Dean James B. Thomas

Dear alumni and friends,

It's the start of another new school year. Big lines, traffic jams, high expectations. There was a student in my parking spot already at 7:30 one recent morning—it usually takes at least a few more weeks before someone takes up the "we will tow you" challenge. So it begins here at Smeal … and the excitement with it.

We start the new year on the heels of several recent accolades for various segments of the college. Both the Management and Organization and the Supply Chain and Information Systems Departments were recently identified as the top departments in their respective fields. At the end of the last academic year, Smeal's Penn State Women in Business was named the Outstanding Student Organization of the Year by the Center for Student Engagement. Recall that within the past few years, we've been ranked No. 1 in executive education and in business school facilities. We've also won case competitions, and students and clubs across the college have been awarded numerous "bests" and other highest distinction honors. As members of the Smeal community, you should be very proud of the accomplishments of late.

Looking ahead to this year, we've done some restructuring to better align the college's organizational structure with our strategic goals. In the Dean's Office alone, we have reorganized responsibilities under three restructured dean positions. Along with these structural changes, there are several other new initiatives getting underway this year:

• Our revamped undergraduate curriculum begins this semester with first-year students taking "Introduction to Management" as their first business course to learn what organizations, businesses, functions, processes, etc., are all about as the foundation of their education.
• The MBA curriculum changes this year with new portfolios, a capstone experience, more chances to customize second-year schedules, and more ways to strengthen personal skills.
• We are supplementing our academic honor code, which has become a mainstay of the MBA program, with a professional code of conduct as a way of emphasizing appropriate ethical and business behaviors.

You can learn more about some of these changes and others by viewing the videos on the right.

Finally, our students aren't the only ones returning to campus this fall. With the global economy seemingly on the mend, we're welcoming back recruiters, too, who are once again eager to hire our students for internships, co-ops, and full-time positions. This is good news for our students and for the economy. Hopefully it's one more sign that the worst of the global recession is now behind us.


Best regards,

James B. Thomas, Dean