Innovation, Impact and Engagement

Innovation

• Drexel University’s first step in its long-term development of an Innovation Neighborhood was the completion of LeBow College of Business’ Gerri C. LeBow Hall – a new 12-story business school building. The Innovation Neighborhood will be built by private developers and create 12 million square feet of mixed-use real estate on campus. The neighborhood will enable collaboration and engagement among commercial enterprises and community organizations with faculty and students.

• Launched the School of Economics to provide a global platform for scholarly contributions, doctoral education and for advances in pedagogy.

• A capstone Information Sciences and Technology course connected a class of 30 students here in Philadelphia with 20 students taking a similar class in India on multiple “real-world” projects. Working collaboratively, these students developed prototype applications in order to hone their ability to develop joint technical solutions as well as learn to work around global challenges such as language barriers and time-zone differences.

• An innovation competition, Classroom ArchiTECH, challenged teams comprised of one student and two professors to imagine classroom technologies that would improve business learning. The first-place team’s innovation, interactive video conferencing to more closely connect students who manage LeBow’s Dragon Fund (a portion of Drexel’s endowment) with investment professionals on Wall Street, has been put into practice in our new building.

• Introduced a new MS in Business Analytics and a Business Analytics co-major for undergraduate students to meet the global demand for graduates who can assist organizations to manage, interpret and provide insights on “big data.” The degree and co-major leverage the faculty and courses from multiple business disciplines including Management, Decision Sciences, Marketing and Management Information Systems.

• Established the “C-Suite Co-op” (internship) for the MBA program – the first of its kind in North America, which provides a unique opportunity for MBA students to gain experience working with C- Suite leadership.

• Created faculty development committees comprised of full professors to provide oversight, mentorship and support to ensure successful progress of junior faculty scholarly and pedagogical contributions (a pilot initiative within the Management, Decision Sciences and MIS departments).

• Replaced an electronic career portfolio requirement with LinkedIn’s career management tool in University B201, which is a required career capstone course for all LeBow undergraduate students. This tool helps students better showcase their knowledge, skills and abilities within their chosen career path for the more than 3 million companies using LinkedIn to recruit.

• Created one of the few two-year MS programs in Accounting, which provides the same opportunity as a two-year MBA: more access to students seeking a career in Accounting without an undergraduate degree in Accounting.

• Adopted a new technology platform to improve the application process for doctoral students, which resulted in significant increase in completed applications, offers, diversity and yield rate.

• Established a dedicated PhD program fund to raise support from alumni, private and institutional donors.

• Launched a series of communication initiatives providing that personal touch from the Dean and faculty to applicants to increase yield, including a Dinner with Dean for selected, high-quality applicants; one- on-one campus visits; direct calls and emails; as well as a “buddy” and “pen-pal” match-up for incoming students.

• Continued with dedicated staff resources from career services to provide support, guidance and oversight for student organizations to ensure positive student and professional experiences. Initiated “Marketing Day” visit to advertising and marketing companies in New York City for 25 marketing students, similar to the visits our finance students have been making to financial institutions such as Bloomberg and the NYSE for more than five years.

• Initiated the undergraduate faculty coach position as a collaborative effort between departments and advising where a selected staff member mentors students on careers and general questions about the majors along with the advising team in a unified manner. A pilot was launched with Accounting and is now being expanded to other areas due to positive student feedback.

• Initiated the Certificate of Research in the Undergraduate Program, with an emphasis on a senior thesis and research internships.

Impact

• Faculty research has led LeBow to continue to be ranked in the Top 100 of University of Texas-Dallas Research Impact Ranking. Overall our faculty have impacted their respective disciplines, organizations and global affairs as follows:

• The Finance Department is ranked in the top 100 of all finance departments globally by Arizona

State University’s Annual Listing of Research Productivity in Top Four Finance Journals.

• The Management Department is ranked No. 63 out of all Management departments globally by Texas AM University’s Management Department Productivity Rankings based on publications in Top Eight Management Journals for the years 2009 to 2013.

