Fisher College of Business

Undergraduate Programs

Area descriptions

The Fisher College of Business has 12 options available for specializations. Each specialization provides students with in-depth classes to enhance the general business program. Below you will find a general description of each of the specializations. To the right, under resources, you will find a PDF version of the specialization sheet which includes curriculum information and if available, extra information regarding salary trends, opportunities, and typical preparations and qualifications.

Accounting

An accountant designs and implements financial and cost accounting systems, both budget and actual. An accountant also monitors operations through assembling, analyzing, and interpreting the essential dollars and cents information of the organization. He or she supplies the information needed for managers, investors, and creditors to evaluate the operations of the organization.

Any organization must maintain some record of operations; there must be some way of measuring what is being done against what it planned. Some form of analysis and interpretation can permit a company to pinpoint problem areas and correct or eliminate them. Accounting is a key factor in this control. It maintains records, supplies facts, and summarizes these analytically to provide the planning, control and evaluation necessary to improve financial operations.

Aviation Management

The Aviation Management Special Major is designed to prepare students for professional positions in the aviation industries. The Fisher College of Business recognizes the need to effectively organize human and material resources in a world of rapid social, economic and technological change.

Aviation is a high technology, rapidly changing, competitive business operating in a global arena. Educated, professional managers are needed in over fifty career areas in the aviation industry. Transportation, economics and logistics, flight operations, and support are some of the many other positions that make up the exciting and challenging field of aviation.

Managers are needed for airports, airlines, transportation support fields and local, state, federal, and international regulatory agencies. Work is continually being done to analyze aviation and to determine what can be done to make it safer; to manage it more efficiently; and to develop new products and techniques to make the airplane, airline, and airport industry more successful.

Economics

Economists develop theories to explain how components of an economy operate and interact with one another. They then gather statistical and empirical evidence to estimate the relationships among the various aspects of the economy. Using this data, economists predict how different economic entities will respond to changes in policies and external forces. These predictions, in turn, help guide private and public decision-makers to form appropriate policies.

Finance

In addition to receiving broad training in general business management, students specializing in Finance are especially prepared for the increasingly important area of financial management in all types of business including financial institutions. The financial officer has responsibility in such activities as funds and cost analysis, investments, the formulating of credit, and other financial operating policies.

Specific career opportunities include financial management in manufacturing and distributing firms, commercial bank management, savings and loan management, stock brokerage, insurance, security analysis, and trust management. This specialization serves as an excellent foundation for graduate study in business and for the study of law. In addition to career opportunities, the finance curriculum is designed to aid the student in the proper handling of his own financial and investment problems.

General Business

Regional students only.

View Program.

View Curriculum Checksheet.

Human Resources

Human resource managers are responsible for recruiting, training, utilizing and maintaining qualified work forces, both in industry and government. This involves such activities as writing job descriptions, interviewing and testing applicants, administering salary and benefit programs, staff training, counseling employees concerning their personal and job problems, dealing with rule violation and conducting research in employment problems.

This specialization prepares the student either for graduate study in human resources management or in employment in various business areas. It provides professional training in principles and practices of procuring, developing, maintaining, and utilizing an effective and harmonious staff of executives and employees, and to provide a basic and integrated foundation of broad social and cultural course work.

Information Systems

The information system specialization emphasizes the application of information technology in business--the design, implementation and management of systems to collect, store, process, retrieve, and communicate information for the support of operations, management, and decision making functions. The objective of these systems is to enhance productivity by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of business processes. For many firms, information systems can also be used to help increase revenue and to provide a competitive advantage.

Computers and other information technologies are the technical foundations or the tools of information systems. However, both technical skills and knowledge of business process and practice are needed by an information systems professional to effectively work in today’s business environment.

The field of information systems is unique in that it blends organizational and managerial concerns with the study of information technologies. The objective of the information systems major is to prepare students for entry into the information systems profession. The program is designed to provide students with (1) the technical foundation required to develop and function credibly in business and industry, and (2) organizational understanding and managerial skills necessary to plan for and manage business information systems. These skills are necessary to advance into leadership positions, particularly within the information systems functional area of the firm.

International Business

The International Business specialization prepares one to understand and participate in worldwide production and distribution activities. This involves study of domestic, international, and foreign business environments and of business practices and problems related to them. Other studies include exchange controls and the operations of foreign exchanges to formulate policies on investments and transfer of capital. There may also be specialization in the analysis of economic conditions in a particular geographic area.

