Synopsis

Yale University founded the school of management in 1974 which was known for its unique

education and preparing students for government, non-profit and profit leadership careers. In

1990 competing business school made Yale’s approach less unique. Faculty, students and staff

had all expressed the degree of dissatisfaction with the curriculum. An attempt at curriculum

reform was made after Joel Podolny was named as its new dean in the spring of 2005. He and

several senior faculty members spent four to five months getting the faculty used to the idea of

undertaking curriculum reforms.

In November 2005 Podolny set up steering committee and six sub committee to cordinate the

design of the new cirrculum. The steering committee consisted of 8 faculty and 2 students and

each of the sub committee was consisted of 6 faculty and 2 students. More than two-third of the

senior faculty was involved in at least one of the committee. The new core courses was devolped

around the various internal and external stakeholders and how these stakeholders must draw

upon all the discipline simutaneosly. The courses, which together became known as

organizational perspective ultimately formed the heart of Yale’s new core curriculum. The

school small size facilitated its ability to design and deliver an integrated curriculum. To make

the new curriculum deliverable SOM decided to have senior professors to teach all the sections

of each course and because of this they had to reduce their MBA class size to 180 from 240

making three sections of 60 students each.

The new first year core curriculum consisted of three main segments: Orientation to

Management which consisted of seven courses designed to focus students on their long term

career aspirations and develop their interpersonal skills, than the second segment was
Organizational Perspective which consisted of eight courses which included elements from

several traditional functions such as finance, marketing and organizational behaviour, the third

segment was Integrated Leadership perspective which consisted of a single course designed to tie

together the material students had learned in the first two segments of the first year. The course

featured inter-disciplinary cases that required students to think through multi-perspectives. SOM

also offered half-semester platform electives to first year students which included finance,

marketing , accounting, operation, strategy and organizational behavior.

When it launched its new curriculum it required international components for all students. SOM

also introduced leadership development program. To provide an opportunity for students to think

and learn about leadership. SOM tested both the old and new students to test their basic

knowledge of core concepts and there was no statistical difference between the two results. As

the new integrated courses required new cases they made a five persons case writer consisted of

highly experienced writer, as they had a more practical approach.

As the new curriculum was integrated, the workload on the senior faculty increased as the

majority of the work fell on a core group of eight professors. The faculty also found themselves

working differently as there was a lot of co-teaching was involved but the junior faculty

members who were not involved in the new curriculum. The total cost for the new curriculum

implementation was somewhere between $2 million and $5 million.

SOM students showed strong support, excitement and enthusiasm for the new curriculum.

Students liked the integrated design of new curriculum.