Graduate Committee Summary Notes
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Called to order: 11:06am
Present: B. Flynn
V. Johar
M. Stull
J. Wu
T. Yang
L. Estrada (summary notes)
Absent: F. Lin
R. Savich
Guests: L. Hanson
Review of Summary Notes from April 22, 2009 (Flynn)
 Approved
MBA Program Admission Standards (Hanson/Flynn) handout
 Hanson proposes that the Graduate Committee introduces a few modest increases in the
admission requirements for the MBA Program.
 The motivation is that we will need to report and document the deficiencies to the AACSB team
for the six-year review for our (re)accreditation later this year. One of the reasons for the six
year review status was our failure to act and document our efforts to close the loop. That is
acting and documenting to institute change.
 As discovered in our graduate Assurance of Learning (AoL) review, some weakness were found
in our students written and oral communication skill. One change we can make in our
assessment would be to increase the MBA admission standards, that is to increase the oral and
written communication skills of incoming students.
 A report was completed (handout) making a comparison of our admission standards to other
CSU’s, such as the GMAT (total score, quantitative and verbal %) and GPA requirements, along
with the 20 point discount (the Graduate committee in 2002 created a “20 point discount”
exception for the GMAT whereby students would be able to waive the GMAT requirement after
4th attempt at exam if the student earned a GMAT score within 20 points of their required score
based on their GPA.)
o Currently the minimum GMAT score required for our MBA Program is 470, that is if the
student has a GPA of 2.9 or higher for the last 90 quarter or 60 semester units. We do
not have a minimum percentage requirement for either the quantitative or verbal score
on the GMAT.
o Reviewing the handout, the impact on the number of students that would be affected
by a change in either standards and what would happen to our enrollment had they not
met the requirements. The report shows a “what if” analysis by use of one or more
deficiencies.
o Hanson is requesting that the Graduate Committee discontinue the use of the “20 point
discount rule” and require both a 10% verbal and quantitative percentile on the GMAT,
effective fall quarter 2010. This combination would have the least impact on MBA
enrollment, only a 14% reduction.
 Discussion:
o


Most students on probation have not passed the GMAT, since they are still completing
their MBA prerequisite courses.
o The 20-point discount rule is not published; information is given to students on case by
case basis.
o Raising our required GMAT score to 500 will change our image. What about Instituting a
GMAT requirement of 500, with the exception of a 30-point discount rule with 4
attempts needed? Some committee members felt that taking the GMAT once under this
scenario was enough. It was proposed that these students would have to take additional
prerequisite MBA courses to meet the requirement. However it was noted that MBA
students already have to successfully complete 11 prerequisites, what “other” classes’
do you propose they take? Also with new fee increases it will cost more for a student to
take additional classes then to just repeat the GMAT exam. Designing and adding one or
more courses to our MBA curriculum to meet this need would go beyond the scope of
this committee and would take more time then we have now to make immediate
changes for closing the loop (AoL). Proposed changes for fall 2011 can be discussed at
the next Graduate Committee meeting scheduled for fall 2009. Hanson volunteered to
help us at that time if needed.
The Graduate Committee voted that the minimum GMAT requirement would remain at 470
with an increase of 10% on both the verbal and quantitative percentiles along with eliminating
the 20 point discount “rule” for the GMAT. Effective date: fall quarter 2010.
Hanson will prepare the required P-from
Assurance of Learning – Closing the Loop (Yang)
 As discussed at the last Graduate Committee meeting the plan to use the Comprehensive Exam
as part of the assessment of learning goals: We recommended that the comp exam committee
chairs turn in a one page report which will contain information about their specific comp exam
and the results for the current academic year (2008-2009 fall, winter, and spring quarters). The
report should include what discipline specific areas were covered on the exam as related to
curriculum, the exam results, and improvements taken as needed (closing the loop.) The MBA
office has all the pass/fail statistics and copies of exams if needed. Purpose is to assess the
student’s general knowledge in their discipline (Assurance of Learning.) This is a quick way to
close the loop in one area by the end of this calendar year.
 Today we will discuss the format needed to review the learning goals while grading the comp
exams
o Learning goals are integrated into the courses; questions for the comp exam are
generated from what is taught in the classroom.
o Stull is the Comp Exam Committee chair for Entrepreneurship. His procedure for grading
comp exams and adjusting curriculum, based on the Entrepreneurship student comp
exam results, were commended by the AACSB visitation team this past February. In that
light, we should follow his procedures as an example for the rest of the Comp Exam
Committee Chairs.
o Stull’s comp exam committee reviews their student’s exams based on the anticipated
answers they expect from the curriculum taught in the classroom. Then based on any
deficiencies found in a certain area, the curriculum is changed to address the
weaknesses. For example one year 75% of the students sitting for the Entrepreneurship
comp exam were found to be weak for one particular question, so are

assignments/projects being given not effective enough? Do they have to be “beefed
up”?
This concept is one of the fastest ways to close an AoL loop by November, for the AACSB report.
Yang will speak to the Department Chairs regarding this requirement.
Next Graduate Committee Meeting will scheduled for fall quarter 2009, TBA.
Adjourned: 12:15pm