This moment belongs to Lehigh — and to everyone in the Lehigh community. More than ever before, the world needs us: our distinctive interdisciplinary education; our intellectual rigor and practical application of knowledge; and the exceptional students our singular faculty and programs prepare for the challenges of the world.
Supporting the university’s new strategic plan and top priorities, GO Beyond: The Campaign for Future Makers builds on the momentum and progress we’ve made together and sets our sights even higher.
The future is ours for the making. Let’s GO Beyond.
To provide your immediate support to GO Beyond: The Campaign for Future Makers, please click the Make a Gift button. For more information about the College of Business initiatives, email Jim Mann at jam508@lehigh.edu or call (610) 758-5689.
Together, we can elevate the Lehigh student and faculty experience, so it will fuel access and opportunity, impact and experience, and research and distinction.
Lehigh’s College of Business alumni, recruiters, students, and parents all testify to the rigor and value of a Lehigh education. The professional contributions of our graduates continually impact society and shape the future of business leadership and development.
As successful as our history has been, it is time to move the college forward to become a top-tier, full-service business school recognized on an international level. We will build upon our solid foundation of business education that centers around our students, faculty, and programs.
To be able to recruit and retain the best faculty and students, we need investment and strategic growth in various areas.
For nearly 30 years, the Rauch Business Center has served Lehigh well as the hub of business education. However, because of growth in both our programs and the student and faculty populations, coupled with newer teaching methods and instructional technology, an expansion and upgrades to the current building are necessary. Further, adapting emerging technologies and data opportunities to the existing facility is a challenge. The College of Business is at a competitive disadvantage in terms of how we deliver business education and how we attract top students and faculty.
Our vision is to solve our infrastructure challenges — and achieve our highest potential — with a well-planned program of renovations and strategic expansion to the Rauch Business Center. The project will benefit the College of Business and Lehigh students and faculty, while advancing our reputation across the country. It will enable faculty, through new classroom configurations and technology, to develop data-rich and immersive experiences that engage students with real-time business issues.
The expansion and renovation will provide a state-of-the art learning environment for business education — undergraduate, graduate, and executive — one that is highly flexible, interactive, and collaborative. The project will enable the College of Business to meet the professional expectations of its growing faculty and compete for the best faculty on the market while providing a world-class home for the Executive Education Program, new 1-MBA Program, and other graduate programs that attract industry leaders to Lehigh.
For today’s junior faculty to become tomorrow’s nationally prominent superstars, the College of Business must demonstrate a significant and sustained commitment to funding their research and scholarship. Endowed and current-use research funds across disciplines will ensure that Lehigh’s junior faculty have the resources they need to become tomorrow’s thought-leaders. Attracting and keeping the best minds — and offering the best to our students — requires a commitment to supporting young, research-productive faculty. The Young Faculty Development and Opportunity Fund provides a crucial support for research and advance a research culture in the College of Business through its impact on recruitment and retention.
An endowed chair provides a virtue of permanence that allows its holder to push the boundaries of their fields — to explore, to plan, and to take risks. The College of Business has recognized leadership in a number of areas and aspires to international prominence in several more. Recognizing faculty leaders with endowed chairs is both a recognition of, and commitment to, an individual’s contributions to the university, their field of study, and our students. We are seeking endowed chairs in several key areas, specifically operations and information systems, entrepreneurship, finance, family business, and supply chain.
The College of Business takes student success very seriously. This success is not confined to teaching; there are endless opportunities for learning and discovery inside and outside the classroom. In order to give our students the best educational experience, we must invest in both our Undergraduate and Graduate Programs Offices to increase and support their student-facing programs, including advising, professional development, career networking, recruitment efforts, and co-curricular activities, such as visiting speakers, clubs, class travel, etc.
Dean Georgette Phillips and college leadership are often presented with opportunities and challenges that require readily available, flexible funding resources. Support to the Dean’s Strategic Initiatives Fund provides those resources, enabling the dean to undertake new initiatives and meet unmet opportunities. These funds are applied in every area of the college, enabling activities and investments that would otherwise go unrealized.
Several examples include: