplified over the ensuing four years and will form the foundation for new initiatives, including: Expand our range of programs with a focus on post-mba leadership programs and new degrees offered in collaboration with other schools within the University. Build on the success of new programs developed over the next two years. Examples of potential additional degrees include a PhD program for practitioners in business; leadership/business for those in medicine, architecture, museum management, engineering, etc. Integrate innovative technology options into instructional offerings in the classroom via expanded distance learning capability, pod casts, etc. Complete the fund-raising for a financial aid endowment that will permit Darden to compete successfully against peer schools in the acquisition of top student talent. Expand off-site research and program delivery via new centers in Asia and Northern Virginia. Determine opportunities for collaboration with other schools depending on the local audience e.g. medicine and engineering in Northern Virginia. Enhance thought leadership through o the establishment of one or more new endowed research centers; o the establishment of new endowments to support research assistant position, post-doctoral appointments, research leaves; Commission/Schools/Darden/November

8 o the recruitment of additional faculty members who are researchactive and who have established or seem likely to establish national reputations for thought leadership. Enhance capabilities of faculty via addition of executive practitioner faculty and visiting research fellows. TEN-YEAR PLAN In ten years Darden will have achieved a commanding and distinctive position in the global field of management education. Expertise resident at Darden will be more closely integrated into wider university activities. Initiatives to assure success include: Develop additional international centers, projected to be in Latin America, Europe and India. These will follow the model described above and serve as a home base for education programs for local participants; an additional location for Charlottesville based students; a venue for executive education programs; a base for country-based research efforts; and an opportunity for other areas within the University to do the same. Establish a University-wide strategy for management and leadership education that leverages the relationship among all graduate and professional schools, and especially among McIntire, the new Batten School, and Darden. We will develop strategies to exploit synergies among these schools. A seamless range of management education and executive education programs will be delivered by these schools. Faculty will have an extended community across the University, allowing better coordination of this critical resource. Deliver a full complement of new degree and non-degree programs teaching leadership/management skills oriented to non-traditional subject areas e.g. non-profit or public sector organizations. Commission/Schools/Darden/November

9 Offer additional lifelong learning opportunities. This may include a post MBA degree, re-tooling for a different career, etc. Add to or expand facilities on Darden s Grounds. These facilities will house the new faculty, staff, and teaching and conference space required with our projected expansion of programs and activities. Commission/Schools/Darden/November