Corporations have a number of needs that are simply not met. Couple
this with the fact that there are still a lot of people, especially in these tough
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economic times, making the effort to further their education; I believe that we
are nowhere near saturation.
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We are not seeking the narrower academically focused who have pub- to our expectations for writing and communication skills and foster the
lished in tier-one or tier-two journals, we are looking for faculty who idea of the importance of these aspects in their career, and we empha-
have done professional presentations and can demonstrate scholarship size those concepts over and over again.
and activity in the field.
We are very overt about what we are doing; we tell students over and
Given the competitive demands placed upon corporations today, over again that this is the formula for success, and we ask the students
and increasing globalization - both of which require tomorrow’s to demonstrate and tell us how this additional knowledge will be helpful
business leaders to be flexible and manage workforces and in- in their careers.
ternal structures that cross cultural and political lines - have you
redefined your mBA offering? It’s not so much a matter of redefining In summary, we are not simply offering a set of courses in a vacuum. We
the MBA offering. As mentioned earlier, we started with a different recognize they are here with plans to advance their careers, and we want to
focus on how to deliver business education incorporating those higher do the most for them in the program to help them achieve those goals.
level needs that organizations are constantly requesting. In short, the
MBA and all our programs have always had a focus on making effective
decisions in a global environment.
Technology
We have content and courses that focus on ethical, global and sustain- Jiu is considered to be a technology intensive institution. To what
ability issues. Our faculty and student populations are also global, thus extent has this benefited your students? Being a fully online institu-
providing further opportunity for all our students to explore issues at an tion, we live and breathe technology. What we have had to do over the
international level. We have created a really interesting mix within the years is to juggle the availability of the courses in our programs against
classroom so students can experience what it’s like to communicate with the newer technologies as they are launched and developed. We have
and work with students and faculty from around the globe. always tried to create a simple and small footprint for our courses.
Many organizations are interfacing with the concept of globalization. For the most part, a student can still access everything and be success-
This does not necessarily result in people traveling any more. A lot of ful with just dialup technology; obviously, anyone with DSL or higher
it is someone sitting in Denver having a scheduled phone conference speed internet access will have a much cleaner integration with the ma-
with someone in New York or someone in India. Our students, through terial but can still access our courses through dial up. So while we are
our technologies and design model, learn to do this from the very first technology intensive, we’ve kept it as simple as possible from the user
course they take with us. They learn to work with students and instruc- perspective so the learning experience for the student is a very efficient
tors across the globe: how to present their ideas, how to coordinate proj- one. Everything is laid out neatly and cleanly.
ects and cope with the give and take of negotiations from a distance.
All of our courses are designed following a very similar template. No
in terms of career management, how much support does Jiu of- matter whether it’s the first course or the fifth or the tenth, the student
fer? We have two levels of support: one is a trademark program, which does not have to worry about where to go to find anything. All the
is a career services program called the Total Professional Advantage materials are laid out in a very organized and consistent fashion: we’ve
TM. This service is offered to all JIU students and it runs in paral- utilized the technology, especially web technologies, in order to ensure
lel with their education. As they go through their course work, e.g. in that the course material is presented as clearly as possible. Our new
their MBA program, over the course of 2 years they will attend semi- students participate in an orientation that provides them with the tools
nars which cater for some of the basics, resume writing, career planning and guidance that they need to be successful. When they step into the
strategies, networking and so forth. first class they are ready. It’s about using the technology to make the
user experience as easy and as friendly as possible.
The difference here at JIU is that we build some of those concepts into
the academic program. For example, when a student takes a course, be you have developed an exclusive career development portal and
it accounting, finance or strategic management, he is evaluated on dif- program. Are you able to tailor the aforementioned technology to
ferent levels. In an accounting course we also evaluate them according the individual needs of your students? For starters we’ve built the
60 | CEO
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