When you think of an art student, what comes to mind? Funky outfits and piercings? Alternative music and idealistic dreams of making  it big? These may be stereotypical tags for artistic young people, but the truth of our consumer society is that every product you buy requires a team of artists to design the logo, labels, packaging, and even the product itself.

Artists are in demand and whether they plan to work in Corporate America, or open up their own gallery or design shop, the more business education they can get the better.

The First ‘Business of Art’ Degree

The Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida has launched a new BA program that combines art studies with business schooling. Believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, the Business of Art and Design degree was created for students who want to pursue art and intend to run their own businesses or work for others.  

According to Ringling, there are more than 1.25 million people working in art and design in the United States alone. They point out that in addition to the actual creative aspect of the work, there is more and more business skill required in this sector of the global economy.

Creatives Are a Valuable Commodity

Ringling President, Dr. Larry R. Thompson, says that individuals who have great creative ideas, and also the ability to organize, plan, and successfully lead and manage others are going to be a ‘valuable commodity’.

Lead faculty Dr. Wanda V. Chavez agrees:

“The new program is the first to integrate the study of business and the study of studio art and design — marrying the right and left brain into one practice. With a solid grounding of business skills, an understanding of the creative process, the reputation of a world-class art and design institution, and the ability to work effectively with other creative individuals, successful students will be able to take advantage of design concepts and design practice as integrated parts of strategic planning, as well as leverage learned leadership skills with the confidence to think creatively themselves to realize their own visions of success.”

What Students Learn

The program is a four-year curriculum leading to a Bachelor of Arts Degree in The Business of Art and Design. Students majoring in the new program will be equipped with a solid foundation of business skills, an understanding of the creative process, and the ability to work effectively with other creative individuals.

Business courses focus on case studies in industries such as arts management, advertising, video production, and art-and-design entrepreneurship. Students also participate in traditional studio classes to learn to think creatively and to understand how artists work and apply art and design in today’s market. 

Now all we need to do is get the MBA students into the art studio and we’ll have a fully integrated workforce!

When you are ready to commit a significant portion of your time and money to getting an MBA, you want to make sure you’re getting an education that’s going to transform your talent and ambition into a solid set of skills that deem you irresistible to the best employers. Business schools are competing to make their MBAs the most relevant to your success.

This month the MBA Roundtable released the results of its 2009 MBA Curricular Innovation Study indicating that 69% of MBA programs have significantly revised the curriculum in the past four years to improve the relevancy of the degree in response to criticism that they are not preparing graduates for today’s business challenges.

What Is Relevance?

Among the 69% of MBA programs making significant revisions to their curriculum, the most common change was the addition of ‘applied content’, or project-based courses. In addition to giving students more opportunities to take their learning out of the comfortable lecture hall and into the demanding real-world business simulations, respondents also reported that integration across topics and disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary content were popular changes.

MBA Programs That Get Into Details

MBA programs have traditionally focused on equipping students with big picture concepts, eschewing fine details of specific industries for personal leadership and decision making skills. Apparently that’s changing. The MBA Roundtable data reveals that 25% of MBA degree programs have added an industry specialization in the past three years. Common emphasis areas are healthcare, biotech, medicine, and entrepreneurship. Another change: about half the programs reported that they had added a focus on leadership development (as in, developing others) and global perspectives to their offerings.

Change is Good

And the changes just keep coming. 89% of all MBA programs surveyed are planning additional curricular changes.

“I think this is very promising news,” said Rodney Alsup, president of the MBA Roundtable. “It shows that there has been a concentrated effort among MBA programs to innovate and make changes that increase their relevance to both students and employers. Furthermore, this has been done in an educational environment that can be resistant to change, or, at the very least, has approval processes that make it difficult to make changes in a timely manner. Some schools need approval from their state boards of education prior to revising their curricula, for example.”

The motivation for these changes comes from both internal and external sources, according to the study. The most common motivator by far was internal quality improvement initiatives, with 64% of participants selecting it as one of their motivators. Among external motivators, “competitor schools” was the most commonly chosen answer, with 34% of respondents choosing it as one of their motivators.

If  you want to know more, check out all the results at www.mbaroundtable.org/events_preview.html.

Students have a new way to demonstrate their potential to succeed in business school. Along with GMAT scores, essays, and exhaustive applications, potential MBA candidates can now submit the results of personality testing directly to graduate programs. And while the use of this new technology is still a student choice, if the idea takes off you can expect graduate schools to begin requiring the personality test results as part of the standard package.

The Personal Potential Index

Educational Testing Service (ETS) has created the ETS Personal Potential Index (ETS PPI), a web-based evaluation system that provides graduate applicants ratings on specific personal attributes deemed by graduate and professional school deans and faculty to be critical for academic success.

