2003-2004 (submitted 9/30/04)

Introduction and Background 

This report’s purpose is to describe the recent activity in the Business Administration Department relative to the assessment of the department’s success in meeting school and department goals objective. 

As background, the first paragraph in the School’s mission statement says: “The John B. Goddard School of Business and Economics is committed to being an acknowledged leader in education.  Our purpose is the development of individuals with the facility to analyze problems, the resolve to implement change, the capacity to lead, and the courage to act justly in all chosen endeavors.”

There are four recognized functional business areas represented in the Business Administration Department:  Finance, Marketing, Human Resources, and Logistics and Operations Management.  Further the department houses six different undergraduate majors that relate to those four functions:  Management, Human Resource Management, Finance, Marketing, Logistics and Operations Management, and Business Administration.  The most general of the department’s degree offerings are Management and Business Administration, both of which are less specialized in any one of the four functions.

Assessment of Selected Objectives

The educational goals that are sought after in the education of our students are still aimed at the general objectives described in the School’s purpose above, but they are tailored to fit the students’ chosen majors.  For example, our intent for management majors is stated on the Department’s course Internet page as:

“Management - Prepares you to apply the knowledge and skills needed to design and maintain a productive work environment. This includes the study of leadership, team effectiveness, employee empowerment, communications, and other subjects associated with interpersonal and organizational effectiveness.”

There are similar statements for other functional area programs in the department.  The similar stated intent for Finance majors is:

“Finance - You will learn to acquire, allocate, and control financial resources. This will include such topics as investments, portfolio theory, and security analysis.”

The finance faculty members are in the process of implementing a plan for the finance majors in the department that has the potential to be generalized to the other functional areas. In that program, they have identified nine skill areas in which they believe that all students should develop a basic level of proficiency.  Those skills areas together are the finance activities on which our financial management course focuses.  Those areas are: Accounting and taxes, financial analysis, statistics- calculator regression, time value of money, valuation, weighted average cost of capital, capital budgeting decision rules, cash flow estimation, and cash budgets.  The finance area in the department is led by two experienced and capable PhD’s, one full-time faculty member who holds a masters degree and two adjunct faculty members who hold masters degrees.  The senior finance faculty  members have developed a number of problem sets in each of the skill areas that will be used to assess all of the students taking the financial management course.  Each student will be required to successfully complete a problem set in each skill area in the WSU testing center.  The problem sets will be evaluated by individual finance faculty for each of his or her students.  A student who is unsuccessful in completion of a problem will be given feedback about how to improve his or her performance and given an additional opportunity to complete a similar problem.  If a student is unsuccessful on the second attempt, feedback will be provided again and a third opportunity will be given.  If a student is unsuccessful in completing this basic problem in all three attempts, that student will not receive a passing grade in the course.  The use of these problem sets in such a uniform way by all the finance professors is expected to provide a well understood and reliable test of the proficiency of our students in this finance course.  This is a very ambitious and time-consuming project but it seems to have the potential to be carried over to many other functional areas and degree programs in the department and it has the potential to make our student assessment less subject and more reliable and consistent. Students were evaluated for the first time during the 2003-2004 school year. However, since this was a new requirement instead of failing students unable to pass the competency quizzes, the instructors deducted five percentage points from a student’s grade for each failed competency quiz. Each student was allowed to prepare and retake each competency until a successful pass was obtained. The high pass rate indicated a high level of skill proficiency.

National Examinations

One of the most important assessments of performance in the department has been a national examination that the School has been administering to our students for that last few years.  The examination was not administered during the last academic year so the most recent data is for the examinations that were administered at the end of the 2001-2002 academic year.  This examination will be given again to seniors in the BUSADM 4780 course during the 2004-2005 academic year. This assessment examination measures student competency in a number of business related subject areas including management, legal environment and social issues, quantitative analysis, economics, accounting, finance, marketing, and international.  Courses taught in the department closely deal with all of the subject areas except economics and accounting.  The scores of the School’s students are reported by percentiles indicating how far up a cumulative distribution our students scored on average compared nationally will all the university students who took these exams.

The scores by subject area are:  Management = 99^th percentile; legal environment and social issues = 99^th percentile; quantitative analysis = 99^th percentile; economics = 92^nd percentile; accounting = 88^th percentile; finance = 84^th percentile; marketing = 84^th percentile; and international = 73^rd percentile. 

The scores of our school’s by major were: Economics = 99^th percentile; finance = 99^th percentile, accounting = 97^th percentile; management = 90^th percentile; logistics = 83^rd percentile; marketing = 44^th percentile; information systems = 27^th percentile; and human resource management = 6^th percentile.

Placement

Another measure that relates to the outcomes assessment in the school and department has to do with placement data on starting salaries.  The following table provides beginning salary data for our graduates for the last four years.

Graduates’ Starting Salaries

The data in this table would seem to be predominantly positive.  The apparent downturn in beginning salaries for our finance graduates has been puzzling, however, especially since our finance graduates usually are those for whom achievement on national exams tends to be the highest in the department. The upturn indicated suggests that beginning salaries for finance graduates is moving in a positive direction again.

2004 Graduating Outcomes Survey Profile:

A survey is administered to all WSU students who participate in graduation.  One of the questions asked was: “How would you rate WSU overall?”

Another question not asked for the 2003-2004 academic year was: “If you could begin again, would you attend WSU?” 

*1.9% responded “Definitely No” to this question.

Although these data do not paint a negative picture, it is hoped that they may be improved in the future.  Specifically, the performance of the department relative to the school in the second question is disappointing.  One of the things that the department has made a concerted effort to do in the last year or so is facilitate a closer connection between the students majoring in the department and faculty advisors in the students’ major concentration areas.  The department is made up of a capable and dedicated faculty and staff who are committed to the students served by the department.  We do recognize that our performance has room for improvement.  One of the things we are discussing both in the School and the Department is increasing requirement for entrance into our majors.  Traditionally, we have had a policy of open enrollment and there is a growing sense that it may be time to provide some formal obstacles to enrollment for those for whom the probability of successful graduation and subsequent employment is lower.