SMITH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS STRATEGIC PLAN (2009-2014) D RAFT: N OVEMBER 2009 G. Anand Anandalingam (Dean)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Smith School has made a remarkable transformation from a very good regional school to a top research and teaching institution offering a wide range of products and services around the world. The capabilities of our faculty, the scale and quality of our facilities, and the quality of our students have soared. The Smith School is now in the process of another transformation. This transformation will carry the school from excellence to greatness with the following mission: be a world leader in generating new knowledge in the emerging global economic and business paradigm, and providing thought leadership to students, corporate executives and policy makers so that they can be agents of both economic prosperity and transformative social change. We want to be counted among the top business schools in this country and the world. We want to be known for superb scholarship, excellent students and flawless operations, not just among those who know us well, but everyone. The school s strategy ranges from initiatives aimed at producing research and program greatness to initiatives to improve job placement, build the Smith community, technology, brand, and revenues. Within this strategy the school will accomplish the following: Develop a culture of thought leadership around our internationally recognized faculty stars and continue key hires of senior faculty with leading research and teaching records. Strengthen MBA curriculum in both the full and part time programs to include entrepreneurial skills sets, corporate responsibility and social value creation. Increase career options for all students by broadening career paths to include associations, governments and other unique employers in the greater DC region. Continue the expansion of Smith Undergraduate Fellows Program so that all students will be able to participate in at least one Fellows track. Strengthen the Smith Community of students, faculty, alumni, and recruiters by integrating activities of student, alumni, career services and mentoring programs. Offer intense intercontinental learning through study, travel experiences for every full time MBA student in either Asia, Europe, the middle east and South America Continue to leverage technology to facilitate remote learning opportunities across continents. 1
Position the school s communications, marketing and branding activities through a focus on reaching significant external constituencies and improving the perception and ranking of our programs Improve employee retention and hiring practices to ensure continued improvement in staff and faculty quality Align existing assets of the business school to support the execution of these initiatives, and add to these assets when necessary Is this strategy achievable? We believe it is. International programs in China and Europe, and the numerous student global study trips that have been generated by the Smith School have established the school as a global institution. At home, many of our academic areas have been recognized for excellence in their respective fields. While the Robert H. Smith School of Business is poised to become the best global business school in the greater Washington DC area, several challenges can hinder progress. For example: Faculty salaries continue to escalate with bidding wars taking place among top schools for key faculty. This makes recruiting and retaining top faculty a financial challenge as well as increasing the cost of our programs There seem to be significant fiscal challenges on the horizon for the State of Maryland and the region impacting both our budget and the number of students enrolling in our entrepreneurial programs. The school continues to make progress in developing its alumni network but additional resources and time must be invested to expand the network to achieve its full potential. Furthermore, external development efforts need to be managed more efficiently to generate the desired results. Students need additional preparation to compete for the best initial job placement opportunities thereby attracting broader and more attractive employers. As a consequence of dealing with the pressures of creating research and rising in the academic ranks, many faculty members remain absent from community activities. Even with these challenges, the Robert H. Smith School of Business is led by dedicated faculty and staff and energized by extraordinary students 2
TABEL OF CONTENTS Executive Summary 1 Vision.. 4 Five-Year Objectives. 5 Strengths and Baseline 6 Competitors 9 Financial Strategy. 12 Challenges.. 13 Strategic Priorities 15 Tactics for the Academic Years 2007-2012. 17 Appendix 1: Administrative and Financial. 23 Appendix 2: Academic Programs 26 Appendix 3: Rankings 30 Appendix 4: Research 34 3
