Dr. Beth Walker, Dean, Colorado State University College of Business

Could you give us a brief introduction to the college and how it stands today?

Our call to business stands for “Business for a Better World.” So, in 2019, we launched a strategic planning process, which took about a year. We had a lot of discussions as a faculty and staff and thought about what we wanted to be known for in 5 or 10 years from the date of our planning process. Through this process, we landed on “Business for a Better World,” and that’s something that we deeply believe in. And we’ve invested across our entire college and everything that we do in our College of Business in this idea. So, it’s been extremely successful. So we look at “Business for a Better World” from a student perspective and a community perspective, including who is coming to our college and who is working in our college. We examine it in terms of our research, the curriculum we deliver to our students, and our community partners’ perspectives on how we engage with them.

So, this is the journey that we’ve been on, and it’s been a vision that has truly unified our college. Everyone believes in it. So, if you talk to any faculty or staff here in our college, they know about “Business for a Better World.” We developed a funding process we call budgeting for strategic outcomes, which has been the very thing that has provided the fuel for our strategic plan. This is because we’ve been able to fund ideas that emerge in our college each year, which help us achieve our strategic outcomes. So this is really something that has defined us as a business school and has taken us to the next level. 

We were recently recognized by the Financial Times as one of the five top business schools in the world for responsible business management education. We were the only school in the United States to receive such an honor, and this really reflects our investment and commitment to using business to create a better world. So we’re very, very proud of that.

We’re also seeing the results in our student enrollments. Since fall 2020, our undergraduate student enrollments have been up 43%, at a time when there are fewer students who will be college-aged. We’re talking about the demographic in the US. So, we were expecting enrollments to decline, but we’ve seen a very steep increase in our college. Part of that is because we do stand for business for a better world. We have a purpose. I think students are attracted to a college of business that has a purpose that is aligned with their own. And this is what excites me most about our trajectory. I really do feel we’re working at the intersection of business, society, and the environment.

Our students are concerned about being sustainable in their lives. They need to have good careers and make money to support themselves. But they also want to make a difference in the world, and we think we help them achieve that objective as well.

It’s been a wonderful journey so far. What would you say have been the keys to the college’s success?

First is our strategic plan. We really have carved out this very specific direction for ourselves. When you look at colleges of business across the country and the world, if you look at their mission and vision statements, they’re all very similar. You wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell one college of business from another. And I think why we’re distinctive is that we develop this positioning. We develop goals. We’ve developed metrics. We measure and fund our strategic plan. And it’s truly allowed us to create an identity for ourselves that distinguishes us from others. 

That is not to say that there aren’t other businesses in this country and in the world that are interested in the same things. And this is an effort that we want to help inspire others to do some of these things. But I think our strategic plan is one of the keys to success because you set this ideal out there: Business for a Better World. And why it’s been so great is because it means something different to each individual, each student, staff, and faculty. 

Under that umbrella, people are inspired to work on research projects that they’re interested in. Maybe that addresses a social or environmental problem through business. Students can take courses that are aligned with their interests. We have a course in sustainability, and every undergraduate student takes that. We also have a course in sustainability at the graduate level. So, I think that’s really our strategic plan, and our ability to fund it and move forward on is key to our success.

Another key is our faculty. In our College of Business, we have world-class faculty who publish research at the highest level and are exceptional educators. So, when we’re hiring a new person, we look for both. Both things are important to us. And so, we attract a certain kind of special individual. They’re not only going to innovate on the research front and publish wonderful work that has an impact, but they will also be exceptional educators who love that part of their jobs just as much, so that’s a distinguishing feature.

I think we have some very special programs. Our full-time MBA program is called Impact MBA, and it’s very different from many other full-time MBAs across the country. We developed this impact MBA program not for students who want to work on Wall Street or for one of the leading consulting firms in the country necessarily, but we tend to attract students who want to change their world through business. It’s a relatively small program with 50 to 60 students at a time. 