The tool is the first of its kind to evaluate students’ noncognitive or personal attributes. Specifically, the testing process measures:

• Knowledge and Creativity
• Communication Skills
• Teamwork
• Resilience
• Planning and Organization
• Ethics and Integrity.

These “soft skills” are considered essential for academic success. The launch of ETS PPI marks the first large-scale use of noncognitive measures for admissions in higher education.

Michael L. Jeffries, Associate Dean of Students at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Director of McNair Scholars & Minority Student Affairs, says ETS PPI will help identify candidates that might otherwise have been missed, while expanding opportunities for a diverse range of students. The McNair Scholars Program is a national initiative aimed at increasing the number of first-generation, low-income and/or underrepresented students in Ph.D. programs.

“The graduate community needs to continue to reduce barriers to graduate education and allow more underrepresented scholars to join the ranks of the professoriate,” explains Jeffries. “To the extent that the ETS PPI will broaden opportunities for students, it is something that I strongly support.”

Early Evidence of Success

Based on more than a decade of research, ETS PPI was developed in response to requests from graduate deans and admissions professionals to address a need for noncognitive measures to evaluate applicants. The development and introduction of ETS PPI comes with the full support of the independent Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) Board.

ETS PPI has been piloted for the past three years through the National Hispanic Research Center’s Project 1000, a program based at the University of Arizona that seeks to increase the number of underrepresented students in graduate school. ETS PPI also was successfully used during this time by ETS for selecting candidates for its summer intern program.

According to David G. Payne, Ph.D., Vice President and COO in the ETS Higher Education & School Assessments Division, research indicates that achievement gaps that exist in standardized tests do not exist in noncognitive measures, which is why ETS PPI is seen as a tool that may help to level the playing field for students seeking graduate and professional degrees, such as an MBA.

“Solid GRE scores and undergraduate grades are very important, but they don’t provide the complete picture of a candidate’s potential,” says Payne. “We’ve known for some time, thanks to research and anecdotal evidence, that qualities like resilience and teamwork were indicators of success in graduate school. The problem was how to measure them effectively. But now, with the introduction of ETS PPI, we have a tool that allows for accurate and valid measures of these critical personal attributes.”

Ready to Be Tested?

Students who have registered for the GRE General Test after May 1, 2009 will have the option of using ETS PPI and sending up to four ETS PPI evaluation reports at no additional cost. ETS PPI is not exclusive to GRE registrants. It is also available to past GRE test takers and others for a fee of $20 per report.

Student can create an ETS PPI profile online as well as contact information for the evaluators he or she would like to complete an ETS PPI evaluation. ETS then sends an e-mail to each evaluator inviting them to access the ETS PPI system to complete the student’s evaluation. Evaluators log in to the system and respond to a series of statements to rate the student on the six personal attributes and to provide an overall rating of the student. The student is notified when each evaluation has been completed and can choose the schools to which the evaluations will be sent. ETS creates an evaluation report, and sends it to the institutions designated by the student.

Find out more here: www.ets.org/ppi

The way ETS describes the process, it sounds like an extended reference letter, but apparently the science supports the results.

What do you think about personality trait testing as a criteria for grad school admission?

Ernst & Young LLP (EY) is stepping up to help universities across the country modify accounting curriculum to prepare students for a new world of accounting. It’s a world of international accounting standards and EY is supporting faculty through their Academic Resource Center (EYARC). This month they released the second phase of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) curriculum and teaching materials, as well as a national training session for professors.

US Lags the World in Adoption of IFRS

According to EY, the US is now the only industrialized country that hasn’t adopted IFRS or set a “date certain” for adoption. In November, the SEC issued a roadmap proposing the adoption of IFRS in the US beginning in 2014, but this plan is currently open for comment before mandatory adoption is initiated.

“Given the roadmap issued by the SEC and the probability of mandatory adoption of IFRS in the US in the relatively near time frame, we believe it’s a matter of when — not if — schools will need to realign their educational programs to address IFRS learning,” said Ellen Glazerman, Ernst & Young LLP, Americas Director of University Relations. “Even though IFRS is not currently mandated in the US, most of our multinational clients report under IFRS in some capacity, therefore demanding that knowledge from our professionals and the new campus recruits that we hire. We, along with universities, have a shared responsibility in accounting education.”

Ernst & Young, a top accounting and consulting firm that employs 130,000 people worldwide, has invested $1.5 million in EYARC, which is a collaborative effort of faculty and professionals dedicated to helping the next generation of accounting professionals meet the fast-changing needs of the global financial markets.

