Starting in Fall 2019, stronger emphasis on business analytics, business communication, and leadership and management across the core curriculum will increase students’ readiness for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

The Analytics and Decision Making Sequence

  • In the first year, students in the BS in Business and Economics program will be immersed in a new business analytics course – BIS 044: Business Analytics I – alongside courses in calculus and statistics to build their analytical capacity.  In BIS 044, students will engage in hands-on programming, and they learn basic concepts of data, including the collection, organization, exploration, and understanding of complex data, with a focus on data as an organizational asset and how data is structured to optimize business decisions and processes. 
  • In the sophomore year, students will engage in BIS 111: Introduction to Information Systems to go deeper into technical and managerial aspects of information systems that enable firms to compete effectively.  The course integrates technical infrastructure, database concepts, management decision-making, and business process issues essential to operational and strategic information systems, in applications supporting functions across the firm.
  • In their junior year, students will take BIS 244: Business Analytics II – a more in-depth, new business analytics course that engages them in hands-on data analysis, techniques, and algorithms for creating effective visualizations to support business decision making.   

The Business Communication Sequence

  • First-year business students will immerse in a new course called BUS 003: Business Communication I to begin their trajectory to deliver professional, clear, concise, evidence-driven, persuasive communications including memos, reports, and presentations. 
  • In their junior year, business students will build on the frameworks and skills from BUS 003 in BUS 203: Business Communication II to enhance their communications related to data, particularly oral communication.  Students will learn to translate data and analysis into narratives that provide context for their messages and make persuasive recommendations in written and oral formats, just as they begin more in-depth course work in their areas of specialization.

The Leadership and Management Sequence

Group projects and co-curricular opportunities for leadership abound at Lehigh, and this new course sequence prepares BS in Business and Economics degree students to lead from within for impact. 

  • In the first year, a new course entitled MGT 043: Organizational Behavior will orient business students to the principles of effective, ethical management at the individual, interpersonal, and group levels of analysis before they begin their intermediate-level, introductory business core. 
  • In the junior year, students take a deeper dive in MGT 243: Leadership in Organizations, where they do in-depth examination of leadership and increase their own capacity for leadership by growing their self-awareness, social awareness, and organizational awareness.