NIU COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
STRATEGIC PLANNING COUNCIL XIV MEETING MINUTES
(Academic Year: 2010-11) ~Friday, October 1, 2010 ~ 12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
STRATEGIC PLANNING COUNCIL XIV (SPC)
SPC Members:
Curtis Batterton (Graduate Student Rep), Ann Carrel (Director, Executive & Professional MBA
Programs),Virginia Cassidy (Vice Provost), Anthony D'Andrea (Director, Development, Senior Gift and
Estate Planning Officer – COB), Michelle De Jean (Director, COB Marketing), Ken Elliot (MGMT Instructor,
UBUS 311), Lia Gillet (Director, ACR), Lenita Hepker (Administrative Assistant to the Dean), Sonja
Herington (Director, Global Affairs & Special Projects), Chang Liu (OMIS Chair), Len Lundstrum (FINA
Faculty), Brain Mackie (OMIS Faculty), Jane Mall (Director, COB Experiential Learning and Corporate
Relations), Lori Marcellus (Director Undergraduate Studies), Sarah Marsh (MGMT Chair), Ian Mills
(Undergraduate Student Rep), Mark Misic (Director of Technology), Christine Mooney (MGMT Faculty),
Paul Prabhaker (Associate Dean, College of Business), Nancy Russo (OMIS Faculty), Denise
Schoenbachler (Dean, College of Business), Rebecca Shortridge (ACCY Faculty), Marc Simpson (FINA
Chair)¸ Pam Smith (ACCY Faculty), Kelly Stewart (Office Manager OM&IS), Beth Towell (Associate Dean
of Undergraduate), and Dan Wunsch (Associate Dean for Administration)
SPC Members Unable to Attend:
Tim Aurand (MKTG Faculty), Joe Cullinane (President – Joe Cullinane Enterprises, Inc.), Geoff Gordon
(MKTG Chair), Charles Gowen III (MGMT Faculty), Tim West (ACCY Faculty) and Jim Young (ACCY Chair)
The Dean welcomed everyone to the first SPC meeting for the 2010-11 academic year. The
meeting opened with discussion on where the College is with the initiatives identified from the
SPC retreat last spring: Passport; Recruitment, Retention and Diversity (RR&D); and Outreach.
The Dean stated there has been some work with both the Passport and RR&D initiatives and
the Outreach initiative is currently on hold.
Passport Initiative
Background
A team has been identified to work on the Passport initiative consisting of COB personnel and
members from the COB’s Board of Executive Advisors. Passport will be created as a
continuation of the two-year Compass Program that was launched this fall to incoming
freshman.
SPC XIV Meeting ~ Friday, October 1, 2010
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Compass Program
The Compass program is a required four part program consisting of four workshops;
three workshops will take place during students’ freshman year and one workshop
during their sophomore year. The Compass Program was designed by the department
advisors with assistance from Associate Dean, Dan Wunsch. Compass will help inform
and guide students toward a specific major and ultimately a career that is a strong fit for
them.
Junior and Senior students will be the focus of the Passport Program, but students who enter
during the freshman and sophomore years will also have the ability to start working on their
Passport. By participating in this required program, students will be able to create a cocurricular transcript which they will be able to use to help market themselves to potential
employers.
Over the past few months, the Passport Committee has worked on creating a first draft of what
the Passport Program will look like. Through these discussions seven “continents” have been
identified: Experiential Learning, Ethics, Career, Service (non-paid), Business Communications,
Global, and Leadership. These continents were identified as areas and skills important to
employers. Once the seven areas were identified, the committee worked to identify current
programs, classes, extracurricular activities, etc., in which students have the option of
participating under each area.
The SPC has been asked to look at the Passport Mapping document and identify what is still
missing from the lists, must be “optional” activities/programs for students, items on Passport
should not be part of the core-curriculum.
Discussion
There will be a minimum number of points each student will have to earn in each
“continent.”
o Students can focus in areas and receive certificates, by accumulating a certain
amount of points above the set minimum in one or more “continent” area.
Each area will have to have a qualitative statement to measure against.
Items under each continent have to be dynamic.
There are some areas that are missing that will be thread into the document that will
fall under more than one continent, such as diversity. We need to work on creating
those threads and creating rows that go across the continents.
o One way of communicating that the students fulfill threads is by having them
write reflection statements on their experience. For example if a student studies
abroad, to fulfill both the continent “global” and the thread “diversity” they
would write a reflection paper on cultural diversity for that country.
Will need to have items built in to the Passport Program for students who have not
fulfilled the minimum requirements so that they can still complete the program and
graduate.
SPC XIV Meeting ~ Friday, October 1, 2010
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Will need to have advisors on board with the Passport Program to inform students of
their Passport requirements and reiterate that it is a graduation requirement.
