Purpose of the Proposal
MBA Program
College of Business Administration
California State University San Marcos
(Additions in brown)
The College of Business Administration (CoBA) currently offers a Specialized Accelerated MBA
(SAMBA) program for full time students. The first cohort of this program started in summer 2014 with
26 students in two specializations: Business Intelligence (BI) and International Business (IB). We propose
adding a third specialization in Hospitality and Tourism Management (HTM) to be offered to the second
cohort that is scheduled to start in Summer 2015. The specialized courses will not be offered until Spring
2016.
Motivation:
San Diego is an attractive destination for tourists from around the world. San Diego County is
home to many hotels, attractions, theme parks, time-shares and restaurants. Certainly, there
seems to be a need to educate those who will lead these organizations.
San Diego County is not the only region of the state that depends heavily on the hospitality
industry as an economic engine. Surprisingly, there is no MBA program anywhere in the state of
California that offers such a specialization. Beyond California’s thriving hospitality industry, the
hospitality industries in emerging markets are a growing and in need of more managers. The fulltime SAMBA program is actively recruiting students from emerging markets such as China and
India.
CoBA is also motivated to take advantage of a system-wide move to offer more self-supporting
programs through Extended Learning to meet the market demands of the region. The selfsupporting SAMBA program, through its ability to serve international students, also promises to
become a vital source of external revenue to support and sustain other programs within the
college.
Target Populations:
A team of CoBA faculty worked on this proposal for the past 12 months. Many meetings with
industry experts including general managers and executives of local hotels, attractions, and
theme parks took place. In particular, Mr. Ed Fuller, former president of Marriott International
was very closely involved with the curriculum development and fundraising.
A partnership has been formed with SDSU’s Payne School of Hospitality and Tourism to attract
its graduates to this new MBA option. In addition, the program will attract international students
through SDSU’s connection in China and India.
Resource Implications
SAMBA, and all of its associated specialized tracks specializations, is designed to be a selfsupporting program to be offered through Extended Learning. All expenses in the attached
proposed budget are to be generated through student tuition and fees. Given the demand in the
first year we believe that the additional specialization will result in enrollment growth that can
feed the three options.
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Participating Faculty:
There are seven faculty who helped to develop the HTM Specialization and/or will teach the courses in
the program:
1- Beverlee Anderson, Professor, Marketing: Beverlee received her Ph.D. in Marketing from The
Ohio State University in 1972. She currently serves as Professor of Business and Marketing at
California State University San Marcos. She has held a variety of teaching and administrative
positions at the University of Kansas, University of Cincinnati, Wright State University and
University of Wisconsin - Parkside. In both 2010 and 2011 she taught in graduate programs
associated with the University of Mumbai, India. Her research covers a variety of cross-cultural
and international topics and has been published and presented in numerous academic and
professional venues. She is active in many professional and community organizations, having
served as President of the Marketing Educators Association and as a member of the Board of
Directors for San Diego Financial Executives International, the Marketing Management
Association, and the Academy of Marketing Science among others.
2- Rajnandini Pillai, Professor, Management: She received her doctorate in 1994 from the State
University of New York at Buffalo in Organizational Behavior. Her areas of teaching and
research interest are leadership, organizational justice, and cross-cultural management. She has
published in the area of charismatic/transformational leadership and cross-cultural management in
the Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Management, and Journal of International Business Studies.
She was the editor-in-chief of a volume entitled, Teaching Leadership: Innovative Approaches for
the 21st Century and co-editor of another volume entitled, Follower Perspectives on Leadership
in the Leadership Horizon series. She is also co-author of the fourth edition of Understanding
Global Cultures with Dr. Marty Gannon. She serves on the editorial board of the Leadership
Quarterly. Dr. Pillai has her MBA from the University of Bombay, India and has held executive
positions in the banking industry in India. She has consulted with several service organizations in
the U.S. on leadership effectiveness and has received awards for excellence in teaching and
research including the College of Business Outstanding Professor Award, the Western Academy
of Management Ascendant Scholar Award, the President’s Award for Scholarship and Creativity,
and the Harry E. Brakebill Distinguished Professor Award. She is also Executive Director and
founding member of the Center for Leadership Innovation and Mentorship Building (CLIMB) at
CSUSM.
3- Glen Brodowsky, Professor, Marketing: Glen earned his Ph.D. in Marketing at School of
Management, State University of New York at Buffalo in 1997. His research interests focus on
global marketing strategy, cross cultural time concepts and their effects on consumer behavior,
country-of-origin effects on product choice, survey research methods, and marketing pedagogy.
He is past president of the Marketing Educators' Association. His research has been published
articles in The Journal of International Consumer Marketing, The Journal of Global Marketing,
The Journal of Applied Social Psychology, International Business Review, The Journal of East
West Marketing, The Journal of Marketing Education, The Marketing Education, Review,
Journal of the Academy of Business Education, and Time and Society.
