Business professors design engineering course

By Frances Altman
VCU School of Business

"The Economics of Product Development and Markets" is a hybrid business class designed by professors in the VCU School of Business especially to meet the needs of Engineering School students. It was felt that engineering students needed a required business course to prepare them for working in a market driven environment.

"One of the fundamental requirements of the business community in supporting the building of the new School of Engineering was a close link between Engineering and our Business School," said Dr. Robert J Mattauch, Commonwealth professor and dean of VCU School of Engineering. "To this end, interaction was begun in 1996 with the first class of engineering students. A couple of years later in 1998, interactive software on management simulation was introduced into the joint engineering/business course. That course has evolved to the present with classes filled to capacity. "We are most excited and enthusiastic about this interaction and look forward to its growth to even greater depth, " said Mattauch.

From its inception, the class was developed and taught by Dr. Leslie Stratton, professor of economics in the School of Business. Her assignment was to develop a class that would include all the business elements the Engineering professors thought would be needed to produce a product and bring it to market. However, as the 2003 spring semester neared, Stratton received word that she had qualified for a teaching-lecture position in Europe. Not wanting to disturb the momentum created by this class, Stratton turned the project over to a colleague, Dr. Shannon Mitchell, professor of economics, who is now teaching two sections of the class. Each class also has been broken up into six teams, and each team will act as one firm, competing against the other firm-teams in the marketplace.

Both classes use Capstone, an interactive software by Management Simulations Inc., which has gained popularity as a software for games as well as the simulation of business models. "Capstone provides such information as the cost of hiring workers, automation levels in factories and other production and planning strategies. Students make choices for each of these items plus the introduction of new products," said Mitchell.

"The School of Engineering wanted to make this course challenging and interdisciplinary," confirms Dr. Ed Millner, chair of the Department of Economics. "Generally this type of program is reserved for MBA students, " said Millner, referring in particular to the use of simulation software. A recent publisher's study shows that students retain up to 80 percent of what they interact with.

Creates Electronic Textbook
Finding a textbook that would cover all of the topics the professors wanted to include in the course has been a perennial challenge. There has not been one available. Instead, Mitchell found herself working with Mignon Tucker of Thompson South-Western Publishers to create an electronic text by selecting chapters from several of their different textbooks that are available to the students through the publishers' website. The students "buy access" at the bookstore, and then read it on line or print it out as they prefer. In addition students bought the "Schaum's Outline of Engineering Economics."

Before the semester ends, two weeks on "marketing a product" also will be taught by Dr. Frank Franzak, chair of the Department of Marketing and Business Law, who has been teaching this segment from the beginning.

"One thing I try to do is show the engineering students websites of companies that marketing students have been doing projects with, emphasizing the technical aspects of the products. It is surprising how many of these companies have innovative products, but they have not considered what benefit to offer the customer. They are in trouble. You can't survive if you do not understand your market.

"The link between engineering and marketing is new product development," Franzak emphasizes. "Product development teams need a mechanical engineer to consider production, an engineer or scientist from Research & Development to provide technical know-how, and a marketer to make sure the product satisfies a real need in the marketplace. All three contribute to doing this better than competition. This is called superior customer value, and it should be the objective of all firms."

"We are looking forward to further integrating our programs with the Engineering School," said Dr. Michael Sesnowitz, dean of the School of Business. "We want business students to understand what engineers do, and we want engineers to understand business. Co-locating the two schools on the new Monroe Campus will make this easier to accomplish."

First VCU Challenge Meet
On May 10 the six teams will meet to see how much they have learned about operating a hypothetical company. Each team presentation will be judged by a panel of professors from the Business and Engineering Schools. Each team will draw upon their experiences, and try to persuade the panel to invest in their firm.

MBA programs generally conduct this type of challenge competition. However, it is not the first time that the School of Business has been associated with a challenge of this nature. In 1978 four VCU business students won the Intercollegiate Business Game, a national competition sponsored by Emory University, Atlanta. The students operated a hypothetical smoke detector manufacturing company, which they presented to a panel of judges in Atlanta, convincing them to purchase the business. The Emory challenge was discontinued in the mid-eighties because preparation for it was too time-consuming for students.