• 66 faculty members received awards by their respective professional associations or by LeBow or Drexel University for excellence in research and teaching.

• Faculty generated 3,140 intellectual contributions, from publications in leading academic and business journals to presentations at academic and business conferences worldwide.

• Faculty members serve as editors or editorial boards members of 82 academic journals.

• LeBow’s Centers and Institutes provide a nexus for the collaboration of students, faculty and organizations as noted below:

• Established the new Dana and David Dornsife Office for Experiential Learning facilitates student-consulting projects with nonprofits and commercial enterprises. More than 300 students tackled over 50 projects, fostering engagement with local organizations.

• Established the Center for Corporate Reputation, the first center of any U.S. college or university to focus on corporate reputation.

• The Center for Corporate Governance connects industry with applied faculty research and curriculum enhancements while fostering discussion in best corporate governance practices. The Center offers training programs for current directors and those who are interested in becoming a director of a public company. The Center also runs an annual conference in which internationally known scholars in governance present their work.

• The Institute for Strategic Leadership appointed a new executive director and has refocused its mission to enhance the practice and scholarship of leadership.

• The LeBow Centers and Institutes have enhanced external relationships with local and global employers, which facilitated the enhancements in career services for the MBA program that led to Financial Times ranking the online program as No. 1 for career services in spring 2014, with overall placements exceeding 85 percent within three months of graduation.

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• Launched and sponsored an annual regional teaching conference, the Business Professor Teaching Summit (BPTS), which focuses on promoting teaching excellence. BPTS attracts approximately 90 participants from LeBow and other institutions and fosters dialogue between these institutions regarding current pedagogical trends in business instruction.

• More than 150 attendees, including 80 from Asia, attended LeBow programming as part of the 2014

International Conference of Management Science and Engineering Management.

Engagement

• LeBow has more than 20 active student groups that represent each of the disciplines, providing a forum for students to develop leadership skills, and interface with professionals, civic leaders and faculty. These student groups also volunteer to mentor and tutor and in 2013-14 served more than 2,100 hours helping 320 students

• Established LeBow’s BRIDGE (Building Relationships in Diverse Group Environments) Program to recruit and retain more underrepresented students from targeted inner-city high schools in the Philadelphia area. Launched in 2012, BRIDGE enlists more than 70 students who represent all of the business disciplines. It fosters a community and offers students formal and informal collaborations with faculty, other students and staff.

• Translated the new strategic plan into an opportunity for faculty and staff to embrace and execute via task forces that focus on each key element, e.g. experiential learning. This will ensure faculty and staff commitment as well as effective collaboration and leveraging of our intellectual resources and talents.

• The Office of Engagement, which is dedicated to facilitating collaboration between students, faculty and industry, hosted 55 events with more than 5,500 attendees during 2013-14 with a similar annual impact since its creation in 2004. Events ranged from speaker series that featured C-suite representatives from locally based global enterprises such as SAP, Vanguard and Johnson Johnson to supporting educational conferences including the Center of Teaching Excellence’s Business Professor Teaching Summit.

• Began regular outreach through e-newletters and social media to PhD alumni network to maintain connections with recent graduates and enhance engagement with current students and faculty.

• Established the Management Information Systems Advisory Council within the Department of Management (now located in the Department of Decision Sciences and MIS) to facilitate access to external collaborations, which has led to membership by representatives from the state of Pennsylvania, city of Philadelphia and leaders from several local corporations specializing in technology.

•  In collaboration with University initiatives such as research co-ops and the Pennoni Honors College, over 30 undergraduate students have been formally engaged in research projects that provide a forum for faculty and students to conduct research in a collaborative manner. This extends scholarship and provides research experience to potential academicians to research methodology.

• Collaboration between faculty and professionals through our Office of Corporate and Executive Education led to research and the development of a new degree offering, a new MS in Business Analytics degree, and a new co-major option for BS students in Business Analytics.