VISION The Smith School has made a remarkable transformation from a very good regional school to a top research and teaching institution offering a wide range of products and services around the world. The capabilities of our faculty, the scale and quality of our facilities, and the quality of our students have soared. The Smith School is now in the midst of another transformation. This transformation will carry the school forward with the vison: To be a world leader in generating new knowledge in the emerging global economic and business paradigm, and providing thought leadership to students, corporate executives and policy makers so that they can be agents of both economic prosperity and transformative social change. We want to be counted among the top business schools in this country and the world. We want to be known for superb scholarship, excellent students and flawless operations, not just among those who know us well, but everyone. The stature of the Robert H. Smith School of Business has advanced dramatically over the last decade. Overall, the school s average of all of its undergraduate and graduate rankings is #15 in the U.S. and when research is taken into account, the Smith School is among the top 10 U.S. business schools. While in 1998 the school had no programs or departments ranked in the top 25, today there are many such rankings. For example, in 2007/08, the following areas were recognized by one or more surveys as being among the nation s best programs: Information Systems Top 10 Quantitative Analysis Top 15 Supply Chain/Logistics Top 10 Entrepreneurship Top 10 Management Top 15 Operations Management Top 20 Finance Top 15 Marketing Top 10 International Business Top 25 Custom Executive Programs Top 20 We need to take on the mantle of becoming thought leaders in the new business paradigm. Over the next several decades we will see an evolution from pure private sector market capitalism to much deeper and broader private-public partnerships, with a resurgence of focus on business ethics, environmental sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and social value creation. All over the world, governments are going to be working very closely with financial, manufacturing and service companies. We need to 4
lead the way in helping both business and government define the parameters of this new relationship. FIVE YEAR OBJECTIVES By the year 2014, The Smith School will be viewed as one of the best business schools in the world. The Smith School will be known for superb academic programs that integrate traditional business functions with knowledge of the practice and challenges created in the new global digital economy. The Smith School will have key programs, centers and partnerships located in significant parts of the world. These programs and partnerships will allow the ready and freely flowing exchange of ideas, students, faculty and corporate partners across international boundaries. The resources available to the Smith School will enable recruiting, developing and retaining world-class students, faculty and staff, ongoing innovation and quality improvement in our programs, and a satisfying and supportive work and learning environment for all members of the Smith School of Business community. The Smith School s status in research and recognition will place the school among the top business schools as measured by an average of all external recognition rankings and research metrics. At least four of the school s academic departments will be among the top 10 in research and of these, at least two will be in the top 5. Overall, the school will be among the top five in the world in research. The average ranking of school s full-time MBA program will be consistently in the top-20 based on evaluations at Business Week, Financial Times and US News and World Report. The average ranking of the undergraduate and parttime MBA programs will be in the top-15. The PhD program will be in the top-10. Student placement and salaries will be at or above those of our peer institutions. World-class organizations will recruit at the Smith School. The School will have a dominant position in the mid-atlantic region with a broad family of programs and activities, and will have national recognition in the areas of globalization, entrepreneurship and technology. The physical facilities will add to the Smith School s attraction and we will continue to offer state-of-the-art technical capabilities for research, teaching and our engagement with external communities 5
STRENGTHS AND BASELINE We are well on the way towards achieving this vision. The Smith School has grown from 70 to 150 faculty members over the last nine years. Many new faculty have been recruited from the world s premier research institutions, each selected for excellence in research, teaching, and their ability to advance the agenda of the school. Many faculty superstars are at the pinnacle of their profession and have been awarded endowed chairs or professorships in their respective fields. Sixty-four percent of our full professors have endowed professorships or chairs while about twenty-four of our faculty are assistant professors with tremendous potential in the coming years. The strength of the faculty is perhaps the school s most significant strategic advantage. In the last decade, the production of published research in the consensus world s best research journals has soared. For example, Table 1 shows the year-by-year position with regard to total output in the 24 leading business journals indexed in the University of Texas (UT), Dallas, Top 100 Business Schools database. The rise of Smith School faculty research is unparalleled. From a position of #76 in the world in 1995, the Smith School placed #5 in the world in 2005 and #4 in the world in 2006. Table 1: World Ranking of Annual Research Output in 24 Top Journals (http://citm.utdallas.edu/utdrankings/) 1990-1995: #51 1996-2000: #20 2000-2005: #11 2004-2009: #9 Academic program quality has risen in parallel with our ascent to the top in research. Academic quality continually increases, attracting outstanding students and