We intentionally want also to attract students from outside the US. They’re very important to us, our international student base. But these are students who are passionate about addressing and solving one of the world’s most pressing problems through business. So, maybe their interest is in food insecurity or working in the food supply chain. Or maybe they’re very interested in climate change and want to do work that addresses environmental challenges. They’re now being hired by some of the top firms in our country. Some are launching new ventures, and some are entrepreneurs, but the common theme is that these students are getting their MBA, plus they’re getting an understanding of business sustainability and how to address some of the challenges that are important to them through business. Impact MBA is a very special program for us and is the key to our success. 

We also have some exceptional online graduate programs, such as an MBA and a master’s of computer information systems program, which are both very highly ranked. These really achieve our access mission. So, here at Colorado State University, we’re a large public Research I institution. We’re also what’s called a land grant. Access to an exceptional education is part of what we stand for, and we address that part of our mission through exceptional online programs. 

Our online MBA program is renowned. We have a very interesting delivery model where even online students are actually in the classroom with the faculty member and the in-person students. We blend them. So, they’re part of a community; they’re not learning by themselves. They’re with a whole community of people, including the faculty member. We added this technology called Mosaic. It’s like a giant Zoom screen on the back wall of a classroom. There, people who are at a distance are almost like full-sized human beings. So, there’s interaction back and forth. 

Online students can choose to learn asynchronously or not use the Mosaic. They might be in our classroom at the same time as everyone else’s synchronously, or they could be in person. So it’s very flexible. Students can choose how they want to engage with us, but it’s very cool. In fact, we had a really great experience with a group from Peru who visited us. We have a great relationship with this university from that country. When they came every summer, half the students came in person, but the other half were in Peru, so they joined us on the Mosaic wall. We had an interpreter. This was the first time we had an interpreter in the classroom who could speak Spanish and English, and it’s a great example of how we can use Mosaic. 

We’ve had another graduate class in supply chain management in that classroom. We invited students from seven different countries and seven different universities. They were all in the same room learning together, and it was very special. So, if you come to Fort Collins, Colorado, we will show you Mosaic because it’s one of those types of technology that really is special. So, that’s a very important part of our program and a key to our success.

We have our own career management center in our business school. Over 90% of the students get a job or offer within 90 days of graduation. Our students make us great. We are very interested in our first-generation students and underrepresented minority students. We feel like diversity and inclusion make us better. We’ve really been working on helping our students and programs be more inclusive and make everyone feel like they belong on our campus. We have really diversified our student body, and we’re very proud of that. 

We’re one of those places where when students come, we know they can succeed. We should provide them with the support to help them do that. And we feel like parents when students are dropped off at Fort Collins. Parents know their students are in good hands when they’re in our business school because we will take care of them and help them thrive.

Thank you very much for that. I think we have covered quite a bit of the academics and curriculum, as well as the role of innovation with Mosaic. I will ask you a little bit more about the research that the college is conducting. That’s another important part of your strategy plan. Will you tell us a little bit more about that as well?

Sure. As I mentioned, when we look forward to hiring a new faculty member, we’re looking for exceptional scholars capable of producing the highest-quality research possible and better exceptional educators. So we look for both. We have faculty who do research in five broad areas. Our departments are marketing, management, accounting, finance, and computer information systems. 

Of course, faculty members work on projects that are of interest to them first and foremost. But we pay special attention to faculty who are doing research at the intersection of business, society, and the environment. So, maybe they’re studying data privacy, for instance, which is very important now. That’s a topic that one of our marketing faculty members, Kelly Martin, is renowned for. Maybe they’re studying another topic at the intersection of business and society or uncovering biases in the accounting domain or in financial services, for instance. 

Certainly, technology is an area where there’s all kinds of room for ethical questions related to technology, AI, etc. So, these are the things that our faculty study. In HR, we might study topics like the impact of a supervisor sending emails outside of work hours on your mental health. I learned not to do that. So, these are the kinds of things that our faculty are studying. 

