Strategic plan: 2018–2022

The west exterior of Capitol Federal Hall

Vision

We aspire to be a business school with an accretive, agile, and analytic culture, known for intellectual and instructional excellence, where students learn and develop, faculty and staff thrive, and alumni and business professionals seek engagement, ideas, and insights.

Mission

Advance and impart business knowledge and prepare students to be leaders who positively contribute to business and society.

Core commitments

We commit ourselves to the following values:

Accountability: To hold ourselves and each other accountable for our performance and productivity and for behaving with integrity. 

Excellence: To expect excellence from ourselves and each other in all that we do. 

Respect: To foster and encourage civil discourse and to convey gratitude and appreciation for each other’s contributions. 

Diversity: To create and support an atmosphere of inclusivity in which all people, ideas, perspectives, and experiences are valued.

Community: To contribute to the larger community which sustains us and of which we are a part. 

Communication: To effectively communicate with one another openly, honestly, and with transparency.

Realizing our vision

The KU School of Business continues to launch initiatives that are mission-driven, informed by our core commitments, and based in our five foundations.

Five foundations and selected initiatives

We deliver innovative, comprehensive business education and professional development that is responsive to student needs, potential employer demand, and marketplace change.

Initiatives

We encourage, support, and expect the creation of scholarship that contributes to the theory and practice of business and meets the highest standards of rigor and relevance.

Initiatives

  • Enhance research incentives for tenure-track faculty, including building out summer support and increasing fellowships and professorships
  • Retain and increase number of tenure-track faculty
  • Increase size and strengthen quality of doctoral program
  • Maximize placement of doctoral students at highly ranked institutions

We leverage our intellectual capital and other resources to serve one another, our alumni, community, the University of Kansas, the state of Kansas, the nation, and beyond.

Initiatives

  • Host public speakers, including industry and thought leaders
    • During fall 2018 semester, faculty paired up with Dean’s Advisory Board member David Dillion to conduct series of lectures that presented academic and practitioners’ viewpoints surrounding selected topics
  • Support additional symposia, conferences
  • Increase opportunities for student projects
    • Expand student assistance at KU SBDC (SBDC work integrated into MBA capstone course over 2019-20 academic year)
    • Expand student opportunities in Kansas City metro, incorporating recommendations from board-member task forces
    • Revitalize student involvement in revamped entrepreneurship co-curricular programs (pilots of revamped programs launched in spring 2023)
  • Disseminate faculty expertise
  • Continue to seek out economic development opportunities

We practice responsible stewardship of our financial, human, and material resources, and maintain a work environment where we value each other, people collaborate, and ideas flourish.

Initiatives

  • Enhance school administration by establishing associate deans for undergraduate, graduate programs 
    • Associate dean for undergraduate programs appointed fall 2017
    • Associate dean for graduate programs appointed spring 2019
  • Improve academic area operations
    • Establish, appoint assistant area directors (completed fall 2018)
    • Improve and make more transparent evaluation process for both tenured/tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty (completed fall 2018) 
  • Increase diversity, equity, inclusion within school
    • Establish DEI director position (completed spring 2018)
    • Increase DEI faculty and staff hires, retention
  • Increase professional development opportunities for both non-tenure-track faculty and staff
  • Optimize physical resources
    • Finish unfinished spaces, or shell spaces, in Capitol Federal Hall (completed spring 2020)

We seek and foster synergistic relationships and engagement with external stakeholders that enhance education, scholarship, student success, and a sense of mutual benefit.

Initiatives

  • Increase school's viability and reputation 
  • Bolster engagement with advisory board members
    • Create task forces (established fall 2018, ongoing)
  • Continue engagement with alumni, industry partners 
  • Maintain promotion of school programs via digital channels
    • Reorganization, redesign of School of Business website (completed fall 2020)
    • Creation of marketing project request form for faculty and staff use (completed spring 2022)