A Top B-School Unveils A New Curriculum Designed With Gen Z In Mind

This fall, freshmen arriving at college campuses across the country faced the familiar rites of passage that come with leaving home for the first time: new dorm rooms to personalize, new roommates to navigate, new schedules and dining options to adjust to. A newfound sense of independence and, hopefully, the responsibility that comes with it.

At American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, D.C., freshmen also encountered a different kind of first: a new, overhauled core curriculum, marking the most significant update in decades.

“Coming out of COVID, there was a feeling among faculty that business education was going to change. The world was going to be different, and we needed to reimagine how we were equipping our students for that,” says Casey Evans, accounting professor, an AU alum, and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs and Students Services at Kogod.

“We were also aware that Gen Z has different needs and perspectives than do millennials. We wanted our curriculum to better reflect the demands of the workplace and the interdisciplinary aspect of business.”

Kogod spent about 18 months reaching out to stakeholders – students, employers, faculty, alumni, and more – to see what they deemed essential in an undergraduate business degree. From that, a multidisciplinary curriculum committee developed a new, overhauled curriculum that is at once leaner and more flexible; more interdisciplinary and experiential; and infused with employment-ready skills in professionalism, AI, and sustainability.

Poets&Quants For Undergrads spoke with Evans, who led Kogod’s curriculum reform process, to talk about the changes and what they mean for Kogod students, employers, and the wider Kogod community. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Explain the context behind the curriculum overhaul. What needs did the school identify?

We really hadn’t changed our core business curriculum in decades. I’m an AU and Kogod alum, and when I looked at my own transcript from the 90s, it was very similar to our students’ transcripts in terms of the core classes. So, everyone was pretty on board with this need for change.

At the same time, we had new leadership with a dean who was very supportive. During COVID, we formed a group of faculty to start thinking about how we could better serve our students. Curriculum was a piece of the larger report that came out of that effort. We spent about 18 months researching like crazy, talking to all of our stakeholders – students, alumni, employers, parents, faculty, peer and aspirational schools – about what we were doing and what we could do better.

We took more of a design-thinking approach, which I think, ultimately, is why we were as successful as we were. We used the feedback all the stakeholders were telling us as the reason to do it. It wasn’t just a top-down directive; it wasn’t the dean’s office saying we need to do this. It was research-driven and stakeholder-informed.

You mentioned that the world of business and Gen Z needs were changing. Could you give some examples of the feedback you were getting from students and employers?

Students were saying that the core curriculum, not really their major, felt siloed. They didn’t understand why they had to learn what we were teaching them because everything seemed so disjointed. Integration became a major theme in our new curriculum. We wanted to focus more on utility and showing the cross-functional nature of business, while also making the classes interesting and engaging. Experiential learning became a big part of that.

We’re rolling out the new curriculum this fall, and we are rolling it out with the new class. It took about a year and was approved in the spring.

What are some of the big differences between the new core and the old core?

One major change is that we’re frontloading the business education core. Instead of pushing students into the business school in their junior year, we’re giving them business classes from day one. First-year students went from taking one or two business classes to six. They’re now taking three business courses in their first semester.

That includes our Purpose of Business course, a professional communications class (which employers said we need to have), and a tools and technology course that covers things like Excel, Python, and AI.

We’ve designed these courses to work together, so we have common projects that overlap across them.

The key has been the professionalism and communications class we’re running. It’s a one-credit course, and students practice what they’ll be presenting in their other classes. We’ve been very intentional with this piece. Faculty who taught in the old curriculum, and are now teaching in the new one, have noticed that students are much better prepared. I’ve seen it myself in the classes I teach as well.

You mentioned professionalism as a focus. What does that look like in practice?

We are evaluating students on their professionalism. Instead of just making attendance and participating part of the grade, we now grade professionalism, with attendance being just one aspect of it. We assess how students collaborate with each other, how they present themselves in class, even how they conduct themselves while seated. Teamwork skills are a significant part of this, and in the early classes, professionalism can account for anywhere from 5% to 15% of their grade.

So a freshman rolling up to class in sweatpants and flip flops, that could affect that portion of their grade?

I have an example. We’re doing our first round of feedback mid-semester next week, and I have a student who comes to class with earbuds in for half the session. That’s a zero for professionalism. We’ll sit down and talk about it, and she’ll have the opportunity to improve. Her current grade is a zero, but she can still raise it significantly. We’re having these conversations to create clear expectations around these types of behaviors, so that as students progress through the business school, they are much better prepared.

