The College of Business Administration and Graduate School of Management announced its plans for the future at its Priorities Presentation last week.

Friday, Dean George Stevens, Associate Dean Lawrence Marks, Associate Dean Don Williams and Assistant Dean Liz Sinclair-Colando spoke about where the College of Business is headed and what its future holds.

Enrollment numbers on the Kent State campus are decreasing. A 6-percent decrease in undergraduate majors and an 8-percent decrease in graduate majors was reported for Spring 2006, Stevens said. One of the major complaints of the college is the lack of faculty members. More full-time faculty members are needed so class sizes can decrease.

“Students will tolerate large class sizes at the freshmen and sophomore level, but they won’t tolerate it at the junior and senior level,” Stevens said.

The college is also working to engage its students beyond the Kent State campus. It established the Entrepreneurial Lab where students work to solve problems for local businesses. The marketing department brings live cases into the classroom in the Customer Analysis course.

The college will continue work with its learning communities on campus.

“What better way to foster relationships with our students?” Sinclair-Colando said.

Learning communities help students form friendships with other students and make this huge campus feel a bit smaller, she said.

The college would like to continuously improve the quality of programs across the curriculum while maintaining excellence in the areas of entrepreneurship and business innovation, financial engineering and global management.

The most critical needs for the college are the support for current enrollment demand and the support for the three centers of excellence, the speakers said.

“We must continue to be flexible and accept challenges in order to continue to be successful,” Stevens said.

Contact Business Administration reporter Nicole King at [email protected].