New Courses: A Look at Kellogg’s Curriculum Development and Innovation
By Michael Mazzeo, Senior Associate Dean of Curriculum and Teaching
Kellogg’s curriculum development is another engine of innovation for the school. Our approach is rooted in faculty research; we encourage our incredible faculty to develop courses that are (1) based on the latest insights in their fields and areas of professional expertise and are (2) designed to facilitate students’ personal and professional development.
Additionally, all our new courses need to meet fundamental standards of rigor and contribute to a robust, coherent overall curriculum. At Kellogg, we strive to base all of our coursework on critical, analytical thinking, so that when students are faced with a new challenge – whatever it may be – they are prepared to meet that challenge.
Kellogg’s new course offerings
This year, our Curriculum Committee reviewed several courses and approved interesting new contributions that combined practical applications with strong analytical foundations. Here are some examples:
- Antitrust Economics
- Keeping it All in the Family: Growing, Financing and Managing Family Firms
- Marketing Luxury
- Private Equity and Distressed Investing
- Service Analytics
I am excited about all of these courses, but I want to take a minute to share what’s of particular interest to me about a few:
Antitrust Economics
While Antitrust economics is always an important managerial issue, there’s a very interesting landscape right now because of tech. There are new challenges associated with defining what the market is, how you deal with platform competition and different products and services that may be tied to each other, like search and advertising and data collection and privacy. Since these issues don’t have as much of a precedent in the law, there’s a lot of emerging thinking that’s coming out of current cases that will connect back to how people think about antitrust in a more modern world.
Keeping it All in the Family: Growing, Financing and Managing Family Firms
Kellogg has a strong cadre of students whose families own businesses and we have a desire to add strong, rigorous courses in this area. I am thrilled that Professor Jose Liberti – our most recent Professor of the Year honoree – has taken up the challenge of creating an offering for these students that provides depth of understanding in some of the crucial financial questions that are faced by family firms. Understanding these idiosyncrasies will make our students much stronger stewards of their businesses.
Service Analytics
Kellogg has been steadily building out its course offerings in analytics over the last several years. We are excited to add a course that covers the operations discipline and focuses, in particular, on service industries. The latter makes up a growing share of our economy, and so developing skills that can be applied to these industries will be of great benefit to our students. Additionally, the course will help students continue to hone their capabilities with analytics – a critical part of their preparation for future success.
Our diverse academic offerings at Kellogg
Our academic offerings go far beyond our courses! I encourage you to check out the full range of our academic offerings at Kellogg, including our majors and pathways, the latter offering an integrated, cross-functional set of courses designed to build expertise in emerging areas and evolving industries.