What we learned coming out of COVID is that the students joining us were not as prepared as previous cohorts in terms of interacting with each other, engaging with their teachers, or how to present themselves professionally. Part of our research for the new curriculum showed us that students wanted to attend events but didn’t feel comfortable because they didn’t know how to network or talk to people they hadn’t met before. They asked us to teach them these skills, and employers told us we need to teach these skills as well. So, we’ve infused professionalism throughout our entire curriculum. It’s now part of their grade in all their fundamental and foundational courses.

That sounds pretty unique: making professionalism part of the grade across multiple core classes. How are students reacting to the new curriculum so far?

Yes, we didn’t see anyone else infuse professionalism and that expectation into courses the way that we are trying to do. So, we’re hoping it will pay dividends.

This first group of students seem receptive. The old curriculum stays with our sophomores, juniors and seniors, but the first-year students don’t know any different.

And they’re rising to the occasion. They’re on time, engaged. I have an early morning class, and I usually expect it to be kind of quiet. I’ve noticed that a much larger majority of students are now engaged in class discussions. They’re applying these skills they are learning in their professional class in their other courses, which is great.

What other changes did you make to the core curriculum?

We’ve also infused other themes that employers recommended including artificial intelligence and sustainability. AI is something we’re really leaning into at Kogod, and we’ve integrated it into most of our foundational courses. Sustainability management is another focus area, so that’s being infused across our classes as well. These three themes—professionalism, AI, and sustainability—are intentionally woven into the new curriculum.

One of the things students were telling us was that they felt there were too many requirements. They had university requirements, business foundational core requirements, and their major requirements, which left very little room for electives – sometimes only three or four after fulfilling all the requirements. No one goes to college expecting to be so restricted; they think they’ll be able to explore different subjects, maybe minor or double-specialize, or even study abroad.

So, we reduced the footprint of our foundational core, going from 44 credits down to 38. We wanted to go to 36, but we didn’t want to torpedo the whole thing. It’s hard to ask faculty who have been teaching certain courses for decades to change everything, so we had to negotiate and work closely with our colleagues to figure out the best approach. We landed on 38 credits, which freed up six credits for students to use however they want – whether that’s adding a specialization or minor, studying abroad, or even taking something like a yoga class.

Students now take their foundational courses during their first and second years, giving them more flexibility in their junior and senior years. They’ll also be better prepared to dive into their majors and take full advantage of the flexibility we’ve given them with those extra credits.

Ultimately, the core curriculum we’ve created is much more flexible and truly interdisciplinary. It’s infused with topics that are critical for employers, like AI, sustainability, and professionalism. We still have all the foundational courses – Intro to Accounting, Intro to Management, Intro to Marketing – that are common to business programs, but the key difference for us is the way we’ve restructured the first year.

In their first year, students take a lot more business courses, like the three I described earlier, and they have another three coming in their second semester. We’ve put a lot of thought into how we’ve built these courses, with much more interdisciplinary content and projects. This integration carries into the intro courses as well. For example, when students reach their Intro to Accounting class, they’ll be building on things they learned in their marketing class, such as budgeting concepts. So the instructors are talking to each other.

Briefly, describe the process for the project.

We now have an entirely new core. If you compare the list of classes in the old curriculum to what we have now, it’s a whole new list. It was a big lift.

It took about a year, once we had completed our research, talked to stakeholders, and knew what was needed. In the summer of 2023, we put together a faculty curriculum committee to design a curriculum that reflected what stakeholders were asking for and what students needed, while still meeting the learning objectives required for an undergraduate business degree.

Then, we had to shop it around and sell it. We spent the better part of last fall regularly checking in with our faculty, staff, and the broader community, and I believe that was key to our success. Everyone felt involved, contributing their feedback as we went along. We held a lot of town halls, had monthly meetings, and attended department meetings, allowing everyone to understand what the changes meant for them as we built it.

There were definitely parts of the curriculum where we encountered a lot of pushback, and we had to go back to the drawing board. We kept talking with colleagues until we got it where we needed it to be. Since it’s faculty governance, we needed almost everyone on board. We spent a solid semester talking it through, addressing concerns, and working through roadblocks. So, by the time it was ready for a vote, many thought it was already done. It ended up passing with like 95% of faculty because we did all that work to socialize it.

Wow. That’s pretty incredible, on any decision. Going back to AI, what are some ways you are infusing it into the curriculum?

