Interim Report to the AACSB

Submitted December, 2005

In compliance with AACSB accreditation maintenance, the College submitted its accreditation interim report in December 2005.  This is the report that was submitted.

December 12, 2005

Dr. Jerry E. Trapnell
Executive Vice President
& Chief Accreditation Officer
AACSB International
777 South Harbour Island Boulevard
Suite 750
Tampa, FL  33602-5730
 

Dear Jerry:

This letter provides an interim update of the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics’ activities in the five year period since reaffirmation of our AACSB accreditation in Spring 2001.  The College has made significant progress during this period in all critical areas, and continues to move toward realization of our strategic objectives and priorities.

Strategic Planning:  The College engaged in a strategic planning exercise in 2003, resulting in a refinement of our vision and the adoption of three broad strategies to be followed in pursuing that vision.  These broad strategies have served as the basis for defining annual objectives for the past three years, and progress against these objectives is tracked and reported to faculty, staff and the College Advisory Board.

Faculty Development:  All departments of the College have reviewed and revised their Faculty Workload and Promotion & Tenure documents to assure consistency with College objectives. 

• Workload expectations have been revised to assure that all pre-tenure and research-active tenured faculty have ample time to pursue their research agendas, and that all faculty are deployed in ways that best match their skills and interests with the College’s needs. 
• All pre-tenure faculty receive a one-semester research leave in their third or fifth pre-tenure year. 
• The Business Administration Department has begun conducting post-tenure reviews for senior faculty.  Other departments will begin these reviews this year.
• All departments have been strengthened by focused hiring of very strong candidates who have excellent preparation as both teachers and scholars.

Resource Development and Deployment:  The College has nearly tripled annual fund raising and the College endowment since 2000.  We have also developed additional external sources of income, which provide a much stronger budget that supports all key activities of the College.  The enhanced budget is being used to:

• Provide database access faculty need for their research.
• Fund faculty for writing extramural grant applications.
• Increase the number of summer research grants available to the faculty.
• Fund awards for demonstrated long term excellence in both our research and education missions.
• Increase the stipend paid to faculty teaching in the Executive MBA program.
• Provide incentive for faculty to teach needed MBA courses in the summer session. 

Assurance of Learning:  The faculty have defined learning objectives for each of our programs in business and accounting.  A set of measures has been determined for these objectives.  Initial implementation and data collection is under way in the MBA program and is planned for the undergraduate programs during the spring 2006 term.

The results of these activities have included:

• increased research output and extramural funding for research (up nearly six-fold since 2000);
• 25% growth in the number of admitted freshmen while increasing average SAT scores by 35 points;
• substantial growth in graduate student enrollments across full-time and part-time MBA programs and specialized MS programs;
• greater participation by College students and faculty in international programs; and
• better recognition of the Lerner College on campus, in the community and by our peers.

Please let me know if you need any further detail concerning the Alfred Lerner College of Business & Economics’ progress over the past five years.