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Core Learning Goals

Why Core Learning?

Before you excel as a public accountant, a human resource manager for a major retailer, a financial analyst charting the biotech industry, or a marketing lead for a fast-moving entertainment start-up, you will need to flex and build your mental muscle, starting with the essential powers of critical and analytical thinking.

Boler Integrated Core Curriculum builds upon a solid foundation of core learning — broad exposure to ideas, conflict, dilemmas, and the unfolding human drama. Why study history, literature, philosophy, music, or art? Because your entire life — and every business you touch — will be served by a few key thinking habits:

  • Making sense of the unfamiliar by means of the familiar
  • Grasping the underlying grammar (organized solutions, hierarchical procedures, rational sequences) of problem-solving
  • Holding to your independent thinking, in the face of pressures, distortions, and overemphasized truths
  • Drawing fresh ideas from a storehouse of seemingly random material

Bore Core Curriculum

Business Analysis using Microsoft Excel

How to answer key business questions, analyze company finances, forecast sales, and prepare business cases while improving your Excel skills.

Principles of Accounting I

Elements of accounting theory, covering revenues, expenses, assets, liabilities, and equity; account classification; analysis and recording of transactions; sources of accounting data; corporation accounting; theory of accounting valuations; preparation of financial statements; manufacturing cost flows and analysis.

Principles of Accounting II

Elements of accounting theory, covering revenues, expenses, assets, liabilities, and equity; account classification; analysis and recording of transactions; sources of accounting data; corporation accounting; theory of accounting valuations; preparation of financial statements; manufacturing cost flows and analysis. Prerequisite: AC 201.

Principles of Economics I

Microeconomic principles and problems. The nature of economics and its method, the economic problem, demand and supply analysis, costs of production, market structures, product and resource pricing, and international trade. Algebra is used throughout both EC 201 and 202.

Principles of Economics II

Macroeconomic principles and problems. Economic goals, basic information about the American economy, national income accounting, international finance, theories of income determination, economic growth and instability, money and banking, monetary and fiscal policy, the public debt, and selected economic problems. Algebra is used in both EC 201 and 202. Prerequisite: EC 201.

Business Analytics & Statistics

Descriptive statistics, probability and probability distributions, sampling, and sampling distributions, hypothesis testing, chi-square analysis, analysis of variance, correlation, bivariate and multivariate regression analysis, time series, and index numbers.

Business Communications

Descriptive statistics, probability and probability distributions, sampling, and sampling distributions, hypothesis testing, chi-square analysis, analysis of variance, correlation, bivariate and multivariate regression analysis, time series, and index numbers.

Data-Driven Decision-Making

Introduction to management information systems, decision support systems, and the data-driven decision process. Special emphasis on database management and the strategic use of information to drive decision-making in organizations. Group projects add practical experience to the conceptual approach. Prerequisite: BI 100.

Managing Employees for Competitive Advantage

Introduction to the theories and practices of managing employees for competitive advantage. Topics include employee acquisition, career and talent development, reward systems, labor relations, employment law and government regulations, and strategic human resource management. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.Please note that this replaces MHR 352.

Supply Chain & Operations Management

The core elements of SCM: customer value, collaboration, and the process of transforming raw materials into successful products. Introduces the three primary functions of supply chain activities: purchasing, operations, and logistics; also, the qualitative and quantitative tools to facilitate and analyze underlying processes. How to leverage concepts such as Just-In-Time, Process Design, and Inventory Control in order to turn great ideas into needed products and services.Prerequisite: EC 210, or equivalent Statistics course.

Business Finance

This course introduces students to financial analysis and financial decision-making for modern corporations. Students learn important elements of financial theory, including, but not limited to: time value of money; the risk-return relationship; cost of capital; capital budgeting; capital structure; asset management; and corporate securities valuation. Of further interest are ethical considerations underlying application of financial theory to business practice. Prerequisite: AC 201, EC 201 and EC 202, and EC 210. Corequisite: AC 202

Marketing Principles

Introduces students to the field of marketing. Provides an overview of marketing concepts and strategies critical to value-driven marketing. Emphasis on how to develop, promote, distribute, and price an organization’s offerings in a dynamic economic, social, political, and international environment. Ethical issues are also examined.Prerequisite: Sophomore standing with a minimum of 25 credit hours.

Legal Environment/Business Law

The legal environment/business law requirement (MHR461/MHR463) differs by major. Please refer to a particular major in this Bulletin for the exact requirement.

Strategic Managemen

Strategic Management or capstone class in Economics: MHR499 is required for all students seeking the B.S.B.A. and is to be taken in the senior year. Economics majors seeking the B.S.E. take EC499 instead of MHR 499.

Applied Calculus

Limits, derivatives, definite and indefinite integrals of polynomial, exponential, and logarithmic functions. Focus on concepts and applications, particularly those pertaining to business fields. Use of a computer algebra system to facilitate computation. Students who already have credit for MT 135 may not earn credit for MT 130.Offered: Fall, Spring.

Boler Professional Development

Details for the Boler Professional Development program can be found here.

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