COM3504 Communicating in Global Virtual Teams
(Formerly MOB3504)
4 Advanced Management CreditsIf you took and passed MOB3504, you cannot register for COM3504, as these two courses are equivalent

In this course, students will learn how to successfully engage, collaborate and communicate in global virtual teams. Students will begin by reading and discussing assigned course reading on global communication, virtual collaboration, organizational communication, and writing in groups in preparation for a major cross-institutional global project.

In collaboration with Marshall School of Business at USC, students will participate in the 6-week global Virtual Business Professional (VBP), project, which puts students in diverse international teams using Slack's communication platform to complete a written social media assessment project for Google, Amazon, or Starbucks. At the conclusion of the project, faculty teaching in the program will choose the best report for each company. Google, Amazon, and Starbucks are partnering with the project and a representative from each company will pick one of the three winners.

Students will be expected to hold virtual meetings, use project management tools, create online presentations, and write a final report using state-of-the-art technology used in today's corporate environment. The VBP project runs from approximately week 4 to week 9 of the academic semester. During this time, class work will include discussing experiences working in the project, identifying and considering shared challenges, and engaging with scholarly and popular reading that can help students in the project.

Prerequisites: None

OIM3600 Computer Science for Business Students

4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

This course, Introduction to Computer Science for Business Students, is designed for business students who are interested in learning about the fundamental concepts of computer science. The course covers a wide range of topics including hardware, the internet, programming in Scratch and Python, basic algorithms, web development using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, SQL, and Flask. In addition, the course also covers important concepts in cybersecurity. Throughout the course, students will work on multiple projects including a final capstone project that integrates and applies the knowledge and skills learned in the previous sessions. Group work and projects are significant elements of the course, as students will have the opportunity to collaborate and learn from each other in a team setting. By the end of the course, students should have a strong foundation in computer science and be able to apply these concepts in a business context.

Prerequisites: None

MKT3510 Consumer Insights and Research
(Formerly Marketing Research)
4 General CreditsThis course provides students with hands-on experience with marketing research and analysis. Marketing research is simply an organized way of developing and providing information for decision-making purposes. The quality of information depends on the care exercised at each step of the marketing research process. These steps include problem definition, research design, data collection methods, questionnaire design, measurement, sampling, data analysis, data interpretation. The class will discuss key elements and issues in marketing research including sources of data, data collection techniques and analytical approaches for providing information to be used in managers' decision. The first part of the class will focus on research process and design. In this section students will learn how to formulate a research problem, determine a research design, evaluate methods for data collection and develop instruments for data collection. The second part of the class will focus on how to analyze the data and recommend the appropriate action to management.

Prerequisites: SME2011 or MKT2000

MKT3550 Consumer Psychology and Shopper Marketing
(Formerly Consumer Behavior)
4 General CreditsThis interdisciplinary course discusses how the consumer is the focus of the marketing system. Drawing on research from sociology, psychology, strategy and economics, this course focuses on the factors that shape consumer needs and influence buying behavior. The content of the course explores individual behavioral variables (needs, motives, perceptions, attitudes, personality, and learning) and group influences (social groups and culture) as they affect the consumer decision-making process. The objective of the course is to help students understand how to analyze marketing programs, especially the communications mix and market segmentation, to improve consumer satisfaction.

Prerequisites: SME2011 or MKT2000

***This course will take place for 4 1/2 days over Spring Break. Exact days and times TBA***

OIM3615 Creating Tech-Savvy Entrepreneurs: A Tech Entrepreneurship Boot Camp
(Formerly MIS3615)
2 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

**Students who took this as MIS3615 cannot take this course**

The objective of this boot camp is to create an environment for entrepreneurs learn about the role of technology in entrepreneurial endeavors. The role of technology, specifically, information technology, in the context of entrepreneurship is two-fold. On one side, technology is necessary for the management and execution of the venture. On the other hand, technology may be the very focus of the entrepreneurial venture. For both cases, we believe that entrepreneurs need exposure to the foundational concepts of building a technology product. The boot camp is hence designed to cover such foundation concepts including design thinking, agile management, and code development. The boot camp will help entrepreneurs develop an appreciation for these foundational concepts as well as understand how to leverage these concepts for entrepreneurial success.