We just had a group of marketing faculty publish a really important paper in the Journal of the Academy of Management Sciences on a new orientation for businesses. They were studying a purpose orientation. This was a new concept or a new construct. It really resonates with us as a business school that stands for business for a better world but looks at the organizations that have a purpose and the implications that it has for their employees and for their bottom line. So, our faculty does a broad array of work on a broader range of projects, and we’re really proud of the work that they’re doing, especially studying topics at the intersection of business, society, and the environment. 

Related to that, we have developed a dissertation proposal competition for students in their PhD process. We have a competition to award funding to students who study topics related to business for a better world, and that’s something we decided to do as a faculty to tell everybody we’re interested in work like this because we want to be known for inspiring others to do what our faculty are doing here at CSU.

In the future, let’s say 20 years from now, it will be really amazing to know that companies were born through the CSU College of Business and see where they are and what they have accomplished. I hope you can track that in the future.

Yes, because a lot of new companies have been started, and a lot of students have come out of our Impact MBA program. It will be interesting to see where everything heads. One of our alumni, Zubaida Bai, was just appointed as CEO of the Grameen Foundation, which is a really big deal. And so, we’re very proud of all of our alumni. They’ve gone on to accomplish amazing things. We also have many important and inspiring entrepreneurs, and Zubaida is an entrepreneur as well. So, we’ll be tracking.

With that, I would like to ask you, what do you see for the future of America’s education sector? What direction do you see it taking?

We’re at a very interesting point in our history in terms of higher education in general. But I feel like our College of Business and our university are well positioned to address the future. I think where we are right now, especially in the US, educational institutions are facing this demographic cliff, with fewer students graduating from high school just demographically. That’s what’s happening. So, here is a smaller pipeline of students eligible to go on to college. But we’re also facing, at this point, students choosing not to go to college at all to decide. They’re saying, “I don’t know what I want to do. I want to join the workforce. Maybe I don’t have to make this investment.” 

That’s a challenge. The competitive landscape has really shifted. Students are making other choices, including not going to college, and it’s not only other universities. So, I think it’s incumbent on us to partner with companies to create a pool of students who see the value and benefit of coming to an institution like Colorado State University College of Business. 

Why come to a university? We have a community here. We have experiential learning. We engage with other disciplines, so we’re very cross-disciplinary. We will help you. And I’ve seen this firsthand. A student joins us as a first-year student, and they don’t have any idea what they want to do. They find their way into the College of Business, and in four years, they are on their way to pursuing their dream job because they’ve taken the courses, they’ve engaged with our faculty, and they’ve joined clubs and organizations, and they’ve had great experiential learning. 

And all these things are really important factors that attract students here. So, that’s at the undergraduate level. And, as I said, our undergraduate enrollments in the business school are up 43% since fall 2020. So we feel like we’re doing something right in terms of being a place where students feel like they belong here. We’re a fit for them, and we can help them achieve their goals and dreams. We’re all about their success at the end of the day.

At the master’s level, it’s been very different. The profiles are very different. Full-time MBA programs are shrinking. Many universities have eliminated their full-time MBA programs. As I mentioned earlier, we have a very special MBA program called the Impact MBA, and it’s growing. So, we again carved a niche around something that people really believe in, and we’ll help them get there. So we’re very proud of that.

I mentioned we have online programs. Since 2017, the number of online MBA programs has essentially doubled. So, the competition has been extremely fierce. What we’re seeing is that we have a very special online MBA program, with Mosaic being extremely flexible. We’ve developed a lot of credentials and certificates that students can put together, starting with a certificate and then with an MBA. And we’ve seen a lot of enrollment in our certificate programs as a way to get started. So, I think that’s absolutely a trend instead of maybe having the time or the funding from an organization for a full MBA.