Need a way to assess the program.
Sponsor name for the program??
o United/Continental – mileage program
RR&D (Recruitment, Retention and Diversity)
The Dean introduced the College of Business 10-day count enrollment for the past 3 years table
and discussed the significance of the drop in enrollments.
College of Business
10-Day Count
Undergraduate
Graduate
Total
2008
3801
793
4594
2009
3498
772
4270
2010
3118
832
3950
The College was aware three years back that the enrollment numbers for
undergraduates was going to drop due to the increased interest of students going to the
services area.
o Because of this knowledge, the College made a strategic decision to do more
marketing for the graduate programs and these efforts have been successful in
increasing graduate student enrollments.
With the recession the number of business students has dropped even more than
anticipated.
o More students are going to community colleges.
o Students are not choosing business as a major due to the banking/finance
fallout.
The University has informed the College of Business that 3118 is an unacceptable
number for undergraduate enrollments.
o Now the College needs to create a strategic priority to get undergraduate
enrollment numbers up.
Transfers were down for the COB by 2%, they were up across campus by 20%.
The number of new freshman students was down across the university.
Retention numbers are down a little from freshman to sophomore levels.
SPC XIV Meeting ~ Friday, October 1, 2010
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o The college is losing a lot of students who should be coming back for their senior
year due to the economy.
Because of the need to increase enrollments, an SPC subgroup has been created to work
specifically on undergraduate recruitment, retention, and diversity. Based on physical and
personal resources the ideal enrollments for business graduate and undergraduate students
have been set at 3400 undergraduate and 900 graduate students. The building capacity of
Barsema Hall is 3750-4000 students.
The following target enrollments will be built over the next 4 years:
College of Business
Targeted 10-Day Count
Undergraduate
Graduate
Total
Fall 2010 (actual)
3118
832
3950
Fall 2011
3200
850
4050
Fall 2012
3250
865
4115
Fall 2013
3300
880
4180
Fall 2014
3400
900
4300
Affirmation for SPC to approve targeted enrollment numbers, motion made by Marc Simpson,
seconded by Mark Misic, all approved.
It is going to take some of our resources to get these numbers up.
Student recruitment has normally been done at the university level, now we will need to
participate in recruitment and retention at the college level.
Need to work with university admissions to find out the recruitment process cycle:
o What is it?
o Where are they at?
o What can we learn from them?
Need to engage students, faculty, alumni during open houses:
 October 11, 2010
 November 11, 2010
o NIU students to call prospective students after attending the open house.
SPC XIV Meeting ~ Friday, October 1, 2010
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In a survey of new students the themes of why students do not come to NIU are safety,
housing, and campus culture.
o This hurts the COB the most because these are the types of students we are
seeking, ones with the minimum GPA requirement of 2.75.
We are going to concentrate on transfer/community college students to meet our Fall
’11 goal.
o These students do not have to live in the dorms, and will have the majority of
their courses in Barsema Hall.
o We need to figure out how to get these prospective CC students here and keep
them here.
Need to look at our scholarship website and make it easier to navigate so students can
find information on scholarships.
o Majority of our scholarships are at the junior/senior level need to work on
creating more at the freshman level.
The next SPC meeting is scheduled for Friday, November 19 from noon – 2 p.m. in the Dean’s
Conference Room.
SPC XIV Meeting ~ Friday, October 1, 2010
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Career Compass
SPC XIV Meeting ~ Friday, October 1, 2010 ~ Appendix
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Passport to the Business World
Identified “Continents”
Experiential
Learning
Ethics
Career
Service
(non-paid)
Business
Communications
Global
Leadership
ELC
Ethics Minor
(non-COB)
Careers course
ABEA High School
Program
Presentations in
front of
alums/businesses
International
Minor (non-COB)
Board positions
in student orgs
Projects with
real businesses
BELIEF
Speaker/Ethics
Day
Meet the firm
nights
Student org
projects
ELC
Study abroad
program participant
Team leader in
group/Asst. Coach
Board/Alumni
events
LEAD Member
Career/Internship
fair
External events
sanctioned by NIU
or NIU student org
Social media
workshops
International
speaker series
Leadership
speaker series
Shadow day
Book Club
Dress for
Success Event
NIU Cares Day
Case
competitions
AIESEC –
student org
Entrepreneurship
minor
Shadow Day
Service Learning
courses
Networking
events
Study abroad
workshop/fair
Student Movein Day
E-mentoring
(MGMT)
International
week event
Company
visits/tours
Internships
Co-op
SPC XIV Meeting ~ Friday, October 1, 2010 ~Appendix
Social
Entrepreneurship
certificate
Elective
international
business courses
University/College
board positions
Foreign Language
courses
Elective leadership
business courses
Corner of life
forum/developing
leadership skills
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