Marketing

Marketing involves the conception, promotion, and physical distribution of good and services to satisfy the economic needs of society. While it is easy to visualize those employed in wholesale and retail establishments as engaged in marketing, employees of other firms primarily engaged in manufacturing and services also perform marketing functions. Marketing is an important area of activity in financial institutions, public utilities, and insurance and some not-for-profit organizations.

Representing more than fifteen percent of all persons employed, marketing plays an ever-increasing role in our economy. Employment opportunities in any phase of marketing--advertising, selling, buying, financing, or merchandising--are varied, attractive, and limitless. An education in marketing is broadening and cultural, as well as specialized.

Operations Management

In order to benefit society, all organizations (public or private; profit or non-profit) must effectively produce and distribute outputs needed by society. These outputs can be tangibles (e.g., manufactured goods, utilities, retail and wholesale transactions) or intangibles (e.g., transportation services, health care and public safety services, financial services, government services, lodging and food services, entertainment and recreational services, educational and counseling services).

To perform successfully, these productive pipelines must be carefully designed, staffed, and operated to convert the appropriate inputs of materials, components, customers, energy, and information into the desired outputs.

Operations managers have the challenging and rewarding role of designing, scheduling, staffing, controlling, and improving these complex, yet important, productive pipelines profiting the goods and services we all use to enrich our lives. In most organizations, the operations system represents the largest function--usually managing most of the organization’s employees and productive assets and accounting for the major portion of the firms capital and operating expenditures. Thus the operations function would be significant if due only to its size, level of resources and total expenditures required to complete its mission.

Real Estate and Urban Analysis

Real Estate students, in addition to receiving broad training in general business management and business finance, are encouraged to acquire an interdisciplinary background by taking courses in urban sociology, economic geography, and related areas. Students specializing in real estate should be sensitive to the complexities of our urban society and be enabled to work productively within it.

Risk Management and Insurance

The fields of Risk Management and Insurance are recognized as important by many corporations, hospitals and governmental units. In addition, the insurance industry is a large employer of individuals with university-level education. In other industries, college graduates are employed in positions requiring an understanding of issues related to insurance (e.g. risk managers and employee benefit managers). The field of Financial Planning offers other opportunities for individuals with university-level training in Risk Management and Insurance combined with a Finance background. A familiarity with risk management and insurance should prove useful for students who pursue careers in related areas such as health care, law, engineering and other fields in Business Administration.

The Risk Management and Insurance specialization is designed to provide students a firm foundation in general business principles as well as a familiarity with methods used by organizations and individuals to manage risk-- i.e., measures taken to reduce the risk of damage to physical assets, exposure to legal liability, or injury to employees or customers. Issues related to management of employee benefits also are studied. Within the framework of the specialization the student is provided an opportunity to choose from additional courses suited to an area of specialization. For example, a student who wishes to pursue a career in financial planning may use two investment courses as part of the major.

Special Area

The Special Area is designed for the student with a cumulative point hour ratio of 2.5 or higher who has a well defined interest which is not represented by the 12 other specializations provided by the BSBA program. Examples might be administrative positions in the performing arts, public relations, professional athletics, or other highly functionalized organizational forms. Since such programs usually result from unique student interests and past experiences, and since there are no existing programs to accommodate such interests, the student is free to select upper-division courses from any department in the University so long as there is cohesive purpose in the group of courses selected and approved. No basic degree requirements are waived for those pursuing special areas. Areas which are represented by graduate degree programs are not subject to becoming special undergraduate majors nor are existing minor programs in other colleges which the BSBA student could take along with another business specialization. More...

View Curriculum Checksheet.

Logistics Management

Logistics is concerned with the design and management of systems for the movement of products from points of production to points of consumption. Such systems typically encompass activities such as transportation, warehousing, materials handling, inventory planning, and control customer service, facility location, scheduling and purchasing.

The logistics management curriculum is designed to emphasize the theoretical as well as the applied aspects of the field. Attention is focused both on the concerns of individual companies engaged in distributing products or facilitating the distribution of products and on the role of government in providing the legal, economic, social, and investment environments within which individual firms must operate.

Students selecting logistics management as an area of specialization will obtain a broad foundation for careers in (1) management of transportation and warehousing companies; (2) the distribution, logistics, materials or traffic management departments of manufacturing, retailing, and wholesaling firms; or (3) research and administrative agencies of government concerned with transportation and logistics matters.
 
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