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Springfield, MO

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A Conversation With … Elizabeth Rozell

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What’s your role with MSU’s College of Business?
I’m over academics. So I interact frequently with all the department heads, and I’m also responsible for the MBA program. There are two advisers there, and we are currently searching for a graduate coordinator position. I’m trying to do both those things, and we have a lot going on right now with the renovation. We’re also trying to update our curriculum and keep it very current. We just finished our new five-year strategic plan for the college.

How many students currently are in the MBA program?
We have about 465 in the traditional program. We are up by about 5 percent. A lot of MBA programs have struggled in their enrollment. Ours has been fairly flat or increasing a bit.

How does COB recruit students, MBA and undergrad?
We have a full-time recruiter in the COB, and each area does its own recruiting as well. Our full-time person goes to career fairs, visits with local high school students. Our target market is really Springfield, St. Louis and Kansas City. We have a presence in each of those markets. Our overall enrollment is 5,300 students right now. We are up about 900 students over the last four years. We’ve had phenomenal growth. It’s just been explosive.

Why so much interest?
I think enrollment is cyclical. I think our recruiting efforts have paid off. We are the only college on campus that has a enrollment and recruitment manager on staff. That’s a full-time position, so she is out on the road and talking with students who are interested. COB is the biggest college on campus. I think we are 25 percent of the student body, roughly.

Does the increased enrollment have to do with an increased economic confidence?
Well, sure, I think that had something to do with it. It ebbs and flows, but in the recruiting process, she talks to hundreds of students. She talks about our renovation, and one of our big initiatives in our strategic plan is we are going to provide experiential learning opportunities. We will have a finance trading lab, an entrepreneurship lab and a cybersecurity lab. That really intrigues. That practical application-oriented structure is very interesting to students.

What’s the fastest growing major?
Our finance major has been one of our fastest growing majors in the college. There are lots of certifications that people in that industry can earn.
Now, we will have a Bloomberg trading lab. We are supported by Bloomberg, which is kind of the gold star of the industry

Will students trade fake stock in the new lab?
We are hoping to have a student investment fund. We will have hopefully a gift from a donor, so it’s real, it’s real money that students can buy and sell stocks with. There is going to be a ticker tape around the top of that lab, much like you see with the New York Stock Exchange. There will be 32 computers in the lab, where they will have access to buy and sell. There are other schools that have these labs, but they are real expensive to operate.

What other major trends are you seeing?
We have a challenge of producing enough computer information students. There is a great demand there. We can’t seem to produce enough to satisfy the need. We just hired a new department head, Josh Davis. He has a lot of technical expertise and industry experience. He will be over the new cybersecurity lab and that’s also a big draw to get some of those students. We have 27 people in our master’s of cybersecurity, which started two years ago. That’s a pretty big program for being so specific. We didn’t forecast we would have that many this quickly.

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