State of the art

By Jessica Legge
Times West Virginian

FAIRMONT August 24, 2008 12:23 am

— This week, students will start attending classes on the state-of-the-art campus of the new University of Charleston Graduate School of Business.
This school joins several established business schools in the state — like at Fairmont State University, West Virginia University and Marshall University — that each have unique qualities of their own.
Charles Ryan, dean of UC’s Graduate School of Business, said university president Edwin Welch had a vision for the school and began the evolution to graduate studies about 10 years ago. After the success of the School of Pharmacy, started about three years ago, the University of Charleston needed to decide where else to go with graduate education.
“After much examination and interviewing with the community, it was decided that the real need was for a graduate school in business education,” Ryan said.
Henry Harmon is the CEO of Triana Energy, an oil and gas exploration and development company, and a longtime member of UC’s Board of Trustees. Ryan said Harmon’s idea was to tie these two entities together and create an academic setting.
Harmon renovated a building in downtown Charleston and turned it into a financial center for West Virginia. Triana Energy occupies several floors and is trying to bring in other companies, and UC’s Graduate School of Business is located on the second level of the building. Harmon built out that space at no cost to the university, Ryan said.
“The school is designed to look like and is a business setting,” he said. “When the student arrives, he or she will see what looks like a traditional firm.”
The Master of Business Administration and Leadership program has a problem-based learning curriculum, Ryan said. Students will shadow developments and in some instances participate in assessing a business and its viability for acquisition.
“The object is to create the next generation of business leaders,” he said. “It is a powerful program we think that will have impact on the economy of the state of West Virginia.”
Dr. Phil Pyburn, professor, said the objective of the program is to train general managers, or people who run businesses and make decisions that impact the entire enterprise.
The students will learn through decision briefs, which allow them to analyze business problems and situations and draw conclusions. They must be able to communicate ideas in a clear and concise way, so they write an executive summary and provide an executive briefing on each case, Pyburn said.
Ryan said this fast-track program will immediately begin to transition students for entrance into the business world. Students will encounter business people on a day-to-day basis and will have networking and career opportunities. They will shadow companies and gain experience through internships, and they will move to a business site toward the end of the program.
Each student is required to spend a six-week summer semester abroad shadowing businesses in an international setting. UC is working with schools in Russia, China, Italy, Spain and Japan on these study abroad opportunities, Ryan said.
This two- to three-year program will accept students who have finished their sophomore year up to baccalaureates. Approximately 20 students will begin the program Wednesday when the fall semester starts, and the business school hopes to have 90 students enrolled by 2010.
Pyburn and Dr. Kim Shin as well as adjunct professors will teach in the program, and staff will be added as it grows. Ryan said visiting consultants and lecturers will also be used.
“I believe it truly is unique in that you have the vision of the University of Charleston to educate students that will be able to immediately take their place in the world and begin to contribute in their specific roles,” he said. “The university has stressed liberal learning outcomes with its students to prepare them for the work experience, to prepare them to take a meaningful role upon graduating.”
The business school believes that over the next five or 10 years the program will develop a specific niche and will gain statewide and national recognition, Ryan said.
He said the Executive Master of Business Administration program, which began to grow about four years ago, will move to the Graduate School of Business. Also, the Executive Master of Forensic Accounting program will soon begin and has attracted about 20 students.
“They’re currently on the main campus,” Ryan said. “We’re doing the transition from the main campus to the downtown campus right now.”
He said other schools of business in the state are remarkable in their own ways, and the University of Charleston wants to be supportive of the whole spectrum of education. But Ryan encouraged students to consider the Master of Business Administration and Leadership program within the university’s Graduate School of Business.
“We offer something that is different from the traditional program,” he said. “This is a fast-track program that allows a student to quickly obtain his or her graduate education in business and to immediately be able to step into that deep pool of career opportunities.”
“This is a pulsating economic center that Henry Harmon has created. Out of that will come career opportunities. It’s a real-time, real-business experience. I don’t know of anything else (like it) that is available in the country.”