Prerequisites: None

MKT3574 Customer Acquisition and Persuasion
(Formerly Managing the Sales Process)
4 Advanced Management CreditsCustomer acquisition and retention is the driver of revenue and hence the lifeblood of every company. Therefore, organizations continuously seek people with strong persuasion skills. College graduates often become sales professionals, business development executives, customer relationship managers, or end up in positions that complement these roles. In addition, many entrepreneurs realize, often too late, the critical role of professional selling for the growth and survival of their nascent ventures. This course will equip students with the knowledge and skills to excel in professional selling, business development, and entrepreneurship.

Prerequisites: none

OIM3620 Cybersecurity
(Formerly MIS3620 Computer and Network Security)
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

**Students who took this as MIS3620 cannot register for this course**

Teaches students the relevance of, purpose to and means behind establishing higher security levels for computers and associated networks. The nature of various security breaches including hacker attacks, email worms and computer viruses are explored. Management's responses including policy and procedure creation, risk management assessment and personnel training program design among others are examined. The tools of both security violators and protectors are explored. This course probes deeply into technical aspects of the hardware and software required to support computer networks. The course uses a combination of readings, case studies, class discussion and guest speakers for learning.

Prerequisites: (SME2012 or OIM2000) and (QTM1000 or AQM1000)

OIM3517 Design Thinking and Problem Solving for Business Impact

(Formerly MOB3517)

4 Advanced Management Credits

This course enables you to work directly with the senior management at Blount Fine Foods.

Blount Fine Foods is a family-owned and operated manufacturer, marketer, and developer of fresh prepared foods. While best known for soup, the company produces hundreds of premium prepared food products for restaurants, retailers, and club stores nationwide.

Students will have the opportunity to work on new product development across the company. Examples of current product lines include the preparation and delivery of prepackaged food items such as: soups, meal bowls, side dishes, and mac & cheese. The course content will include expanding student knowledge on product lines, capabilities, pricing, consumer preferences as well as their go to market strategy. It is ideal for any students wanting to develop their consulting skills in product development, technology, operations, and management.

Skills learned include tactical approaches (such as project management) and business problem solving models as well as strategic tools and processes (design thinking and competitive assessments). This innovative, action-learning course gives you the opportunity to work with senior leaders at a very successful company using the newest Design Thinking and Problem-Solving methods. There will be a pitch competition at the end of the course.

Prerequisites: FME1000 and FME1001 or EPS1000 and MOB1010

MKT3502 Developing Effective Advertising

4 Advanced Management Credits

Developing Effective Advertising is an immersion in "creative thinking" in a "virtual" internship experience in a "virtual" best-of-breed advertising agency where students learn about developing effective advertising alongside some of the most talented and experienced advertising professionals in the industry. The "virtual" ad agency internship experience provides students with "real-world" learning in all aspects of current advertising and firsthand exposure to exciting career paths they may not otherwise encounter in a conventional advertising course.

Students learn about effective advertising by application of concepts, principles and fundamentals vis-à-vis lectures, readings, discussions, interactive exercises, case analysis, team projects and featured guest speakers from blue chip advertising agencies and media companies in the U.S., including Google, Cayenne Creative, MullenLowe U.S., NAIL Communications, Mediahub Worldwide, PHD Media, Wheelhouse Executive Recruiters and Babson College.

Students work together in 3 different assigned teams over the course of the semester and are assigned 3 team projects. Students also have individual assignments (readings, discussion board contributions and one mid-term paper) to complete. Methods of assessment is evenly balanced between individual and team assignments.

Prerequisites: MKT 2000

MKT4530 Digital Analytics
4 Advanced Management Credits

The consumer buying journey continues to evolve, particularly as consumers become more comfortable and experience the benefits of using digital and mobile platforms to support all facets of the buying process. This rapidly expanding digital ecosystem generates an enormous amount of data. This course will explore how organizations can utilize the latest digital analytics techniques to turn structured and unstructured big data, into extremely valuable customer and marketing insights. This course is designed to complement Babson's Marketing Analytics course and covers entirely different topics and materials specifically focused within the digital sphere.

Students will utilize industry-leading digital analytics tools to collect and analyze consumer data to support decision-making and the development of marketing strategies that are informed by the insights. This includes the use of social media analytics platforms to listen to the voice of the customer, monitor consumer sentiment, and perform a comprehensive share of voice competitor analysis. Students will also use a web analytics platform to learn how to track, segment and measure the online and mobile device usage behaviors of customers and visitors. Students will also learn how to construct digital marketing experiments, perform A/B testing, and measure the ROI of digital campaigns. The course design includes official certifications in each of the digital analytics platforms used in the course.

Prerequisites: SME2011 or MKT2000