significant corporate recognition. The school s undergraduate program attracts spectacular students and external recognition for its programs has extended from the Maryland to the Mid- Atlantic and Northeastern United States. About forty-three percent of the fall 2007 freshman class was out-of-state. The school is the largest and top ranked supplier of an accredited part-time MBA education in the Washington-Baltimore region, offering part-time MBA tracks in Washington, D.C., Shady Grove and Baltimore, Maryland, serving over 1,200 students in evening and weekend programs. The school is now making significant efforts to integrate placement activities for both full and part time students. This is especially significant because our high quality part time students gives the MBA program substantial size and mass and enhances our ability to attract top recruiters. 6
The Executive Masters in Business Administration (EMBA), a program launched in 2003, is offered in College Park; Shanghai, China; and Zurich, Switzerland with over 100 students. The quality of our undergraduate students is superb, and the innovative Smith Fellows program is creating a fabulous undergraduate experience. The Smith School entering freshman class quality in each of the last six years exceeded that for all other entering freshman classes at the College Park campus. Retention of freshman for last year s class, at 95 percent, was also at the top as were the school s graduation rates and student teaching ratings. Table 2 summarizes some of the pertinent ranking statistics for the Smith School. Our centers have achieved significant national recognition, attracted external funding, and important corporate partners. Celebrating its twentieth anniversary last year, the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship is well established, and a leading partner to the technology entrepreneurs of the Washington-Baltimore region. Our research centers such as Excellence in Service, Electronic Markets and Enterprises, Human Capital, Innovation, and Technology, Health Information and Decision Systems, and Supply Chain Management, are bringing added distinction to the school and creating partnerships among the school and the corporate and government communities. A new center for studying Complexity in Business was launched in Spring 2008. The Netcentric Research Laboratories: Supply Chain Management, Financial Markets, Electronic Markets, and Behavioral Labs are creating an integrated electronic teaching and research environment, with applications to e-commerce, supply chain management, financial markets, auctions, and consumer research. Identified as a special strength by the 2005 AACSB International accreditation review, the laboratories foster demonstration projects and research in these areas, as well as exploring the associated organizational and behavioral implications of these changes. This is the most extensive such operation of its kind in the country, reflecting the vision of converging technology applications across the various functions of business. The school is successfully engaging its large and established alumni base and corporate network, with the prospect of generous private giving and employment opportunities for students. The school was also the beneficiary of generous gifts to expand its facilities by adding the South Wing in 2002 and the North Wing in 2007 and to increase PhD stipends to the highest in the nation in 2008. The expanded Van Munching Hall will continue to provide the most advanced technological teaching environment among all leading business schools. Additional financial support from Mr. Robert H. Smith, the school s leading benefactor, has seeded new technology, branding and development initiatives. This funding is now supporting the transformational undergraduate program for undergraduates The Smith School Fellows Program that formally began in Fall 2006. 7
Table 2: Mission Baseline (Academic Year 2007/2008) Mission: To ascend to one of the top global business schools as measured by the school s stature in research and teaching, and the quality and placement of its students. We will provide a superb research and teaching environment for our faculty and students as well as give our students a first class return on investment for their time and expense. Research (World): UTD* Overall School 9 Decision and Information Technologies: 6 Finance 12 Marketing 10 Management and Organization 3 Average Academic Program Ranking 25 Top Individual Program Rankings Part-Time MBA Full-Time MBA Undergraduate 16 (US News) 20 (Financial Times) 17 (U.S. News) Graduate Salaries Part-Time MBA (ROI) 7 (Forbes, 2006) Full-Time MBA (ROI) 2 (of FT Top 20) Full-Time MBA (MBA Salary/Pre MBA Salary) Undergraduate (Starting Salary/Cost) 8 (Business Week) 8 (Business Week) Faculty Salaries Average/(Median Percentile)** Full Professor 106.5%/(107.1) Associate Professor 102.9% /100.5) Assistant Professor 92.5% /(95.2) * UT-Dallas (UTD) **Salary Comparison Group: Berkeley, UCLA, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Ga. Tech, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, NYU, UNC-Chapel Hill, Ohio State, Wharton, Texas-Austin, Washington, Wisconsin. 8