Fairmont State University
At the beginning of July, Dr. Richard Harvey became the new dean of the Fairmont State University School of Business. Outreach is his mission for the school.
“One of the things I would like us to do is more community outreach and more contact with the businesses out there,” he said. “We have some internships and practicums — I would like to have a lot more.”
Harvey would like businesses to call upon the school’s faculty for their expertise. He has proposed creating a university business center that will serve as a place for university-business relations.
The school offers undergraduate programs in accounting, information systems and business administration. A variety of concentrations are available under the business administration major, including new programs that have been developed in entrepreneurship and hospital management.
The graduate MBA program, which is in its third year, offers tracks in human resources management and project management. Harvey said these areas are growing fields that are in demand in North Central West Virginia. The MBA program, which has 75 or 80 students, has had full enrollment all three years.
“If you have a good product, if you have the course offerings that students are interested in, the students will come,” he said.
Two staff and 15 faculty members run Fairmont State’s School of Business. Harvey estimated that more than 1,000 students are enrolled in the school this semester.
As the student body of Fairmont State University has grown, the School of Business has also increased its numbers. The business school has expanded its curriculum and has its own niche, he said.
“What makes us unique is that we have in most cases actual practicing professionals that are in the classrooms with typically smaller size classes, so you have much more faculty-student interaction, and that interaction is with somebody who is actually out in the field,” Harvey said.

West Virginia University
Tim Terman, spokesperson for the West Virginia University College of Business and Economics, said accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business is one way to gauge the quality of a business school.
WVU’s College of B&E is one of 555 institutions that have been awarded this recognition, he said. Not only are the college’s graduate and undergraduate business programs accredited, but its accounting program also received a separate accreditation.
Terman praised the college’s research efforts. The co-editor of the Journal of Retailing, a leading research publication, is among the college’s faculty.
“WVU is a research institution; thus, our faculty contribute to their fields through ongoing research,” he said.
Through the Forensic Accounting and Fraud Investigation graduate program, IRS agents are trained to detect and prosecute fraud using the latest techniques. Dr. Richard Riley, a faculty member in the program, received the 2008 Educator of the Year award from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, Terman said.
The Institute for Fraud Prevention, which is a consortium of groups that focuses on preventing fraud through research and education, is also headquartered at the college.
“In a nutshell, our goal is to improve West Virginia’s future,” Terman said. “We do this through education, but we also have initiatives with direct impact on our state. For nearly 60 years our Bureau of Business and Economic Research has helped business and government leaders see economic trends, and for more than a decade our Center for Chinese Business has been building relationships with China’s leaders, relationships that can help our state gain exports to China.”
The staff of the WVU College of B&E’s Center for Career Development also assists students in finding jobs and internships.
“They work with them on interview skills, resume writing, and we even have a big dinner once a year where they practice etiquette,” Terman said. “That’s a real plus for students in preparing for careers.”

Marshall University
Dr. Chong Kim, interim dean of the Marshall University Lewis College of Business, said competition between university-level business schools in the state improves the quality of education.
The Lewis College of Business has many different options to attract students and is accredited by AACSB.
“That signifies a very high-quality business program,” Kim said of the accreditation.
He said the college has about 58 faculty members who work in its three divisions: management and marketing, finance and economics, and accounting and legal environment.
Approximately 1,300 students are enrolled in the college’s six undergraduate degree programs, which include accounting, economics, finance, management, marketing and management information systems. The accounting program is also accredited by AACSB.
The college has more than 550 students in its graduate programs, Kim said. It offers three primary master’s degrees: MBA or EMBA, Master of Science in Human Resource Management, and Master of Science in Health Care Administration.
Students can earn a doctorate degree in management practice in nurse anesthesia, which Kim said is a unique program that combines nursing and business curriculum. In addition, the college is offering an international business major this fall and has added a minor in entrepreneurship. It also has a health care management concentration under the management major.
Most of the courses have a small class size and are taught by very qualified instructors, he said.
“We’ve got the face-to-face relationship with our professors and students,” he said.
The business college’s high quality of professors make it unique, as well as its quality students and resources. The cirriculum is also very important, and the college has established a positive reputation, Kim said.
“We try to make our students’ successes our business,” he said. “We try to bring (in) our students and try to produce high quality of education, and then they can go out being business leaders and successful persons in their careers.”
E-mail Jessica Legge at jlegge@timeswv.com.