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Sought-After Degree Is Edwards Campus' First for Triangle Funding
Edwards Campus officials are anxiously anticipating Board of Regents approval of a new business degree program designed to boost the region’s bioscience industry and the career prospects of working adults.
The new bachelor of business administration
degree presents a unique offering from the Edwards Campus. The new “BBA” is designed specifically for students who have completed roughly 60 college credit hours but have not yet earned a bachelor’s degree. Course work will focus on business-oriented decision-making and business management skills.
“The BBA program will help those students leverage their work experience and technical skills by providing them with general management skills, allowing them to take on additional managerial responsibilities with their current employer or transfer to other employers,” said Keith Chauvin, associate dean for academic affairs and professor in the KU School of Business.
“The goal is to give these students business acumen and general leadership and managerial skills to augment their work experience,” Chauvin added. “People often develop technical skills through on-the-job training or experience, but have a ceiling in their career path if they can’t also work on the business management side and understand the cost/revenue implications of decisions.”
If approved, the program will begin in the spring semester. Classes will be offered late afternoons and early evenings to accommodate students’ work schedules, but Chauvin said the program is “absolutely appropriate” for workers displaced by the recession as well.
A First Leg Up
The BBA program will be the first initiative at the Edwards Campus to be funded through the Johnson County Education and Research Triangle project. One of the Triangle’s primary goals is to translate research successes into commercial successes that stay and thrive in Kansas. For that to happen, Chauvin said, the community needs a workforce with a higher level of business skills.
“The BBA program is not designed solely for researchers or biologists, but it would be great for someone without a degree who is working in a clinical research organization or a lab,” he said. “It will provide them an opportunity to gain the business skills that are critical to the growth of the bioscience industry sector. Without a sufficient supply of those skills in our community, those products and ideas will go somewhere else to find it, so this will be a boost to the human capital of the community and help keep good jobs and economic activity in Johnson County and in Kansas.”
The program needs to be high quality, with strong academic standards, in order to achieve that goal, Chauvin said. Courses will be taught by the same faculty who teach the highly regarded Master of Business Administration program at the Edwards Campus and the full-time undergraduate program in Lawrence.
“They are truly exceptional teachers and researchers, so this program will create a substantial number of opportunities,” Chauvin said, “for working adults and for the Kansas economy.”
