B-School Curriculum Changes Planned

A committee of Harvard Business School (HBS) faculty members voted Saturday to implement a new MBA curriculum which attempts to integrate different studies and provide more opportunities for real-world experience.

The vote concluded a two-year Leadership and Learning initiative, which recommended major changes to the MBA program.

The new integrated curriculum will attempt to connect the different concepts taught at the Business School--finance, ethics, management, among others.

"This sets a broad outline for what goes into the curriculum," said Associate Professor of Business Administration Leonard A. Schlesinger, who chaired the faculty committee which voted Saturday.

"Now the focus is to take those votes and structures and do the detailed planning and piloting," he said.

In two votes earlier this year, the HBS faculty decided to adopt an amended year-round calendar and to reduce the number of required courses. The faculty also voted to create a required course that will provide first-year students with a unified introduction to the foundations of business.

"We went beyond looking at individual courses and looked at altering the entire business school experience," Schlesinger said.

In Saturday's vote, the faculty agreed to proceed with the changes already proposed and to bring the recommendation phase to a close. Most of those recommendations were broad, Schlesinger said, and decisions will now be made on the details of how to enact them.

Faculty members will meet this week to appoint committees to implement the changes.

Student leaders yesterday expressed support for the vote.

"I think it's a very positive vote," said W. Mark Strickland, the student association's vice-president for academic affairs. "It begins the process of implementing a lot of changes that will benefit students who come to HBS in future years."

But students say the major challenges lie ahead. They emphasized that Saturday's vote does not mark the end of the HBS reform process.

"Now we have the huge challenge of implementing this stuff," Strickland said.

"The real work really begins now," said James E. Brown, president of the Student Association. "What was voted on Saturday is not a done deal and may undergo changes. The fact that it was voted on does not mean it's written in stone."

Student leaders expressed general satisfaction with the recommenda- tions of the Leadership and Learning initiative.

They said an integrated curriculum will better prepare them to be business leaders.

"We struggle to do integrating on our own," Strickland said. "It will be very helpful to see implications across industries.

They said an integrated curriculum will better prepare them to be business leaders.

"We struggle to do integrating on our own," Strickland said. "It will be very helpful to see implications across industries.