293 – Designing New Courses, Assessing Curriculum, and Assessing Interventions
The Role of Academic Committees and Collective Decisionmaking in Improving the Teaching and Place of Statistics in Business Schools
Bodapati Gandhi
University of Puerto Rico Business School
Statisticians represent only one among many competing voices in business schools. The author outlines the ways in which changes in technology and pedagogical methods have impacted business statistics curricula. The author responds to the greater time demands these changes have resulted in, by suggesting some changes to the business statistics syllabus. She also suggests that statistics must be emphasized as a research tool across the business curriculum itself. These changes, however, often require a collective decision of the entire business faculty and not merely business statistics professors. They can even require approval by related departments or university-wide joint committees. In order to change the role and place of statistics in the curriculum, then, business statistics faculty must often enlist allies among the different organizational structures both within and even beyond their business school. The paper illustrates these realities with a concrete example: the author’s personal experience with curricular revisions as an instructor and member of academic committees.
