Nine new courses and major changes will be implemented in the Olin Business School’s course listings as the school will be amending and updating its curriculum for the class of 2019 and beyond.

The changes, announced in a town hall meeting Monday afternoon, were the result of feedback from several sources, including current students, alumni, faculty and recruiters. Deloitte, Target, Procter & Gamble, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs were among the companies that worked with Olin to update the curriculum.

Stephen Huber | Student Life

Professor of Organizational Behavior Bill Bottom speaks about the upcoming curriculum changes for undergraduate business school students. Bottom is chair of the program committee and has been working to implement changes for five years, using recommendations from recruiters, alumni and companies to influence the major changes.

Students in the classes of 2017 and 2018 will be able to choose to complete the old set of major requirements or the new ones. Several of the majors have been restructured and reclassified with the intention of highlighting the skillset of Olin students to recruiters and potential employers.

According to Dean Mahendra Gupta, the goal of updating the curriculum is to make sure that Olin students are prepared the ever-changing business world.

“The world is changing, and we want to make sure that our curriculum continues to keep pace and hopefully a step ahead of what recruiters are demanding,” Gupta said during the event. “That’s what this [process] is all about.”

Olin developed a committee 10 years ago to provide recommendations for changes in the curriculum. The task force identified that students needed to know how to quantitatively analyze data better and that the business school needed a more centralized curriculum between the departments.

Professor of Organizational Behavior Bill Bottom is chair of the program committee and has been working for five years to implement effective changes.

“Business is not a static endeavor,” Bottom said. “It changes. So the way which business practices, the demands it places on students are very different and will be different still in 10, 15, 20 years from the demands students faced 25 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago.”

International Business, formerly a double-major-only program, is being reclassified and will now be offered as a minor only. The decision to downgrade International Business to a minor came from feedback noting that the current work environment is looking for more specialized skills from potential employees.

“This was a message that we heard very consistently from employers, recruiters, our alums,” Bottom said during the meeting. “Obviously, international and global awareness and knowledge makes a great deal of sense, [but] getting a major in International Business seems like a much less compelling proposition. The minor is there; it’s an opportunity to get a little bit of depth. The coursework that’s involved is quite good but I think better suits the needs of the marketplace.”

Stephen Huber | Student Life

Mahendra Gupta, dean of the Olin Business School, speaks about the current state of the business school at a panel on Monday. The undergraduate program will undergo curriculum changes that affect major requirements, minor programs and course offerings.

Director of Undergraduate Programs Steve Malter also noted that several of the required classes that needed to be taken through the College of Arts & Sciences are no longer offered, making the major impossible to complete in its current form.

The Organization and Human Resource major is being removed and replaced with Leadership and Strategic Management. In an effort to better show employees collaborative work and leadership skills, the new major will take the foundation of the old major and add strategy and leadership courses.

“Bringing in new courses such as Thinking Creatively and Leading Creative Teams—incredibly timely,” Malter said. “We know that most students go into organizations that require teamwork and require them to lead, so there is going to be some really, I think, timely and interesting opportunities for our students to gain some much needed skills.”

Another change comes with the Operations and Supply Chain Management major, which will feature a new Supply Chain Management course that the namesake major did not previously offer. Other new courses include Digital Marketing and Customer Analytics as well as Research in Industry Analysis.

Additionally, Olin will now allow Bachelor of Science in business administration students to take classes in the Sam Fox School and the Engineering School to count for the 48 non-business credits for students. Formerly, only courses in the College of Arts & Sciences would count toward this requirement.

In keeping with this trend, Olin will now count Computer Science 131 as a physical and life science requirement and will retroactively recognize it for those who have not taken a science credit yet.

Sophomore Colton Calandrella, an Economics and Strategy major, came to the event after hearing that the coursework for his major would be different under the new requirements.

“The new curriculum definitely changed some of my plans,” Calandrella said. “I am keeping my Economics and Strategy major but I plan to add the Leadership and Strategic Management as a second major now that I have more flexibility in my schedule.”

“I’m really excited about the changes,” Calandrella added. “Many of them are common-sense improvements, especially allowing computer science to count as the scientific requirement since that is such an important skill in the business world.”

Freshman Chris Melendez attended the town hall meeting in order to see how the curriculum change would affect his education and was pleased with the results.

“Options available for me now are so much more expanded,” he said. “I’m just looking forward to that and looking forward to having all those options.”

Melendez, a prospective marketing major, supports the change to reclassify International Business.

“I think it makes a lot of sense,” Melendez said. “I think you need something else besides International Business to be successful and be a major. You need something in addition to it. It’s a great little flavor to boost your resume, but it’s not the whole picture.”