HONORS PROGRAM CURRICULUM

Honors Seminars

Students are required to take three courses from a menu of two-credit Honors Program seminars whose topics reflect the important issues facing business leaders. Some examples of recent seminar topics include: "Corporate Responsibility," "Intellectual Property," and "Globalization."

The goal of this requirement is to provide an extra set of opportunities to help students think more broadly and deeply about the process of leading others and the special functions leaders perform in helping teams to be more effective. A minimum grade of "B" is required in each seminar. (This is a requirement only for students enrolled in the management Honors Program curriculum and cannot be taken until the sophomore year.)

Upcoming Honors Program Seminars
Fall 2008

Social Entrepreneurship, Prof. Kristen McCormack, Executive-in-Residence/Lecturer/Faculty Director, Public and Nonprofit Management Program, Organizational Behavior Department

This course is for students who are interested in using their business skills to solve seemingly intractable world problems.   Whether you are interested in cleaning up the environment, providing access to clean water and education or providing access to capital in poor communities, you will want to learn how core business skills can help achieve your organization/company mission.   Students interested in studying successful models of for-profit and nonprofit enterprise as well as what it takes to be a social entrepreneur are encouraged to participate in this seminar.  We will use a combination of cases, lectures, business plans, visitors and dialogue to explore the topic of social entrepreneurship. Participants should be comfortable with basic financial analysis and the essential components of a business plan.

Monte-Carlo Simulation Modeling and Visual Basic Programming in Excel, Prof. Erol Pekoz, Associate Professor, Operations and Technology Management

 

This course will cover the concepts and methods necessary for developing variability assessment and risk exposure models in Excel using Monte-Carlo Simulation tools and Visual Basic Programming. Examples from finance will include derivatives and portfolio analysis, examples from operations will include production and inventory models, examples from marketing will include new product market models and real options analysis, and examples from accounting will include cost and interest rate models. Examples will be presented to class and worked as a group on the computer in a hands-on fashion; this will demonstrate how to effectively use the software and how to interpret results. Students will also learn how to use Visual Basic programming and macros in Excel to create an automated professional-looking decision-support Excel add-in complete with menu commands and dialog boxes. The final project will be the development of a simulation model, under the consulting advice of the instructor, to solve a problem of interest which could taken from students’ job or internship. If desired, at the end of the course students could have a useable model that they could take to their work setting.

 

Current Honors Program Seminars

Spring 2008

What Drives the Health Sector? Prof. Mark Allan, Faculty Director, Health Sector Management Program, Lecturer of Finance and Economics

Shortly, one in five dollars of the US economy will be devoted to the health sector, with no end to the growth in sight. This seminar will explore the critical forces at play, including unique economic structures, comparative international models of financing, and the transformative role of technology innovation. Understand how to create value in the system, and turn a public policy crisis into the opportunity for business success tied to meeting critical social needs. This seminar will address the entire health sector, from biotechnology companies to hospital systems.

Investing in Green Technologies, Prof. Nalin Kulatilaka, Wing Tat Lee Family Professor in Management, Finance and Economics Department

Concern about climate change and energy security is generating tremendous interest in green technologies. This Honors Seminar will explore issues surrounding investments in the development and adoption of green technologies, with a particular focus on energy conservation and renewable energy generation opportunities (e.g., solar, wind) in the built environment.

Winning in the Network Era, Prof. N. Venkatraman, David J. McGrath, Jr. Professor in Management, Management Information Systems Department

This Honors Seminar will focus on some of the current challenges of competing successfully and winning in an era marked by profound impact of information and communication technologies. This is intended for students interested in some of the latest thinking in how IT impacts business; it is not a technical course, but a course at the intersection of strategy and information technology.

Past Honors Program Seminars:

Fall 2007

International Business, Professor Tomas Kohn

The seminar will cover issues of interest to managers of multinational and local companies exploring business opportunities in emerging economies. We will explore the opportunities for, and deal with some of the unique challenges of, investing and managing in emerging-economy countries. It will be divided into three modules as follows:

Module 1: "The Environment," gives a framework to understand the complex business environment of emerging economies.

Module 2: "Business Strategy," provides tools that help students understand specific ways of dealing with the uncertainties that characterize these economies.

Module 3: "Synthesis," enables students to explore the personal dimension of international management. During this module we will also have presentations of students' projects and an open discussion about the course's topics.

The course will be taught as a highly-interactive seminar, with extensive use of cases, student research from current news sources, academic and practitioner journals, and a text. While the course will be dealing with managerial issues, students will be encouraged to view these in the context of the macro environment surrounding international companies’ operations.

 

Spring 2007

Franchising, Professor Patrick Kaufmann

This seminar peeks behind the golden arches to examine the structure and management of franchised distribution systems.  Franchising, responsible for more than one third of all U.S. retail dollars, is an important institution in the U.S. and the world.  Nevertheless, its underlying rationale has been controversial among business theorists, and its consequences have been controversial among social critics.  In this course, students will examine topics such as the economic reasons for the success of the franchise relationship, the sources of conflict in franchised systems and the management tools used to control it, the methods of system expansion and process of site selection, the struggle between standardization and adaptation, and the cultural impact of franchising on our daily lives.

Competitive Environmental Strategy, Professor Jennifer Howard-Grenville

Why has Wal-mart built a huge wind turbine to power one of its stores in Texas?  Why has oil giant British Petroleum (BP) taken to calling itself “Beyond Petroleum” and invested $8 Billion dollars in alternative energy technologies?  To save the planet?  Or to make good business sense?  In this course, we will investigate these recent moves by businesses, the economic and social climate that has prompted them, and the ways that businesses (large and small) are increasingly seeing actions that reduce their environmental impact as “business as usual.”  As Wal-mart’s CEO remarked, “This is a business philosophy, not a social philosophy… at some point businesses will be held accountable for the actions they take” (Time, April 2006).  Learn how to make sense of these recent shifts, and, more importantly, how to position yourself to participate in these business decisions and opportunities that will be a defining feature of the business landscape over the coming decades.

Leaders, Values and Strategies, Professor Patrick Kaufmann

Successful managers must understand the science and technology of modern business. They must also realize that management is an "art," for which there is no simple formula for success.  Success is something we create by integrating the science, technology, and art of decision making. 

This seminar will focus on the role of values and leadership in meeting the business challenges of the future.  Great executives know how to "lead with values."   In many industries, it is a company's values that distinguish it from competitors, separate success from failure, and build a network of loyal customers, employees, and investors.  We will discuss how companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations develop leaders who know what matters most.  Through readings and case studies, we will examine and discuss people and organizations that illustrate how values make a difference in the art of management.