Assurance of Learning
Curriculum Management in Lubin
The mission of the Lubin School of Business is to develop our students' analytical, organizational, and personal competencies in a comprehensive academic and experience-based learning environment dedicated to preparing students to successfully begin and advance in their chosen professional careers.
Lubin's course-embedded approach to assessment engages the faculty at many levels including: developing learning goals, creating assessment exercises, evaluating performance, and implementing improvements based on the evidence. The faculty of the Lubin School of Business is committed to each student's success in every course and throughout the program.
The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business recognized Lubin's "exemplary Assurance of Learning Process" during our re-accreditation visit highlighting our strong faculty involvement, our merit process for assessment activities and our strong rubrics.
The Lubin undergraduate learning goals are the skills the faculty expects students to master by graduation in the Bachelor of Business Administration program.
Lubin's General Learning Goals
- Communications
- Critical thinking, problem solving and decision making
- Interpersonal interaction, social responsibility and ethics
- Global perspectives
- Quantitative applications
Lubin's Management-Specific Learning Goals (all majors)
Accounting
- Prepare performance reports for different responsibility centers in a decentralized organization
- Evaluate short term incremental decisions and demonstrate the long-run impact of these decisions on the profitability of the firm
- Prepare, analyze and interpret basic financial statements
- Describe the increased prominence of nonfinancial measures for planning, controlling and measuring performance in an organization
Finance
- Evaluate business decisions considering the time value of money
- Analyze financial statements using appropriate financial ratios
- Determine levels of risk and return for various securities
Management
- Apply management theories to business situations
- Demonstrate knowledge of motivational tools in leading others
- Plan and organize business strategies and tactics
- Evaluate business results within an organization
Legal Studies
- Demonstrate knowledge of contracts, torts, crimes and real and personal property
- Analyze the impact of legal and regulatory activities on business
- Identify legal issues in business situations
Marketing
- Assess the social, cultural, economic, competitive, technological, legal and ethical factors that affect marketing strategy
- Integrate key marketing functions within an organization and coordinate with other functional areas
- Apply marketing tools to create customer value and meet organizational objectives
- Measure the impact of marketing strategies
The Curriculum Management Process
The Lubin School of Business has a comprehensive system of assessment and continuous improvement for all programs. Lubin's Director of Continuous Improvement works with the Lubin Undergraduate Curriculum Committee to review assessment procedures, determine processes, review student performance and recommend improvements to our programs. The dean then evaluates plans and provides the necessary resources for execution at the school or departmental level.
Lubin faculty members contribute anonymous assessment materials including: papers, projects, assignments and exams from their courses depending on the learning goal of interest. Sometimes appropriate materials are not available from the general coursework so we ask faculty members to develop assignments for students. Faculty assessors then evaluate individual responses from samples of our student population.
Continuous Improvement in Lubin
The faculty in Lubin strives to provide students the best possible mix of educational experiences to ensure learning. Over the past few years we have implemented the following programs to enhance student performance:
General Improvements
Core course coordinators monitor syllabi, materials and exams in our nine core courses to ensure quality and consistency.
Faculty members report their coverage of all the learning goals in their courses in the annual review process.
Each semester we offer faculty members grants aimed at specific goals such as written communication, critical thinking or quantitative skills.
The Professional Experience Program (PEP) provides opportunities for students to gain business experience through a series of courses, internships, programs and activities.
Quantitative Applications
The Lubin School leadership and the management science department work closely with the mathematics department faculty to include business content in math courses and increase the use of Excel.
Lubin developed a required in-depth sequence in quantitative reasoning for all business majors.
The Management Science department developed a comprehensive program for remediating students in mathematics that includes a pretest and post-test measure of performance. The program identifies weaker students and encourages them to study using a set of videos to guide them.
Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making
Students in our cornerstone course completed an exercise in which they evaluated the GDP of various countries and considered issues related to comparative advantage.
Communications
Communications skills are important in the Lubin School and though students perform well on this goal, our expectations are high. The English department offers dedicated sections of ENG 201: Writing in the Disciplines for business students on each campus. Student also have the opportunity to earn scholarships for the Business Writing Essentials course in Pace's School of Continuing and Professional Education.
Interpersonal Interaction
To improve students' teamwork skills our faculty will participate in a workshop to learn project management skills to teach students how to work together effectively toward a common goal.