Outcomes Data

Undergraduate

Jon M. Huntsman School of Business Outcomes Displayed at a Department Level

Educational Testing Services. Colleges and universities throughout the United States use the Major Field Test in Business developed by Educational Testing Services (ETS), Princeton, New Jersey, to measure student academic achievement and growth and to assess the educational outcomes of the business program’s core subjects collectively as well as separately.

Educational Testing Services results from 2009, 2006 and 2005

Business Core Classes Assessment. Each department in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business teaches two or more courses in the business core curriculum required of all majors. As part of our assessment effort, learning goals for each core course have been developed. Progress made in achieving selected learning goals is assessed through pre- and post-tests in each course. The charts below show the students’ progress from pre-tests given at the beginning of the semester to the post-tests given at the end of the semester.

Pre/Post Test Results Spring 2006 - Fall 2006 Comparison

Survey Results. The Jon M. Huntsman School of Business receives reports from the University Analysis, Assessment and Accreditation Office on a number of measures related to student satisfaction and placement. Copies of several of the complete reports are located on this page. The summaries are an executive summary of key measures from these university generated reports.

Entrepreneurship

Pre-test and post-test regarding opportunity identification and creation were administered in MGT 3510 in Fall, 2008. The results show that a number of training techniques that are implemented in the class do result in a significant increase in the quantity and quality of the ideas that are generated by students. Based on the data, the instructors continue to add and refine opportunity identification techniques in the course.

Human Resource Management

HR Knowledge Assessment
An assessment of HR knowledge has been piloted in the honors section of MHR 4630 for three years.

Team and Leadership Roles Assessment

Peer-based assessment of team and leadership roles was completed in MHR 3710 in the fall of 2005. The results indicated a statistically significant correlation between team role score and team performance on the project (r = .20, p < .05). This data was used to make curriculum enhancements.

HR Games
The Society for Human Resource Management sponsors a national competition on an annual basis that allows teams from universities to compete based on their knowledge of human resource management topics. The teams drawn from the undergraduate program in human resource management have consistently won at the state and regional levels and placed multiple times at the national competition. The results for the past four years are below:

Embedded Course Assessment

Daniel Holland completed a number of different embedded course assessment in some of the course that he has taught between Fall 2008 and Summer 2009.  The results of his finding can be found on this page.

Graduate

Master of Science in Human Resource Management

In December 2008, we identified four key characteristics of an outstanding M.S. in Human Resources Program. These provide the guiding framework for our journey toward top tier. Our progress and goals relative to these are highlighted below:

Recruitment Initiative:

High Ability Students from the Region, Nation and Beyond Will Be Attracted to the Program.

We have worked aggressively over the past year to strengthen recruitment for the program. Our strategy is to start close to home and expand outward into the region, and in time nation-wide. Key initiatives have included:

• Movement of recruitment, advising and program administration from the MBA Office to the Management Department.
• Program Administrator hired to provide focused attention to recruitment efforts.
• Integrated business acumen courses into the program, thus removing a barrier to entry for students coming from non-business disciplines.
• Updated our program brochure and web page to better present the program to prospective applicants.
• More active recruiting on campus through communications with advisors and career placement officers, including a luncheon held for advisors on campus to introduce our program, career opportunities, and admissions standards. 16 advisors attended.
• Intensified recruitment at instate graduate fairs: USU, UU, Westminster, Weber State, UVU and BYU. Also recruited at U of Montana.
• Developed collaborative recruiting relationship with BYU-Idaho

As can be observed in Table 1, we are well on our way toward meeting our recruiting goals for Fall Semester 2009.

Table 1: Recruitment Goals and Performance

Placement Initiative:

Outstanding organizations will recruit our interns and graduates.

A clear indicator of our journey towards top tier will be the extent to which top organizations routinely court and hire our interns and graduates into high quality positions.

Table 2. Placement Goals and Performance

¹ Category I internships include those where students will receive outstanding mentorship, generally with national/international organizations.
² Category II internships include those where students will receive good to strong mentorship, generally with regional or strong local organizations.
³ Category III internships include those where students will receive modest mentorship, generally with local organizations.

Curricular Initiative:

The curriculum will include unique value adding/career accelerating experiences for our students.

A unique element of the MSHR program is that it is competency based. Students are challenged in each class to go beyond textbook learning toward direct application of skills in applied projects, often in real organizational settings. Over the past year and a half we have taken a careful look at our curriculum, moving forward with the following initiatives designed to strengthen the strategic orientation of our program:

• Refined business acumen requirements for the program.
• Human Resource Planning and Staffing course redesigned to be “Talent Acquisition and Retention.”
• Compensation and Benefits course and the Performance Management course have been merged into a redesigned course entitled “Total Rewards and Employee Performance.”
• “Human Capital Management,” a course designed to track the linkage between HR practices and firm performance has been moved from an elective, to a required course in the curriculum.
• An international experience has been added to the program.
• A “lean enterprise” component has been added to the program, with the development and addition of a new course entitled “Leadership and Operational Excellence.”
• Working with the MBA Program, we have designed and obtained approval for delivery a dual MSHR-MBA program, whereby highly motivated students can complete the two degrees in a two-year, 60 credit program.
• As part of the Management Department’s curricular consolidation efforts, we are working to better align the undergraduate and graduate HR curriculum.

Key metrics associated with curricular outcomes of the program are highlighted in Table 3. As can be seen from the table, we are still in the early stages of defining the curricular metrics that will assess the academic quality of the program.

Table 3. Curricular Performance Measures