Consortium on Quality Education Campus Statements

Babson College

A. Campus description

Size

• Private residential college, founded in 1919, located in the Boston suburb of Wellesley, MA
• Degrees offered: AACSB-accredited BS, and Masters in Business Administration; other specialized business-related Masters degrees; also a School of Executive Education offering non-degree custom and open enrollment programs.
• Enrollments:
  Undergraduates 1,750 full time undergraduates; 85% live on campus
  • Graduate students
  • 2 year MBA 300
  • 1 year MBA 45
  • part-time MBA 1,200

• Students served
  Students admitted for fall of 2000:

• Freshmen applications 2,879
• Acceptances 1,136
• Enrolled 430
• Average SATs 1,213
• % women 41%
• % international 21%
• # African American 12
• # Hispanic/Latino 12
• % fulltime 100%

  Retention and graduation rates

• Freshmen to sophomore year 90%
• Graduated in 4 years 79.2%
• Graduated in 5 years 83.7%

  Student "movement"

• New freshmen 430 fall '00
• New transfers 43 fall '00
• Leave of absence 20 spring '00
• Withdrawal 11 spring '00
• Suspends and dismissals 26 spring '00
• Return from leave of absence 16 spring '00
• Re-admits 20 spring '00

  After graduation (Class of 2000)

• 78% of graduates accepted or considering offers after graduation, May 2000
• 97% of the class of 1999 were employed within 6 months of graduation
• Mean base salary: $40,107
• Key industries employing graduates are: banking (commercial and investment), consulting, accounting, and computer-related services

B. Innovative practices related to Greater Expectations

In the summer of 1993, stakeholders of the college (including faculty, administration, current students, alumni, employers and members of governance) met to discuss the state of the undergraduate program at Babson. The result of this three-day retreat was a determination that the curriculum should change to meet the changing needs of this diverse community. The new program was to meet three goals: it should make students more active participants in the learning process; it should incorporate more opportunities for field-based learning; and it should better integrate the separate disciplinary "stovepipes" of knowledge.

After several years of design, the new curriculum was ratified by the faculty in December of 1995, and launched with the class entering as freshmen in the fall of 1996. The program continued to be built semester-by-semester after that. The first class through the new curriculum graduated in May 2000.

Some distinctive aspects of the curriculum that support the goals stated above:

• A year-long 8-credit team-taught first-year course (called Foundation Management Experience), required of all students, in which each class of size 30 is funded up to $3,000 to run a business of its own design and to work with a community service partner who will receive all profits from the business.
• An integrated first-year liberal arts and rhetoric curriculum.
• A management core curriculum (called Intermediate Management Core (IMC)), required of all students, that delivers an integrated team-taught approach to learning all business required for the AACSB-accredited degree. The 26-credit IMC, delivered over 3 semesters during a student's sophomore and junior year, replaces 8 separate "stovepipe" business and economic core courses that had totaled 32 credits.
• Elimination of pre-packaged "majors" (beyond satisfying the core requirements for the AACSB-accredited degree) in favor of individually designed areas of specialization for each student.
• Competency-based curriculum: Asks students to develop abilities in 6 general areas: rhetoric; numeracy; ethics and social responsibility; leadership, teamwork and creativity; international and multicultural perspectives; and critical thinking.
• Two one-credit pass/fail activities that support student self-reflection and ownership of their learning. One activity is to write at the end of their first year an essay self-reflective of their learning and development of competencies. The other activity is to write a learning plan during their second and third year in support of their self-designed elective coursework.
• A "Coaching for Teamwork and Leadership" program that gives students one-on-one feedback on their development of several key competencies. This program, designed by faculty, is delivered by a coaching cadre consisting of several hundred Babson-trained community volunteers and MBA students.

C. Institutional learning goals and a brief description of the process followed to determine them

• Babson graduates can formulate, explore, reflect and communicate critically on historical, cultural, and contemporary issues in a world characterized by diverse cultures and ways of knowing.
• Babson graduates can analyze critically, think creatively and logically, reason quantitatively, and communicate effectively about complex personal, social, and professional issues.
• Babson graduates are prepared and willing to be responsible members of society; they are committed to continually developing intellectual, ethical, social, and professional character and abilities.
• Babson graduates bring a high level of business expertise to the workplace and society; as creative, ethical, and versatile contributors, they are adept at initiating, implementing and managing change.

• Also these 5 "across-the-curriculum" competencies:

• Ethics and Social Responsibility
• International/Multicultural Perspectives
• Leadership/Teamwork/Creativity
• Numeracy
• Rhetoric

Description:
Babson has a set of 27 Babson student core competencies (under the 4 main headings listed above). These were developed by the faculty and ratified by Babson's undergraduate curriculum committee (an elected body of the faculty). There are also 5 "across-the-curriculum" student competencies (above) that are another cut at the 27 and especially deal with areas/competencies that we feel would be left unattended if left only to the individual academic departments. The competencies (the 27 and the 5) are used to guide the development of the curriculum, and course syllabi. They have also sparked the creation of richer assessment tools to help students gain feedback on the development of the competencies. These tools include: self-reflective essays, learning plans, e-portfolios, and the Coaching for Leadership and Teamwork program. We ask employees who recruit our students to rate them on the competencies.