B-School Faculty Overhauls MBA For Class of '72

The Business School faculty took a major step toward curriculum reform by voting yesterday to establish an experimental first-year MBA program involving one-fifth of the entering class.

Except for a few generalized guidelines, the 150 first-year MBA students will have a curriculum "not bound by [the] legislation" which establishes the regular course load.

The students who are selected for the experiment will be divided into two sections which will meet from January through August rather than the conventional academic year. This innovation was designed to give the professors involved in the new program more time to develop new approaches.

Charles J. Christenson, professor of Business Administration and chairman of the first-year subcommittee which sponsored the motions, said lost night that "to make any kind of change in the curriculum as it has existed is exceedingly difficult. This is a way of opening up the program to try out some things that otherwise we'd be blocked from doing."

The normal first-year course load consists of 12 courses staggered throughout the year Christenson said that instead of 12 faculty members for each of 12 courses, perhaps no-more than eight men will be assigned to each experimental section, thus instituting a more condensed, less compartmentalized set-up with less courses.

Professors running the experimentalprogram, he added, will hopefully find ways to ease the quantity of work because students are getting more work assigned than ever before and are too frustrated to concentrate on it and do a thorough job.

In other faculty action yesterday. a motion was passed to appoint three or four Program Coordinators for the 600 first-year MBA students in the eight non-experimental sections. These Program Coordinators will "counsel and assist instructors in those sections who wish to experiment with integrative or innovative curricular approaches."

John A. Seiler, dean of the MBA program. said that the Program Coordinators will help decentralize the first-year curriculum, giving each section more autonomy. "It's a relatively small move but it does give the sections a little more salience."