What will I study?

This course enhances and further develops the skills necessary for effective academic writing. Students will learn how to develop ideas to guide their research and to think critically when finding and using sources to write well-documented academic papers. Students learn how to use ideas from sources as evidence in essays and longer research papers. This course addresses research strategies, audience analysis, and bibliographic style, as well as organizational skills for writing the well-constructed, researched, and written college paper. In order to fulfill the College Composition requirement, students must achieve a minimum grade of 2.0 in the designated College Composition course.

This course introduces the notion of communication as an element that stimulates decisions and/or behaviors within an organizational context. Emphasis is placed on how managers can guide individual and team behavior toward fulfilling tactical and strategic objectives by engineering communication networks within the company’s social systems. This translates into identifying opportunities for establishing or breaking connections between team members or units. Key topics that will help students gain theoretical and practical knowledge and skills include communication theories, verbal and nonverbal communication strategies, cover letters, resumes, interviews, cultural diversity, cross-cultural communication, interpersonal communication, business and professional writing and presentations, and the influence of technology such as artificial intelligence on business communication.

This course provides the knowledge and skills necessary for the student to comprehend financial statements and financial records and make use of the information for management and investment decisions. Key topics include an overview of financial statements and business decisions, the balance sheet, the income statement, the cash flow statement, sales revenue, receivables, cost of goods sold and inventory, long-lived assets and depreciation, current and long-term liabilities, owner’s equity, investments in other corporations, an introduction to financial statement analysis and international issues dealing with financial statements.

Technology and Operations Management is focused on transforming inputs (e.g., materials, equipment, technology, and human resources) into outputs (e.g., goods, services, decisions and information) in an efficient and effective manner. This course is designed to help students gain an in-depth understanding of the key decision points, systems and processes, tools, and methods that facilitate the above transformation. Primary topics include developing operations strategy, manufacturing and service flows, supply chain processes, and technology management. The cohesive body of knowledge presented in this class constructs the foundation for students to effectively plan, organize, and control the value-creating activities of the firm (i.e., operations management). Materials covered within the technology component of this course provide an introduction to emerging technologies and relevant methods, such as Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet of Things. These enable firms to analyze and improve their processes and to pinpoint problems or opportunities in order to create value.

The purpose of this course is to address business applications of AI with an emphasis on Deep Learning applications. This course consists of a series of workshops/case studies to give students hands-on experience related to data analysis and pattern recognition with deep learning. Key topics include image classification, clustering, forecasting, predictive analytics, language processing, and text analytics.

The purpose of this course is to enable students to develop a well-rounded understanding of artificial intelligence and its methods. The key objective is to help students comprehend the history of AI and recent developments and techniques in the field and, in particular, Deep Learning methods. An emphasis is placed on equipping students with a working knowledge of basic Machine Learning and Deep Learning, how they work, and in what situations they can be most effective and applicable. Key topics include introduction to AI, Machine Learning and optimization, Neural Networks and Deep Learning, Supervised Learning, Unsupervised Learning, and Reinforcement Learning.

Today’s business professionals need to be skilled in the acquisition and analysis of relevant data sets that can be utilized to drive business strategy. An emphasis is placed on the process of gathering, analyzing, and presenting data in a way that can drive strategic decision-making in modern organizations. This course examines current trends in transactional and dynamic data generation and draws upon quantitative tools to make sense of the data for market and managerial purposes. Students will learn to use common analysis methods to summarize and interpret results for the benefit of internal and external consumers.

This course is designed to help students understand the external environment, its building blocks, characteristics, behaviors, and impacts on organizations. The design of this class is informed by the fundamental principle that strategic success results from matching the complexity of the company with the complexity of its external environment. Accordingly, a manager’s knowledge and analysis of the external forces and variables (e.g., economic, social, cultural, political, legal, technological, and competitive forces) represent a key component of strategic decision making. In this class, the external environment is recognized as a complex system; therefore, students will be equipped with proper analytical perspectives and tools from Complexity Science to make sense of the market’s behaviors. Primary topics include the external environment as a complex system, the role of the external analysis in strategic planning and decision making, and external forces, variables, and their impacts

This course is designed to enhance students’ analytical skills in strategic thinking and decision-making through the examination of relevant concepts, tools, and techniques in Complexity Science and Strategic Management. A key component of the strategic management process involves “performing an internal audit,” which helps managers to develop an in-depth understanding of the company’s internal resources, operations, and capacities. The outputs of the internal audit represent strengths and weaknesses of the organization. Informed by the properties of complex systems and equipped with analytical perspectives and tools such as systems thinking and system archetypes, students will be able to analyze and gain insight into the firm’s patterns of behavior and dynamics within various sectors (e.g., management, marketing, finance, operations, and R&D). Students will learn to formulate effective strategies by integrating their knowledge of a company’s inner-workings and the external environment

In this course, leadership is operationalized as the art of facilitating the emergence of ideal collective behaviors that align strongly with organizational objectives. This particular description sheds light on the strong synergy between a leader’s understanding of the concept of organizational behavior and her/his leadership skills. An emphasis is placed on examining the formation and emergence of behavior at individual, team, and organizational level in parallel with the interrelationship among these three categories. Primary topics include mental models, decision making, collective behavior, organizational design, ethics, and selecting proper leadership styles.

In this class students will be introduced to the key concepts, tools, and principles of strategy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. This course is designed in a unique manner to enhance students’ strategic thinking and decision making skills through the integration of synergistic theories and concepts from functional courses including Business Dynamics, Artificial Intelligence, Business Analytics, Financial Accounting, Finance, Business Communications, Technology and Operations Management, Economic Analysis, Marketing, and Organizational Systems and Complexity. Upon completion of this course, students will possess proper knowledge and skills that play a key role in developing effective strategic plans by answering the following questions: (1) Where are we now? (2) Where do we want to go? (3) How are we going to get there?