Engaging Courses
Students across our professional majors take highly engaging coursework with real-life application at the Eller College of Management. View some examples highly engaging courses offered at the Eller College of Management:
Some examples of highly engaging courses in Accounting include:
ACC 420 Principles of Federal Taxation Students engage in four individual tax return projects that involve using real world software to prepare tax returns based on given information about taxpayers. Students enjoy the real world aspects of the projects, and after graduation often comment how much it prepared them for preparing tax returns in practice. |
Highly engaging courses in Business Administration include:
ACCT 400E, Intermediate Accounting for Business Administration Majors
Course Description: This course has two goals. First, students will gain more experience taking business transactions and aggregating them into financial statements. Second, students will learn what types of information about a firm's performance and its strategy can be inferred from reviewing its financial statements. Course Experiences: In this course, you will learn GAAP and how these policies impact financial statements. You will construct and evaluate income statements, balance sheets and statement of cash flows. You will learn to compute and interpret profitability, turnover, liquidity and solvency. Finally, you will work within a group to analyze the annual report and financial results of a publicly traded company. |
BCOM 314R, Business Communication
Course Description: Course intended to introduce students to the strategic nature of business communication. By the end of the course, students should be able to analyze business situations and prepare messages that fulfill all of the intended purposes of their communication, meet the needs and expectations of business audiences and take into account other relevant contextual factors. Students must have adequate oral and communication skills to be able to effectively focus on developing the higher-order thinking skills that are necessary to succeed in the course. In order to help students devise successful communication strategies, the course will also therefore emphasize the development of these higher-order skills, which include analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Course Experience: In this course, you will learn effective communication practices necessary in a professional business setting. For online students you will be engaging in weekly video conference meetings with teammates and the instructor though Cisco WebEx and Google Hangout. |
ENTR 420R, Innovation Principles and Environments
Course Description: Overview of entrepreneurial approach, strategies and skills within a range of environments to advance technology and innovations. Students can pair ENTR 420R/520R with lab course to develop innovation-specific feasibility study or business plan. Course Experiences: This course is designed to help you understand the innovation, ideation, entrepreneurship and successful business models. Through collaboration within a group, you will learn to integrate and apply models of innovation, strategy, problem solving and critical thinking. You will learn to assess feasibility, unique value propositions, business models, pro forma development and go-to-market solutions. Throughout the course you will work within a group to create a comprehensive business plan and investor pitch video. |
MIS 478, Project Management Course Experiences: You will learn the life cycle of project management from initiating to closing. You will learn to identify the critical path of a project, compress a schedule under budget constraints, use Earned-Value Management techniques and conduct risk analysis for project management. You will be exposed to multiple scenarios that require you to make decisions based on scope, resources and schedules. |
Some examples of highly engaging courses in Business Economics include:
ECON 453 DATA ANALYTICS AND MODELING: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS FOR ECONOMIC STRATEGY Students learn forecasting techniques, assembly, interpretation and use of economic data; analysis of business conditions; examination of related environmental factors; construction of actual sales or revenue forecasts. This is an applied econometrics course where students learn how to work both individually and in teams with large datasets for business and government entities. Corporations describe this as data mining. The following skills will be developed or practiced in the course - Statistical Programming using SAS Software, Research methods, Communication of Statistical Analysis and Project Management. |
ECON 454 ADVANCED DATA ANALYTICS AND MODELING: ADVANCED QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS FOR ECONOMIC STRATEGY Students work both individually and in teams to develop advanced data handling, graphic visualization and econometric methods that are used in the analysis of large/big economic and business datasets. Statistical software such as SAS will be used for statistical programming and data visualization. In addition, SQL programming may be used for data management (the accessing, cleaning, merging and preparation of large datasets for analysis). |
Some examples of highly engaging courses in Business Management include:
MGMT 475 Special Topics in Management (Non-Profit Consulting) This course will provide students with real-world knowledge and experience in management consulting for nonprofit organizations. Specifically, students work in teams and use their business expertise to consult on projects with nonprofit organizations in the community. This action-based course provides students with the opportunity to work with organizations making a positive impact on the Tucson community. Students will learn through hands-on experiences with actual clients to develop resume building experiences and skills valued in the work place. Focused application of consulting, business-related research and client management will be the emphasis of this course. |
MGMT 486 Managerial Decision Making In addition to teaching basic theories, principles and research findings in judgment and decision making, the class is heavy on applications and is meant to give the students tools to use in both their professional and personal decisions. Decision making is treated as a skill as a skill, something the students can learn and get better at. Since decisions are everywhere, these are useful skills to acquire. |
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Some examples of highly engaging courses in Finance include:
FIN423A/B Applied Portfolio Management Students apply financial and investment management theories and skills with hands-on management of a ($1.4M) investment fund provided by the UA Foundation. Students learn the investment process, execute transactions and manage real equity and fixed income portfolios in dynamic investment markets. |