Many working professionals are saying, “I’ll take this certificate. I need this skill set. That’s what I want. Do you have that?” We’ve been focused on listening to what the marketplace needs and delivering that. We hope that students can add these certificates together at the end to have an MBA if that’s what they choose to do. We have a great master’s in computer information systems. We’re developing a hybrid program with a partner in India, where one year might be online, and the second year might be in person. So, we’re trying to offer all kinds of different formats, really meet the students where they are, and deliver value to them at the end of the day.

One of my last questions will also be about partnerships. I would like to ask where you’re looking to expand your partnerships, referring to the corporate sector, internships, or programs that you can develop together. What are your thoughts in that sense?

That’s a great question. Partnerships are key to the future, so we are continually investing. It’s an area of growth for us. Part of our mission as a College of Business is also engagement with the community broadly defined. Of course, one constituent is our recruiters or employers who might hire our students. I mentioned we have our own career management center. We have fabulous career fairs where we bring up to 80 employers to one spot, fall and spring, and our students are there to meet with them for jobs. We had almost 600 students attend just a couple of weeks ago, and it’s fabulous. 

Our corporate partners love us and the quality of our students. They tell us that this is the best career fair they’ve attended. Like I said, we take good care of them, but it’s the energy. It’s the enthusiasm post-Covid to be all together in a situation or in a setting like this that is just very energizing. And I think it’s because it’s hope when students see their futures there, and when employers see their futures there as well because they’re meeting with all these great students. And that’s why we really cultivate our relationships with employers and intend to build those. 

We also partner with companies to improve their employee base. How can we deliver education to their employees, like our online MBA program or our online MCIS program, or what certificates they might be interested in? Do you need custom programming? So, we have those kinds of relationships at the corporate level. 

We also engage with our community, especially around entrepreneurship. During Covid, for instance, we launched programs for our small business owners in Larimer County, Colorado, where we created a program for business owners in the area that were really struggling during that very difficult time. So, we thought about what our business school could do to help our community. And this is what we did. We partnered with Larimer County. We got a grant, and we delivered this program. We have entrepreneurship programs that started for students, then some faculty came, and now we’ve opened it up to our community. And it’s about half-and-half of students and community members who come in. So, building engagement with partners of all types is really important to us, and I think it’s the key to the future, whether it’s partnerships also with 2-year universities or other 4-year universities. What can we do together? I think this is something we can really lean into in the future.

And as my last question, Beth. I would like to ask what your key message is to conclude this interview.

The CSU College of Business stands for business for a better world, and I think this idea resonates with our faculty, staff, and students. One of the reasons we went down this path is that we wanted to attract students and keep and retain the best staff and faculty. And so, if this message resonates with you, this is what we stand for, and that’s what I want everyone to know about us.

Fantastic. Is there anything I haven’t asked you about that you would like to mention?

On innovation, I just wanted to say a couple of things I talked about. We’re always innovating on every front. We’re a very entrepreneurial college. We believe that innovation occurs at the intersection of disciplines. What we’ve been doing is probably working with every other college at CSU in some capacity with a new program or research partnership. 

We really believe in this idea, but we’re working on a new concept called Innovation Allie.

It’s a living-learning concept at CSU. We haven’t done this before, and we’re partnering with housing and dining. So, the students who live and learn in this area will be interested in innovation and entrepreneurship. Of course, there will be business students who live there, but there will also be students who come from all over the campus and are interested in innovation and entrepreneurship. 

We’re in the early stages. We plan, though, that this is going to be finished by fall 2027. We feel like this is a new idea that’s going to attract even more new students to Colorado State University who want to live in this environment that will be very dynamic, hands-on, and engaging. Then, it will further those new businesses that you talked about and further inspire innovation across our campus, community, and the State of Colorado going forward. So, it’s a big new project. It’s all about innovation, and it’s just underway in fall 2027.