Sam M. Walton College of Business - University of Arkansas

Course Outlines

The Undergraduate Program Committee met once a week during the Summer of 2002 (the College provided stipend support). The Committee divided itself into 2-3 person subcommittees for each course in the core curriculum (i.e. members were on 2 or 3 subcommittees). The objective for the summer was to develop a very detailed outline for each course. Each outline was to have a brief narrative on each section of the course and detailed learning objectives for that section (written in the correct form using action verbs). The outline would also contain the catalog description, prerequisites, and other items necessary for University approval of the course.
view Course Outlines »

Other Curriculum Issues

The Undergraduate Program Committee also developed recommendations to the faculty on a number of issues related to the new curriculum. Recommendations were developed on the following issues:

• Course Sequence and Prerequisites
  • It was recommended to change Data Analysis from a second year course to a first year course so that it could be a prerequisite for the sophomore integrated courses.
  • It was recommended that the 6 hours of Business Strategy and Planning be combined into one 6 hour course rather than two 3 hour courses.
• Pre-business Requirements
  • Pre-business courses and required grade standards
  • Exceptions to pre-business requirements
• Transfer Policies
  • Monitoring of pre-business grades from transfer institutions
  • Substitutes for Core Courses
  • Concurrent Enrollment at other Institutions
    • This recommendation was accepted by the faculty but subsequent implementation difficulties led the committee to reverse its recommendation. The policy will not be implemented.
• Specifying the Courses for the Additional (or Business) Social Science Requirement
• General Education Elective Policy
  • The committee dropped its recommendation that 9 of the 16 hours be in a single concentration because of implementation difficulties. They substituted a restriction on the number of physical or dance education hours that may be included.
• Adjustments to the Minor for Non-business Students

The full text of these recommendations may be viewed here:
view Policy and Implementation Recommendations »

FIPSE Grant Final Proposal

The Committee assisted in drafting the final proposal to the Comprehensive Program of the U.S. Department of Education, Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE). The proposal requested $230,000 funding for course releases and summer grants for faculty members to serve on course development teams. Each three person team (four person team for the 6 hour Business Strategy and Planning course) will work in the 12 months before the new course in first offered to develop detailed implementation plans and teaching materials. A major part of the FIPSE proposal was a plan for evaluating the curriculum revision. Five learning goals were specified with plans to access each.

The College was notified in August 2002 that the proposal was funded. The text of the proposal may be viewed here:
view FIPSE Final Proposal »

View Core Curriculum Tables...

• Attachment A: Core Course Enrollment, 2001-2002
• Attachment B: Core Course Enrollment - Students In Other Colleges
• Attachment C: Estimated Core Enrollment - New Curriculum
• Attachment D: Core Sections Needed During Transition
• Attachment E: Classroom Space Required for Transition

Course Development Team Selection

The FIPSE grant provides funding the compensate faculty for serving on course development teams. The funding is sufficient to hire an adjunct to release each team member for one course of teaching responsibility in a Fall and Spring semester and provide each of the team members with a $6,000 summer grant. Each team will work on course development in the 12 months before their course is to be first offered and then teach the course in the first two years it is offered. The charge to the teams includes the following objectives:

The team for each course will be responsible for:

1. Further development of the course outline and learning objectives
   1. Significant departures from the current course outline must be approved by the Undergraduate Program Committee
2. Development of plans to incorporate international issues, ethics, diversity, and written and oral communication, as appropriate
3. Development of teaching materials that can be supplied to faculty needing to prepare to teach the course --- and that can be made accessible to faculty at other universities (FIPSE dissemination plan).
   1. These materials should be so detailed that they provide a detailed blueprint on how to implement the course for the faculty member who wants the guidance.
4. Development of assessment methods to determine the degree to which learning objectives are being achieved.
5. Plan and implement faculty development activities for the first group of faculty to teach the course

Even though the work of the various teams will span a three year period as the new courses are phased in, it was decided to identify all the teams at the same time so that they and their department chair could plan ahead for their course release. An e-mail was sent to the faculty soliciting volunteers and some of the most prominent members of the faculty volunteered to serve. This was a very significant tangible sign of the Walton College faculty's support for the curriculum change. The full text of the letter of agreement signed by team members may be viewed here:
view Development Team letter »

Course Development

In January 2003, the three person course development teams for WCOB 1023, Business Foundations and WCOB 1033, Data Analysis and Interpretation began their work. These courses will be first taught in Spring 2004. The latest products of their course development can be viewed here:
coming soon »

Each team is working with an instructional designer from the Walton College Technology Mediated Learning Team. A narrative description of the course development process can be viewed at:
view Course Development Process »

Course Scheduling and Staffing

Based on the initial implementation planning in Fall 2002, detailed policies and procedures for scheduling and staffing the core classes were proposed, debated, and agreed upon. Most of the core courses will have their home in a quasi-department (Walton College of Business Department, WCBD) instead of a traditional department and will have a WCOB course prefix. New methods of scheduling and staffing these courses had to be devised. There were two exceptions to:

• The principles of economics courses retain their departmental course prefix (ECON) because the courses continue to be part of the University core courses. These courses (ECON 2013 & ECON 2023) will continue to be scheduled and staffed by the Department of Economics.
• The revised business law course, WCOB 1012, Legal Environment of Business, will continue to be taught by a specialized faculty and scheduled and staffed by the department that traditionally performed these tasks (Accounting).

It was decided to create a quasi-department chair position, Business Core Curriculum Director. This person would schedule the core courses and work with department chairs to staff the courses. The job description of the Business Core Curriculum Director can be viewed here:
view Job Description »

It was also necessary to devise a system of determining core course staffing obligations across departments. At the September 2002 Executive Committee retreat it was decided that initially the staffing obligations should be based on the proportion of the old core semester credit hours staffed by each department. The long term goal is to make core course staffing obligations roughly equal across departments. The policy proposal on the detailed procedures to implement these goals can be viewed here:
view Staffing New Core Courses »
view Teaching Obligations »
view Enrollment Estimates »

Course Coordinators

The issue of the role of course coordinators for the core courses generated quite a bit of Executive Committee discussion. The discussion was initiated at the September 2002 Executive Committee retreat and continued intermittently into the Spring 2003 semester. It was finally decided that we would use course coordinators. The policy proposal and associated Executive Committee decisions can be viewed here:
view Course Coordinators - E Comm Decisions »
view Course Coordinators - Dept. Chair Handbook »

CPA Exam Eligibility

The Arkansas State Board of Public Accountancy regulates eligibility for sitting for the CPA exam in Arkansas. Their requirement listed specific course titles which are not included in this new curriculum. We requested that the Board consider a modification to its eligibility rules and used the topical coverage spreadsheet in the "Curriculum Structure and Content" section to help make the case. The Board approved the following modification (change in bold)

A total of 150 semester hours of college credits from an institution accredited by one of the major regional accreditation associations or other accrediting organization recognized by the Board as being comparable, including, at least, a Baccalaureate degree and a concentration in accounting, and including the courses listed below, provided, however, some portion of the hours of instruction constituting a course identified below may be taught as a portion of another subject matter course when the college has designed its course structure as a business process concept, or other similar strategy, to include multiple subjects required by this paragraph as part of a single course and that the course alone or combined with other courses contain the minimum number of hours of instruction in the required subject to equal a conventional three hour course, which must be completed no later that the same semester in which the exam is taken.