FIN431 Financial Intermediaries and Bank Executive Loan Panel Commercial and Industrial (C&I Loan Consultant Project) – 30% of course. Students work in teams developing credit analyses and commercial loan presentation (including credit analyses, recommendations, loan structure and covenants) to a Bank Executive Loan Panel (BEL panel). |
FIN460 Real Estate Finance and Meritage Residential Real Estate Competition Students work in teams to evaluate a residential real estate investment in Arizona, perform a full financial analysis of the property (e.g., forecast revenues, costs, cap rates, assumptions, etc.) and make a recommendation regarding the investment. Additionally, student teams research and report on a current real estate issue. Results are presented to a panel of industry professionals. |
FIN498H Applied Portfolio Management Honors and CFA Institute Research Challenge While applying financial and investment management theories and skills with hands-on management of a ($1.4M) investment fund provided by the UA Foundation, honors students also work as equity research analysts on a team mentored by a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) member. Analysis of a publicly traded company, including meetings with the company’s management team, results in a stock buy-sell-hold recommendation and presentation and defense of the analysis to a panel of industry experts. |
FIN498H Applied Portfolio Management Honors and CQA Investment Challenge Students apply financial and investment management theories and skills with hands-on management of a ($1.4M) investment fund provided by the UA Foundation. Honors student teams apply stock selection techniques and portfolio management skills by simulating a long-short equity hedge fund under the mentorship of a Chicago Quantitative Alliance (CQA) member. Students gain real-world experience as hedge fund analysts and portfolio managers. |
Some examples of highly engaging courses in Marketing include:
MKTG 452 Integrated Marketing Communications This class explores the variety of components that represent the promotional aspect of the Promotional Mix which includes advertising, sales promotion, public relations and personal selling. The semester includes a real-life project to which the students can apply what have been learned in the classroom to an actual marketing problem or opportunity. Early in the semester, students are broken into groups or "agencies." At about the same time, a Tucson or Phoenix based company who has agreed to be the sponsor for the project, comes to class and presents its particular problem or opportunity. Student groups--all of which have the same challenge assignment, have the remainder of the semester to develop and then ultimately present their group's plan in a semester-ending presentation to the organization. To help the student groups marry the course material to the project, after each major section of course content, in-class time is devoted to the groups to determine what might be appropriate to include in their proposals. In the end, the course combines both experiential learning with traditional course work in an experience that also provides an entry onto the student's resume. |
Highly engaging courses in Management Information Systems include:
MIS 441, Systems Analysis and Design
Students work in teams to create a technology solution for a real client based on the client’s technology needs. The client can be a for-profit business, volunteer organization, non-profit or community group. Students write up a request for proposal (RFP) based on what the client proposes and it is signed by students and client contact. Students have to talk to multiple stakeholders to develop a customer profile and value proposition to address the job's pains and gains from interviewing the various people who work with or for the client. They diagram the workflow and develop a use case diagram and description, as well as other optional UML diagrams. All student groups create a low-fidelity prototype so that clients can see what the students are recommending and offer feedback. Results are presented to the client, and the final paper is written and delivered to the client. Students also have many opportunities to view other student groups’ works to learn from them, as well as to offer feedback. |
MIS 478, Project Management
Project Management is the application of knowledge, analytical skills, scheduling software tools and techniques related to various project activities in order to meet project requirements. This course specifically addresses the nine project management "knowledge areas", the five project management "process groups" and the 4-way constraints of project management (i.e., scope, time, cost, quality). Graduate-level requirements include an additional term paper or team-based PM Project with a real organization. You will learn the life cycle of project management from initiating to closing. You will learn to identify the critical path of a project, compress a schedule under budget constraints, use Earned-Value Management techniques, and conduct risk analysis for project management. You will be exposed to multiple scenarios that require you to make decisions based on scope, resources and schedules. |
University of Arizona Students Accelerate Technology Adoption in the Classroom
Eller pre-business first year honors students were challenged to think as business entrepreneurs and propose how cutting-edge apps and other web-based resources can be used in a variety of classes in colleges across campus. MIS 111 Honors Students assisted a number of faculty members in evaluating the use of twenty-six new technologies in a variety of classes across the University of Arizona campus. As a result MIS 111 Honors is teaching students engaging habits to innovate and create new technologies in education in preparation for future transcriptable engagement coursework.
Highly engaging courses in Operations Management include:
MIS 478, Project Management
Project Management is the application of knowledge, analytical skills, scheduling software tools and techniques related to various project activities in order to meet project requirements. This course specifically addresses the nine project management "knowledge areas", the five project management "process groups" and the 4-way constraints of project management (i.e., scope, time, cost, quality). Graduate-level requirements include an additional term paper or team-based PM Project with a real organization. You will learn the life cycle of project management from initiating to closing. You will learn to identify the critical path of a project, compress a schedule under budget constraints, use Earned-Value Management techniques and conduct risk analysis for project management. You will be exposed to multiple scenarios that require you to make decisions based on scope, resources and schedules. |