A STATEMENT ABOUT CURRICULUM MANAGEMENT AND CONTENT 

Curriculum Management 
Normally, faculty member involvement leads curriculum management processes.  This will involve many aspects of the construction and delivery of degree programs.  When, for instance, the strategic management decisions of a school propose the development of a new curriculum, faculty expertise will be engaged in the activities that define learning goals for the new curriculum and that create the learning experiences that enact the goals.  Faculty members will also be involved in processes to monitor progress and evaluate success of curricula.  They will use information from curriculum evaluation and assessments of learning achievement to guide curriculum revision.

In managing curricula schools may engage perspectives from a variety of sources.  The business community engaged by way of advisory councils, recruiters, or surveys, may provide valuable insights into needed characteristics of graduates. University departments outside of the business school (e.g., communications, mathematics, international studies, philosophy, history, ecology, etc.) may add understanding from recent advances in their disciplines.  Public policy makers may supply ideas about skills needed in graduates to meet anticipated social demands.  Alumni can share useful insights into their experiences as graduates from the school’s curricula.

A part of curriculum management process that will normally have substantial faculty involvement is the monitoring and evaluation to see that curricula are meeting the goals that have been set for them and to see that those educational goals are still appropriate.  Where opportunities for curriculum improvement are found, faculty members will use this information to guide further development and revision.

Management-Specific Learning Content
For a degree to prepare a student to enter and sustain a career in business and/or management certain content areas are generally deemed to be appropriate.  The list below is one depiction of the topics normally included in business and management degrees. 

Topical Coverage Must Fit the School’s Mission
There is no implication in these standards that these topics designate particular courses or treatments.  Schools should assume great flexibility in fashioning curricula to meet their missions and to fit with the specific circumstances of particular programs.  Some of these topics may be emphasized for particular learning needs and others may be de-emphasized.  Combinations of topics may be grouped to integrate learning.  Various topics and learning goals will call for special pedagogical treatment.  Schools are expected to determine how these, or other, topics occur in the learning experiences of students, but accreditation does not mandate any particular set of courses, nor is a prescribed pattern or order intended.  The school must justify how curricular contents and structure meet the needs of the mission of the school and the learning goals for each degree program. 

Curricular contents must assure that program graduates are prepared to assume business and management careers as appropriate to the learning goals of the program.  Contents of the learning experiences provided by programs should be both current and relevant to needs of business and management positions.  This implies, for example, that present day curricula will prepare graduates to operate in a business environment that is global in scope.  Graduates should be prepared to interact with persons from other cultures and to manage in circumstances where business practices and social conventions are different than the graduate’s native country.  Another example of present-day relevance and currency is the need for graduates to be competent in the uses of technology and information systems in modern organizational operations.  The school must determine the specific ways globalization and information systems are included in the curriculum, and the particular pedagogies used.  Curricula without these two areas of learning would not normally be considered current and relevant. 

Topics typically found in general management degree programs include: