The public’s scrutiny of higher education may be at an all-time high. Whether it be parents questioning the value of a college degree, researchers scrutinizing learning outcomes, government officials tracking student debt, or employers evaluating job-readiness, educators face unprecedented pressure to prepare students for life outside of college. For business educators at liberal arts colleges, this external scrutiny is often matched by internal scrutiny from colleagues who question whether pre-professional programs even belong. Other concerns extend beyond the present and focus on preparing students not just for their first job, but on developing capacities for their whole life—personal, professional and civic. How might business faculty respond to this increased demand and multitude of pressures? In the midst of this new reality, Mary Grace Neville, began a seven-year programmatic study. She led a multi-stakeholder inquiry and organized a national dialogue centered on the question: “What ought we be teaching at the undergraduate business level in order to be cultivating high integrity leaders for tomorrow’s rapidly changing, highly complex, multicultural, and interdependent world?” In this seminar, she introduced the capacity-mapping framework that has emerged from this work (and continues to evolve) and invited participants to consider various ways to integrate capacity development across an undergraduate business curriculum. Review the personal capacity map and consider these questions: How do you set priorities and achieve balance within the curriculum? How can business programs orient themselves so that they can be responsive to the constancy of change? How can colleagues within institutions and across institutions collaborate to strengthen student preparedness? How might technology support capacity development? Join NITLE, Dr. Neville, and colleagues across the nation to re-imagine undergraduate business education.

1. Capacity Mapping:
A Framework for Re-Imagining
Undergraduate Business Education
NITLE Seminar Series
This work funded by the Mellon Foundation
May 6, 2014
Dr. Mary Grace Neville
This document emerges from a 7 year programmatic study that began locally in 2005, extended to a national
dialogue in 2006, has was then deepened by extensive reading and study on liberal arts education , business
education, and philosophies of learning and development in 2008. In Fall 2011, a new task force convened to
update and operationalize the early thinking given the university’s new reality – increasing enrollments and
constrained resources. Capacities were tested and refined in 2012 and 2013. The concept evolution continues.

2. Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University
College curricula vary widely,
the half-life of information is staggering, and
18-22 year olds grow up fast.
Build Capacities for Life
So “what’s an educator to do if
today’s students will be tomorrow’s leaders?”

3. Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University
Which ones?(Neville, et. al. 2007)Why?(Neville & Godwin, 2013)
How? (Neville, in progress) (Colby, Ehrlich, Sullivan, Dolle, 2011)
…and What about QuickBooks proficiency?!(Colby, Ehrlich, Sullivan, Dolle, 2011)
 Inquire
 Reflect
 Experiment
 Theorize

4. Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University
Emergent theory suggests our industry
has crucial changes to make.
 Content centric
 Functional independence
 High efficiency (large classes with
PhD student instructors….)
 Understood by marketplace
 “We’ve done this before”“ Factory”
– Traditional Business Programs –

5. “Integrative learning” has a final stage of
reflection after a specialty path.
Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University
 Customized efficiency
 Accents area of functional interest
(i.e. Environmental Management)
 Functional connections indicated
 Bridges to first job
 “We can sell this as special”
“Yellow Brick Road”
– Programs Culminating in a Facilitated Seminar –

6. Liberal arts approaches claim to build the
capacity for life-long learning, civic
engagement, and abilities to connect dots.
Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University
– 3 Models for Delivering Liberal Arts Majors –
Liberal Arts
Whole Person

7. Liberal arts approaches claim to build the
capacity for life-long learning, civic
engagement, and abilities to connect dots.
Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University
– 3 Models for Delivering Liberal Arts Majors –
Liberal Arts
Whole Person
Distribution
Requirements

8. Liberal arts approaches claim to build the
capacity for life-long learning, civic
engagement, and abilities to connect dots.
Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University
– 3 Models for Delivering Liberal Arts Majors –
Liberal Arts
Whole Person
Distribution
Requirements
Cohort based
inclusion of
Liberal Arts

9. Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University
So the question became:
“what do we hope any (business) major has?”
21st Century Requirements
 Rapid change
 Global complexity
 High degrees of ambiguity
 Interdependencies exaggerated by technology
and migration
 Balance of skills and abilities
 “What else might also be true?”
Answer: Equipment for the future.

10. Individual &
Interpersonal
Personal
Capacity
Critical &
Integrative
Thinking
Logic &
Reasoning
Systems &
Society
Whole
Person, Strategic
Career
Skills, Tactical
Literacy:
• Reading
• Writing
• Quantitative &
Computational
Personal Capacity Map
Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University

11. Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University
The map now serves as a framework for
balancing course designs and integrating
capacity development across the curriculum.
Study
Level
Example
Course
Thinking & Analysis Introspective & Intellectual Human & Organizations
Literacy Logic &
Reasoning
Critical & Integrative Systems &
Society
Personal
Capacity
Critical &
Integrative
Thinking
Introductory
&
Supporting
Fdns of
Business
Macro
economics
Financial
accounting
Core
Leadership
perspectives
Financial
statement
analysis
Upper
Level
Business
ethics
Capstone

12. Some institutions and faculty will
actualize this faster than others.
Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University
– “Speed Bumps” we’ll need to cross –
• What balance does each slice merit in your curriculum?
• Resources?
• Strategic objectives?
• Context and culture?
• How can we scale capacity development?
• How do we teach faculty to collaborate in order to even
begin moving away from “factory” models?
• Students wired for emergent today; faculty wired from
past.

13. Our “Mission” should we choose to accept
it… Genuinely prepare managers/business students
for leading our 21st Century (rapidly changing) world.
Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University
1. Hold our current practices lightly.
2. Practice self-acceptance that there’s a lot you/we
don’t know.
3. Call on your courage to try something anything
you don’t know yet.
4. Be prepared to change your practice as often as
our manager/students need to be changing in the
workplace (every 6 months!).

14. Additional information and shared
resources are available.
Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
Southwestern University
• Dr. Mary Grace
Neville, marygrace.neville@gmail.com
• NITLE Academic
Commons, http://www.academiccoms.org
• Southwestern University’s institutional
repository, SU Scholars (available fall 2014; will include
slides, supporting manuscript, and extended annotated
bibliography)