After years of hard work on the part of faculty, staff, and administrators to strengthen the quality of the business school, and after months of preparing complex, in-depth reports, the College of Business Administration hosted an AACSB International—The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business—peer review team from January 27-29, 2008. The reviewers’ task: to determine if the college continues to meet the rigorous standards required to carry the prestigious AACSB-International-accredited designation.
Everyone’s dedication paid off.
Based on the report from the peer review team, the AACSB Business Accreditation Committee informed Executive Dean Joyce J. Elam that the business school and the School of Accounting would receive reaffirmation of their accreditation for another five years with no conditions. Fewer than seven percent of the world’s business schools have achieved business and/or accounting accreditation from AACSB, putting the college and the School of Accounting in very elite company. The accreditation applies to the undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs.
More than a symbol, the college’s AACSB accreditation positively affects the business community.
“AACSB accreditation ensures that our business school is meeting the highest standards of management education,” Elam said. “Because we are an AACSB-accredited business school, the business community can be assured that the college is offering current and relevant academic programs, that our faculty are highly qualified—with the majority having terminal degrees and being actively involved in research, consulting, and board membership—and that we hold ourselves to the highest standards of educational accountability.”
According to her, these positive aspects of accreditation, which are valuable to business partners everywhere, are “of particular importance to our local business community because they either currently employ or hire the majority of our graduates.”
Commitment to continuous improvement will propel the college onward.
Within the context of its highly complimentary report, including praising the college for its development of international business as an area of strategic focus, the evaluation team encouraged the college to continue to focus on being a leading internationally-oriented business school.
“We will develop a more comprehensive, well-defined concept of what it means to be an internationally educated student and the implications of this effort for faculty, staff, and students,” Elam said.