COMPETITORS The Smith School has both public and private business school peers and competitors. We compete with some schools, such as Georgetown, in attracting MBA students but have few other areas of competition with them. Some schools, such as University of Texas at Austin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) or Carnegie Mellon, have substantial reputations as technology oriented schools. In other cases, individual departments (e.g., Finance) might compete with a specific school (e.g., Northwestern). We believe that the key to long-term academic success as measured by academic reputation among other business schools is research prominence. The speed of the Smith School s rise (and similarly, the limited strength of the university s branding) explains much of its lack of recognition as a great academic institution. Table 3 provides business school research rankings from the University of Texas, Dallas. We believe that this is a representative indicator of the Smith School s primary research competitors. As is evident, the Smith School s competitors are recognized to be among the very best business schools in the United States. Table 3: Top 10 U.S. Business Schools Research Rankings * 1. Wharton 2. Duke 3. NYU 4. Chicago 5. Michigan 6. Columbia 7. Harvard 8. Stanford 9. Maryland (Smith) 10. Texas - Austin Trade magazine rankings are summarized in the Appendix at the end of this report. Table A10 provides the summary research ranking for the business school based on productivity in top-rated journals. The best ranked department is Management and Organization (ranked 3), while Decision and Information Technologies (rank 6), Marketing (rank 10) and Finance (rank 12) are all in the top 15. It should be noted that in many areas, the school s strengths are much greater than its public recognition. These same Departments are not as highly ranked when Deans and other senior academic administrators are surveyed by US News and World Report. For example, the Marketing Department has been placed in the top 10 by the UT-Dallas research productivity measure, but otherwise appears rarely in top-10 marketing department rankings. We are very well regarded among major finance departments and finance faculty, as * Global rank based on research publications in 24 top academic journals for the five-year period 2004-2008 (University of Texas at Dallas). 9
demonstrated by our success in faculty recruiting, but the Finance Department does not get the recognition it deserves in trade magazine rankings. There is significant work that needs to be done in order to get the research reputation known to people who matter, especially those who fill in rankings surveys. For the purposes of accreditation by AACSB International, the Smith School s current peers and aspirant group are given in Table 4. The rankings of most of these programs are in line with normal expectations but programs such as Harvard s are worse than expected because of the lack of strength of its PhD program compared to the others and some programs such as Virginia s and Georgetown s fall far below their branding because of their weak research records when compared to the major research schools. For this reason, neither Georgetown nor Virginia are considered to be other peers or aspirational peers of the Smith School. Table 4: AACSB Int. Comparable Peers and Aspirant Group * Smith Brand Recognition 17, Research Rank 9, Overall 25. Comparable Peers Average brand recognition, research rank, overall average rank University of Texas at Austin 16, 11, 24 University of Michigan 8, 5, 9 University of Indiana 21, 27, 20 University of CA Berkeley 6, 16, 11 Ohio State University 38, 17, 44 University of North Carolina 28, 19, 19 Aspirant Group Average brand recognition, research rank, overall average rank Harvard University 10, 7, 1 New York University 5, 3, 10 University of Chicago 3, 4, 4 Stanford 4, 10, 3 Mass. Institute of Technology 7, 11, 7 Columbia University 9, 6, 6 * Research rank based on Table A9 in the Appendix; overall ranking based on Table A7. Brand recognition taken from previous Strategic Plan report. 10
FINANCIAL STRATEGY While the Smith School is a public business school within the flagship public university of the State of Maryland, the financial position of the school more closely resembles a private institution. About 15 percent of the school s support is from the State of Maryland. The school, like many other major public business schools does not retain its undergraduate tuition nor the university-specified graduate tuition for its full-time MBA students. In return, the school receives a base budget. In the Smith School s case, we estimate that we generate about $35 million in undergraduate tuitions for the university. The university provides a base budget of about $19 million in return. At standard university tuition rates, we estimate that the Smith School provides courses that generate about $25 million of the $35 million tuition gross. In addition, the school receives university services such as university paid employee fringe benefits (social security, employee retirement, and health insurance), some facilities maintenance and personnel, financial and developmental services. (Details in Appendices A1 and A2.) The school generates additional revenues with activities such as its Executive MBA Program (EMBA), non-degree executive education and its part-time MBA programs. Various agreements with the university define revenue sharing and tax structures for each program. Total Smith School revenues have grown from approximately $15 million in 1998 to over $60 million in the academic year ending June 2008. When an estimate of university services not in the Smith School s budget is included, total revenues are now above $70 million per year. The school uses a five-year forecasting model to report and project revenues by category, product line and location. This model augments an operational budget reporting system that interfaces with the university s accounting systems. The forecasting system enables the Smith School to investigate various tuition/cost scenarios as well as to incorporate hiring, operational and facilities investments. Figure 1 shows the historical distribution of the school s revenues as well as the actual revenues for academic years up to 2007/2008 (FY 2008) as well as forecasts for 2008/09 (FY 2009.) The portion marked University Paid Benefits is a crude estimate of the value of the employee benefits and other services paid by the university on behalf of the Smith School. Private contributions are a very important part of the school s financial plan. However, significant revenue growth is also required for the school to meet its ambitious goals. Similar to previous years, the Smith School plans to add 15-20 faculty members in the next three years. The school would like to double its marketing and communications budget over the next five years, invest in expanding executive education, and increase its information technology support, and alumni and development activities. In each case, we expect the departmental budgets to grow anywhere from 30 to 100%. Another significant challenge is to grow funding for the Smith Undergraduate Fellows program from a very small base to well over $1.5 million per year. 11
Figure 1: Robert H. Smith Actual and Projected Revenues (As of June 2008:1998-2008 actual, 2009 projected). 90000 North Wing 80000 70000 60000 50000 40000 30000 20000 10000 0 1998 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 CHALLENGES Private Revenues and Gifts B-School Retained Tuitions/Fees Univ Funded Projects Base Budget University Paid Benefits Faculty Issues Several challenges can hinder continuing progress toward realizing our vision. Our endowment is significantly smaller than the major private institutions in our aspirant group. Faculty will be attracted and retained only if we can continue to compete with other top schools by offering endowed chairs and research professorships. As the school has grown in stature, our faculty has become raiding targets of other top business schools. The school has achieved a very competitive salary profile but will require additional resources and endowed positions to compete with the academically elite private business schools for future top level recruiting. Faculty salaries are becoming an increasing concern because of the escalation of salaries by competing schools for a relatively small group of the very top faculty. Retention and recruiting packages are creating compression salary issues as well as unrealistic expectations for many faculty members and may limit growth of the tenure track. Another weakness of the school has been the relative absence of many of our faculty in activities related to building the Smith community. There are strong pressures on faculty for world-class research and teaching. In addition, assistant professors are 12
sheltered from most service activities so that the bulk of such activities have fallen on the tenured faculty. Part of this problem is self-correcting as assistant professors are promoted to higher ranks but steps to correct this weakness and transform the faculty culture to a more balanced one involving greater service is a long-term process and sustained efforts are essential. Rankings The overall quality of the Smith School is greater than some of the major external rankings. One contributor to this deficiency is the time required to build academic reputation. However, it is not clear how far the Smith School s brand recognition can climb without comparable increases in the brand recognition of the university. What is clear is that a number of business schools whose universities have stronger brands than Maryland s are rated above the Smith School s even though objective comparisons do not show them to be superior. In addition, the Smith School does not do too well in the following important rankings factors: placement indicators starting salaries and student job acceptance rates, and the reputation of the Smith School with corporate recruiters. There has been a historic weakness in the office of career management at the Smith School, and this has to be attended to. As yet, many top companies do not recruit at the Smith School. Student mentoring, job placement and development efforts are only now approaching the level required for a fine business school but many companies that should have been recruiting at the Smith School have only recently started this process. In addition, bringing additional top companies to recruit on campus is a long, time-consuming process. Two other points can be made with respect to ranking. One is that many magazines rely on self-reported business school data that is frequently inconsistent and suggestive of reporting errors or exaggerated data. Second is that while the school has made steady, year-to-year, progress in faculty and student quality, specific magazine rankings have fluctuated wildly because of relatively small changes in measured parameters, often caused by flaws in the rankings methodologies, creates much concern among students and alumni. Alumni Network The school is catching up in the development of its alumni network but still lags behind its major competitors. We have many very successful and well-placed alumni but more must be brought into active partnerships with the school. In fact, even though the Smith School has over 45 thousand alumni worldwide, less than 5 percent are active in any way. The University of Maryland has historically had a very indifferent attitude towards alumni and this feeling is mutual. Over the past 15 years or so, many initiatives have started at both the Smith School and the University to engage our alumni many different ways. We need to expand the scope of our alumni relations operations by improving date integrity, enhancing the activities and events for alumni, engaging alumni in current Smith School operations including student mentoring, speaking engagements and student placement. 13
