Expansion Toward Excellence



Media Contact: Dawn Skelly, Carlson School of Management,

(612) 624-8770, dskelly@umn.edu

The Carlson School Undergraduate program expands toward excellence

New undergraduate building and curriculum possess elements aimed at millennials.

MINNEAPOLIS—(Sept. 2, 2008)—Undergraduate students at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota will start school this fall in a new facility, Herbert M. Hanson, Jr. Hall. The bricks and mortar of the four-story building won’t be the only thing greeting them; an innovative and very important change will take place in the classrooms, where the students will participate in a revamped curriculum.

Hanson Hall is an 132,000 square feet, four-story building, outfitted with an atrium, 22 interview rooms, nine classrooms, 10 breakout rooms, a collaborative learning lab, a recruiter meeting lounge and offices for undergraduate advising and career counseling. Additionally, the Carlson School’s Department of Information Technology and the Department of Economics in the College of Liberal Arts are housed within the building. The many study and gathering spaces in the new building will allow undergraduate students more opportunities to build meaningful connections with their fellow students and with recruiters, while setting the foundation for academic excellence.

“As we expand our physical square footage, we want to expand both the economic capital for the state of Minnesota, and improve the competitive advantage and networks of our undergraduate students,” explains Alison Davis-Blake, dean of the Carlson School. “By 2010, the new building and program will allow us to serve 50 percent more undergraduates than in 2005.” At present, 65 percent of the 450 incoming freshmen each year are from Minnesota.

The new Undergraduate facility and program are designed to serve the changing needs of millennial generation students, born from 1982 to the present. “Millennials want a sense of community and life long connections. They’re keenly focused on achieving and planning for their long-term futures, and they want to feel challenged. Additionally, they have high technology aptitudes,” remarks Davis-Blake. “We’ve updated our whole program to reflect these new needs in order to offer our students the premier program in the country.”

The new undergraduate curriculum boasts progressive changes not yet found in any other public business school—an international experience requirement for all students beginning this fall and a public/nonprofit management major. Other changes come at the beginning and end of undergraduates’ tenures: incoming freshmen now need to take a contemporary management course to explore the arena of business management from the start of their academic careers. In their final year, each student will complete a capstone project in his or her major. Perhaps the most considerable change to the curriculum is in the new immersion core, a semester-long experience designed to build stronger cohorts of undergraduate students while providing a more comprehensive and rigorous business education, similar in structure to a MBA program.

The portfolio of required immersion core classes develops in students’ sophomore year to encompass marketing, finance, operations management and business strategy. Students in their junior and senior years will specialize in one of the Carlson School’s 10 majors, and take other elective coursework. Other degree requirements include taking courses in business communications, human resources and industrial relations, management accounting, and information systems; and participating in an international experience, which can be fulfilled at any point before graduation.

On the skyway connecting the Carlson School to Hanson Hall, a quote by the late Robert Sparboe reads, “It all starts with carefully selected connections.” This theme carries throughout Hanson Hall, where new spaces mean students can build more connections with peers. Each undergraduate student can reserve eight hours per semester in breakout rooms with plasma presentation screens and wireless technology. Student groups can also meet in the Glaser/Mooty Family Student Lounge, equipped with a projector and screen, a community chalkboard and cable television. Adjacent to the lounge is the Best Buy Learning Lab, where students can work collaboratively by plugging in their own laptops on designated tables, or by using one of the two dozen desktop lab computers. “The design of the building is meant to supplement the curriculum and provide a welcoming environment that fosters academic excellence and strengthens the community,” says Davis-Blake.

About the Carlson School of Management

The Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota is a world-class educational institution located in the heart of the Minneapolis/St. Paul business community, which is home to 20 Fortune 500 companies whose leaders engage regularly with the school. The mission of the Carlson School is to discover transformative knowledge about the issues faced by organizations and managers in a dynamic global economy and to create exceptional learning and career opportunities by facilitating an engaged and integrated community of scholars, students, and practitioners. The Carlson School has more than 5,000 students, 6 degree programs, 106 tenure- and tenure-track faculty, and more than 50,000 alumni in a network that spans the globe. For more information, visit carlsonschool.umn.edu.

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