Students Will Demand IFRS Education

The further down the road to IFRS we travel, the universities will need to offer a comprehensive international accounting program in order to remain competitive. Accounting students will demand it. And according to Catherine Banks, EYARC Program Director, students will not only benefit from the technical knowledge, but their overall critical skills will be improved by the expanded curriculum as well.

“Students who have an understanding of IFRS will distinguish themselves in the hiring process and will likely have increased career and mobility opportunities. Learning IFRS requires students to build more critical-thinking skills to better understand the substance of transactions, which should make them better accountants.”  

What Resources Are Available?

The first phase of IFRS curriculum was released in January of this year. The second phase of curriculum provides additional IFRS resources intended to supplement typical US university financial accounting coursework. EYARC’s curriculum is unique as it includes comprehensive and flexible materials that compare IFRS with US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), including a user guide, lecture notes, presentation slides, homework problems, illustrative disclosures, case studies and international spotlight features.

EYARC held its first national IFRS training session in Cleveland last week for more than 60 faculty attendees from across the country. James Wahlen, Professor of Accounting and Chairman of the MBA Program at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University said,

“The EYARC IFRS faculty training was an outstanding experience. Several accounting faculty and retired partners assembled a comprehensive and detailed set of materials that will help me and accounting faculty members all over the country incorporate an understanding of IFRS into our courses. This training is a great example of how practice and academia can partner for the benefit of our students, our teaching and research, and our profession.”

Jennifer Blouin, Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business said,

“Making an effort to maximize pedagogical flexibility, EYARC offered faculty extensive training and materials useful for developing IFRS curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The class notes, cases, and high level spotlights on convergence issues created by EYARC’s team of academics and practice professionals will be invaluable as I incorporate IFRS into my syllabus.”

Faculty who are interested in obtaining access to the private EYARC site should contact Catherine Banks at catherine.banks@ey.com. On this site, faculty have access to not only the EYARC curriculum materials but many other firm resources on IFRS, accounting, auditing and tax. 

More information about IFRS, and the ‘roadmap’ to adoption is available from the AICPA at http://www.ifrs.com/.

Earlier this month, the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business announced that Craig Dye will take over as Director of Investments. In this new position, Dye will lead the Dingman Center’s Capital Access Network, which provides early-stage funding (up to $1.5 million) to area start-ups. This type of angel investment captial is crucial in nurturing start-up companies.

“Craig will help us continue the center’s role in supporting economic development and innovation throughout Maryland,” said Asher Epstein, managing director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. “His investment and entrepreneurial experience brings a valued set of skills to lead the Capital Access Network’s growth.”

Economic Growth Through Entrepreneurship

The Capital Access Network is one of the Mid-Atlantic’s largest angel investment networks linking entrepreneurs with potential investors. Together with regional tech councils, incubators and state-funded institutions, Dye will work to expand the Dingman Center’s regional presence and outreach across the university’s campus.

In addition to providing early-stage capital, the Dingman Center provides MBA and undergraduate students at the Smith School with practical experiences and opportunities to pitch their business ideas, obtain feedback from experienced entrepreneurs-in-residence, and access funding.

Angel Investors vs. Venture Capitalists

Angel investors and venture capitalists are similar, but there’s are a couple of key distincitons. Angel investors put their own money into a business, and it is typically less than what can be raised from the venture capitalists. An angel investor is any individual who provides start-up capital in exchange for debt or equity. Sometimes they organize into groups or networks to share research and pool their investment capital, but even when they do, it’s typically their own money on the line. This differs from venture capitalists, who manage the pooled money of others.

The amount invested by angels fills an important gap between the resources entrepreneurs can raise on their own and formal venture capital, which usually considers only very high dollar investments. Angel investment is sometimes a viable ‘second round’ of financing for high-growth start-ups.

Like companies who receive venture capital, their start-up nature makes angel investments high risk. This, plus the fact that if the business is successful, the investment will likely be diluted by future investment (venture capital) rounds, requires that angel investments provide a high return. Similar to getting connected with venture capital, companies meet angel investors by referrals, at investor conferences, and at pitch meetings organized by groups of angels.

Angels Provide More Than Money

On old Broadway, angels were the wealthy individuals who provided money for theatrical productions. Business has borrowed the term. Angel investors may be retired entrepreneurs or executives interested in mentoring the future generation and leveraging their experience and contacts without committing to full time employment. Many angel investors provide much more than capital in the form of advice and access to their powerful networks.

If you’ve run out of cash, but don’t yet need millions, you might be ready for an angel investor. And if you’re in Maryland, the Dingman Center might be able to help you out!