Resources The greatest challenge for the Smith School of Business is the availability of consistent and increasing resources. The University provides less than 20% of the budget, and the school needs to generate the rest by being very entrepreneurial. Much of the revenue comes from the part-time MBA program that is subject to the risk of the well-being of the global and regional economy. In fact, we expect budget cuts due to the downturn of the economy of the U.S. and the State of Maryland. The recessionary pressures will also adversely affect the number of students enrolling in our revenue producing endeavors. As mentioned above, our endowment is also very small, less than $50 million, and the participation of our alumni in philanthropy is also limited. Thus the income from private sources can also not match many of our regional and national competitors and aspirants. On the other side, the school has increased the financial support to attract top quality Masters and PhD students but additional resources will be needed. While PhD stipends have are now at the top, substantial additional resources are needed for undergraduate and MBA scholarships. Further, recruiting and retaining top faculty and staff also requires a significant infusion of funds. The fundraising objectives for the Smith School of Business reflect these goals. Endowment funds for faculty chairs and professorships, student scholarships and financial aid are central to realizing the vision for the Robert H. Smith School of Business. Our fundraising objectives include additional resources to maintain the competitive edge of the technological infrastructure of Van Munching Hall and to improve operations at our part-time locations. Strategic Differentiators Although we have relied on technology being the main differentiator for the Smith School of Business and pride ourselves in being a pioneer in incorporating technology at the core of our teaching and overall educational missions, over the past two years we have moved on to consider our strategic differentiation as being on the nexus of globalization, entrepreneurship and technology. We call it the GET Strategy. We believe that a leading business school in the 21 st century has to be global in its outlook and mission. However, being a business school that is global does not differentiate us in a strategic manner. We continue to excel in both research and teaching as it pertains to technology, especially information systems and technology. We expend a considerable amount of time on entrepreneurship, in research, teaching, and also in experiential learning for our graduate and undergraduate students. In fact, we are the premier business school with a focus on entrepreneurship in the mid-atlantic region, from New Jersey to South Carolina. We have a number of programs on the interface of globalization, entrepreneurship and technology. Every year we conduct a business plan competition in Beijing, China which 14
is very successful with more than 200 companies competing for start-up or bridge funds. We have a number of global study trips to different parts of the world where the students, both undergraduate and MBA, learn about the entrepreneurial landscape in the countries they visit. Further, we have revamped the MBA curriculum to ensure that all students, full-time and part-time, take required courses in globalization, entrepreneurship and technology. We plan to extend this curriculum requirement to the undergraduate program in future years. In addition to the GET strategy, we also believe that a key strategic differentiator for the Smith School of Business is its proximity to Washington DC. Given the location, and the fact that over the next several decades we will see an evolution from pure private sector market capitalism to much deeper and broader private-public partnerships we believe that we have the opportunity to lead the way in helping both business and government define the parameters of this new relationship. We are planning to extend our strategy to include programs on business ethics, environmental sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and social value creation. Competitors A short-term threat to enrollments the part time program is the increased activity of Georgetown in building its part time program. A longer- term threat is the creation of the Cary School of Business at Johns Hopkins University. This program is not accredited by the AACSB, but now has a greater potential than the previous Hopkins Continuing Education MBA Program to draw students from the Smith part time program and therefore affect our revenues. In addition, Johns Hopkins University s superior branding to the University of Maryland increases this threat. 15