4- Robert Aboolian, Professor, Operations and Supply Chain Management: Robert received his
Ph.D. in Operations Management from Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto
in 2002. He is the Faculty Director of Specialized Accelerated MBA (SAMBA) program, and the
Chair of Operations and Supply Chain Management Department. He teaches Operations
Management, Supply Chain Management, Revenue Management, Business Statistics, Project
Management and Decision Models at undergraduate and MBA levels. His research interests
include Location of Competitive Facilities, Service System Design, Reverse Logistics, Supply
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Chain Network Design, Nonlinear Integer Programming, Production and Inventory Planning,
Web Services Planning, and Online Game System Design and his work has been published in
leading journals such as INFORMS Journal on Computing, Transportation Science, IIE
Transactions, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Operational Research Society
and Annals of Operations Research. He serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for many top quality
journals and is in the editorial board of the International Journal of Applied Management Science
and the International Journal of Information Systems and Supply Chain Management. He is an
active member of INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences).
He has worked in the industry for many years as an industrial Engineer and has consulted many
elite companies and organizations globally.
5- Camille Shuster, Professor, Marketing: Camille earned her Ph.D. in Communication at The
Ohio State University in 1977. She has also taught at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University, Arizona State University, Xavier University, Thunderbird School of Management,
and Indiana University Northwest. Her most current book was co-authored with Michael
Copeland, retired human resources manager with Procter & Gamble, Global Business Practices:
Adapting for Success. They also wrote Global Business: Planning for Sales and Negotiations. She
has co-authored a book entitled, “The Consumer . . . Or Else!” with Don Dufek, retired senior
vice president and officer of The Kroger Company. The Rise of Consumer Power: Adopting the
Right Marketing Communication Strategies, was published in Singapore. Camille has authored
over 30 articles in professional and academic publications. She is also President of Global
Collaborations and has conducted seminars and worked with over 60 companies in more than 20
countries around the world.
6- Ted Shore, Professor, Management: Ted holds degrees from SUNY Buffalo (B.A.), City
College of the City University of New York (M.A.) and Colorado State University (Ph.D.). Ted
began his career with the Standard Oil Company of Ohio (SOHIO) in corporate human resources
where he performed such functions as development and validation of selection programs,
employee attitude surveys, individual pre-hire psychological assessment, and the corporate
assessment center. He left the corporate arena to pursue an academic career and has taught at
several universities in the fields of human resource management, organizational behavior and
general management. He has published a variety of articles in academic journals and presented
numerous papers at academic conferences covering such topics as employee work attitudes,
workplace equity, performance appraisal, management assessment centers, compensation, and
business ethics. He has been an HR consultant for various corporations including BellSouth,
Eastman Kodak, IBM and Merrill Lynch. He is licensed as an industrial and organizational
psychologist in California.
7- Qi Sun, Assistant Professor, Finance: Qi received his Ph.D. in Finance from University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2006. She is an Assistant Professor at Finance Department. Her
research interests include Behavioral Finance, Corporate Earnings and Corporate Sustainability
Investment.
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Courses offered and their Descriptions:
OM 622: Hospitality Revenue Management
Introduces a systematic process designed to increase revenue by leveraging tools as well as market supply
and demand indicators to apply effective pricing and inventory management strategies. Provides an
overview of revenue management applications to the hotel industry designed to manage revenue per
available room using different pricing models and applying duration management strategies. Examines
revenue management topics in forecasting, group management, overbooking, as well as Search Engine
Optimization.
MKTG 622: Brand Stewardship in Hospitality Industry
A graduate level course designed for hospitality professionals wishing to learn more about corporate-level
strategic brand management. Students are introduced to the complex issues brand managers face against
the backdrop of rapidly changing technological, demographic, and legal environments.
MKTG 624: Managing Services Marketing
Examine how services marketing can work to achieve company objectives from the top executive
perspective by setting service goals, allocating budget for training, monitoring service delivery, assessing
the level of service delivered, and evaluating how well goals were achieved.
FIN 622: Real Estate Finance and Hotel Asset Management
Prepares students for senior positions in hospitality real estate finance and asset management. Covers
foundation knowledge of real estate finance, management contracts, franchise agreements, and hotel asset
management. Integrates industry practitioner presentations and student case studies into academic
lectures. Focuses on the strategic role of real estate in the hospitality industry, and the essence of financial
management in hospitality real estate. Helps students gain insights of the latest techniques in hotel asset
management, and build competence in using quantitative tools of financial economics.
MGMT 622: Employment Best Practices, Culture, and Employee Engagement
This course examines human resource practices within the hospitality industry. Focuses specifically on
best employment practices, unionization, risk management, information technology, employment
branding/talent acquisition, training/development, and culture and engagement.
MGMT 624: Global Hospitality Leadership
This course aims to educate managers and leaders to work effectively with employees from different
cultures and backgrounds that are different from their own in the context of the hospitality industry.
Whether working abroad or in multi-cultural teams in the United States, hospitality leaders must be adept
at managing diversity. The course will build on students’ knowledge of organizational behavior and
leadership issues and address topics such as cross-cultural differences in communication, motivation,
ethics, team management, and leadership.
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