Introduction (continued)
Message from the Dean
Robert B. DuncanThe Eli and Edythe L. Broad Dean
The Broad School has long been a community of innovative and ambitious learners, sensing opportunities and converting them into successes. Over the last several years, we have significantly improved the intellectual capital of the school, the quality of admitted students, student exposure to hands-on learning in laboratory environments and, ultimately, the national and international reputation of our graduate and undergraduate programs. This has been possible only because of the extraordinary commitment to excellence displayed by those involved, from students, faculty, and staff to alumni and corporate friends.
As our mission indicates, the Broad School is focused on creating leading-edge, useable knowledge to develop the competencies of the strategic change leader for the global, multicultural marketplace. This leadership development process is lifelong. It begins at the undergraduate level, where we teach students the basics about leadership skills, ethics, and values. These students then go to work for a few years and return for their MBA. Our MBA programs – and our other specialized master’s programs — provide an opportunity to reflect on work experience and develop a better understanding about what is required for leadership in the global economy. Finally, learning continues during one’s career via executive education. Through all types of customized and open-enrollment programs, Broad School Executive Development Programs provide an opportunity for a leader to continue to learn new capabilities. At the same time, we continue our commitment to our strong research tradition. Through our doctoral program, we focus on developing new scholars, who will assume a leadership role in the academic community, generating new, leading-edge useable knowledge.
This annual report is our opportunity to share our accomplishments with the larger academic and business community. On these pages you will see that our undergraduate program continues to have highly competitive admissions standards, and excellent services designed to give individual opportunities to a large group of students.
Our full-time MBA program has just revised its curriculum to be more flexible and responsive to market demands for talent, while our Executive MBA program celebrates its 40th anniversary, continuing a remarkable history of producing top business leaders. We are launching a new doctoral program in the coming year in Developing the competencies of strategic change leaders Information Technology Management, pooling faculty expertise throughout the college to build a program that delivers immediate value.
As we have worked to help our students become strategic change leaders, we have also cultivated significant competencies for developing leaders in the real world. One example of this is our partnership with Kerr-McGee Corporation (see page 10), which allowed us to customize a long-term development program in supply chain management that hundreds of their employees will experience and that is directly impacting their business.
Like most state institutions across the country, Michigan State University is facing serious challenges as state support has been reduced. However, I have been particularly impressed by the collaborative efforts of our students, faculty and staff working together to make the Broad School a better place with fewer resources. I think everyone in the Broad community can be proud of what we have accomplished — some of which is outlined in this annual report — and of what we have the potential to do together.