STRATEGIC PRIORITIES The school has attracted world-class faculty, enhanced the distinctiveness and caliber of its programs and centers, and improved the financial and administrative elements of its infrastructure. It has also achieved recognition nationally and internationally for several competencies such as the technology focus of the school and our activities in entrepreneurship. However, we have not yet reached the status to which we aspire. In our continued campaign toward attaining our strategic goals and correcting areas of weakness, we continue our focus on several strategic priorities: Maintaining research greatness throughout the school. Transforming academic programs from excellent to great. Building the Smith community to create a dynamic faculty, staff, student, and alumni network. Marketing the distinctions of the school. Increasing resources and infrastructure support for the school. The next section outlines, the tactics underlying each of these strategic priorities. 16
Research Greatness Maintain research greatness throughout the school. Continue signature hires of senior faculty with major international reputations and leading research records throughout the school. Aggressively recruit mature junior faculty with the potential to be stars in their fields Continue to build department research reputations by promoting existing capabilities and accomplishments including bringing to Smith high-visibility research seminars and national conferences with the goal of one major event per month. Exploit and improve synergies across departments in joint leading edge research Centers. Support and increase faculty research grant activities and develop additional summer research funding opportunities for tenured faculty. Continue to reduce workload for PhD students to support top talent. Increase placement opportunities for Ph.D. students with earlier and more stringent research paper requirements. Expand the Smith Undergraduate Research Fellow Program and provide research fellowships for undergraduate students to assist faculty in faculty research. Achieve placement goals for PhD students in top 50 business schools and research universities. 17
Academic Program Distinctions Transform Smith academic programs from excellent to great. Maintain high teaching quality across all levels of the undergraduate programs and all locations of the MBA program. Improve teaching support for faculty and begin the development of a series of expanded teaching quality enhancements. Improve the partnership between adjunct faculty and the school by increasingly integrating adjuncts into the intellectual life of the school.. Improve the measurement of student teaching satisfaction by developing and implementing a customer service oriented series of satisfaction surveys and integrate them into the university s new on-line course satisfaction system. Continue implementing the Smith Undergraduate Fellows Program. Implement additional Junior/Senior Fellows tracks so that all students have the opportunity to participate in at least one Fellows track. Implement the second year of the new MBA program (both core and electives) for all full and part time students. Find mechanisms to integrate the Smith brand into the curriculum and improve job placement for all MBA students. Continue enhancing the part-time MBA program with additional student services, teaching quality improvements, technology advances and physical infrastructure improvements. Enhance the quality of students and teaching in our successful MS in Accounting program. Assess the market and develop specialized EMBA and Master of Science programs such as finance and information systems, and supply chain management. Intensify the effort to enhance the quality of the PhD Program through all phases of admission, coursework, research and placement. Offer global opportunities in Asia, Europe and the United States for undergraduate, MBA and EMBA students. 18
Building the Smith Community Build the Smith community to create a dynamic faculty, staff, student, and alumni network. Continue building the Smith community of students, faculty, alumni and recruiters integrating activities of student, alumni and mentoring programs with special effort on building the part-time/full-time MBA student/alumni network. Expand the scope of our alumni relations operations by improving date integrity, enhancing the activities and events for alumni, engaging alumni in current Smith School operations including student mentoring, speaking engagements and student placement. Establish regionally-based alumni-relations with operations in New York as a starting point. Continue to improve placement opportunities for full and part-time students with enhanced emphasis in developing employment relationships with top companies. Improve the school s governance system, accountability and reporting systems, and committee and organizational structures to stimulate the development of the Smith community, marketing efforts, program delivery and operational efficiencies in line with the Smith School s emergence as a mature top research institution. Refine faculty service standards and metrics to reflect the importance of faculty collaboration in building a strong Smith community culture. Execute coordinated strategies to build and strengthen corporate partnerships that will lead to increased student career opportunities, research, sponsorship and philanthropic support of key Smith School initiatives. Extend the mentoring program to part time MBA and undergraduate students. Integrate center, academic and external relations event programming and sponsorship into a unified strategy for corporate sponsorship and fund raising. 19