We’re approaching this differently at each level – it will be different for first-year students than for the seniors. In our first-year classes, we’re incorporating in-class exercises. For example, this Thursday, in the Intro to Business class, I’m giving them a prompt about a specific industry being impacted by climate change. They’ll be tasked with researching topics using reputable sources like IBISWorld and Statista. Then, they’ll compare that to, say, ChatGPT and see if they learn anything new that didn’t come up in your research. And to evaluate ChatGPT’s sources. Inevitably they will go deeper.

So, we’re teaching them to critically evaluate AI output.

As they move into their sophomore and junior years, they’ll use AI more as a tool within their specific disciplines. For example, in a negotiations class, they might use AI to help prepare for role-playing exercises, simulating conversations they might have in a real negotiation.

Employers told us that they’re still going to hire our students, but they want graduates who know how to use AI effectively. So, we’re making sure our students are comfortable with AI as a tool.

What about experiential learning? Any changes to your capstone project?

Our capstone was already experiential in nature, but with the new curriculum, we’ve added a mini capstone at the end of the six classes they take during their first year. This mini capstone will culminate all the foundational learning they’ve done. It will take place in the last five weeks of their second semester, and it’s essentially their first case study, where they’ll apply everything they’ve learned.

In addition to their intro to business, professionalism, and business tools class, next semester they’ll take courses like econ, statistics, and an international business-focused class. The mini-capstone will bring all of that together. We’re also hoping this new first-year experience will help with retention, as all the students are taking the same classes in a sort of cohorted model. We’re hoping this will help them come together, find their group, and feel more comfortable in larger numbers as they move forward.

For the capstone, we’re planning to bring in great alumni as judges to listen to the presentations. We’ll probably have prizes and even some parties—there are a lot of things we can do. We haven’t done it yet because it’s scheduled for next semester, but we’re really focused on engaging both students and alumni.

Now, regarding the senior capstone, we already place them with real companies in the DC area to solve actual business problems. What’s different with the new curriculum is that we’ve received feedback from students who want to view the capstone through the lens of their major. Before, we gave a common prompt like, “Here’s a marketing problem,” “here’s a management problem,” and everyone had to solve it. Now, we’re designing different aspects of the same capstone project specific to each major. There will be components for finance and accounting students, for marketing students, for management students, and so on.

How will you measure the success of this overhaul?

We’re talking to faculty, monitoring student performance, and will be looking at retention rates at the end of the first year. We’ve also committed to continuously checking in with our stakeholders to ensure the curriculum remains aligned with their needs.

I imagine that if you noticed things were changing coming out of COVID, that other business programs noticed it too. What advice would you give to other schools looking to overhaul their curriculum?

Lessons learned, we definitely have them. When we spoke with stakeholders and some of our competitor schools, we found that many had wanted to do a big curriculum overhaul, and some had tried, but only one had gotten to the other end of it. It’s really challenging.
For us, the key was having leadership support. This is critical for any major curriculum reform. But what really made our overhaul successful was the ground-up approach. It was students, faculty, and stakeholders telling us, “These are the changes you need to make.”

I think it was really important to maintain regular communication with our community throughout the process. We made a point of regularly sharing our findings and progress with the faculty council. We attended department meetings to share updates. We went to smaller committee meetings to keep everyone informed.

We also identified key faculty members to serve as champions. My co-chairs and I couldn’t be in every conversation, so we were very intentional about who we put on the committee. We made sure to include faculty who had been at Kogod for a while, well-respected colleagues, and strong teachers. We had a mix of research and non-research faculty, along with people in administrative roles like committee chairs and course coordinators, because they understood how things worked.

We really benefited from working closely with our registrar throughout this process. The registrar’s office helped us anticipate potential academic regulations and issues I hadn’t necessarily considered. They were able to flag concerns as they arose, which was incredibly helpful. Having a collaborative registrar who didn’t just focus on what faculty approved, but who actively participated in the process, made a huge difference. They were part of the conversation along the way, not just at the end.

Also, understanding the university’s approval timeline was crucial. To roll out the curriculum this fall, we knew we needed final approvals by the end of spring, and it typically takes about six months to get approvals once you’re out of your academic unit. That’s why we pushed so hard last fall to get everything ready within our unit. It’s essentially a year-long approval process, so knowing that timeline helped us stay on track.

It’s easy to think, “We’ll just push it to next year,” and many initiatives fizzle out that way. But we publicly committed to rolling out the curriculum for the fall, and that deadline kept us motivated. Yes, we hit roadblocks—unexpected challenges always come up—but staying focused on what was best for the students kept us moving forward. Everyone agreed that this change would benefit our students, and that shared motivation made it possible to overcome the obstacles and stick to the plan.

 

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