Ever wish you could have taken business courses as an undergrad?

The Rady School of Management is now offering two business courses for juniors and seniors in the spring quarter —designed to cover a broad range of topics for students of all majors. Classes emphasize teamwork and will cover quantitative skills and resource management as well as “soft skills” such as how to motivate and be a strong project manager. Clark Jordan, the assistant dean of undergraduate education at the Rady School of Management, says it’s important that students of every major can have some experience working within a budget and also learn other basic business-related skills before entering the workforce.

Jason Shinar, Revelle ’07, a management science major who took a business project management course in the spring, says: “It’s a good opportunity for students interested in business, especially those who want to get more hands-on perspective as opposed to the applied economic theory they’re used to.”

There are currently eight to nine courses in development and the senior vice chancellor’s office has asked Jordan to develop a minor in business. Jordan also plans to offer business courses to UCSD graduate students in other disciplines, in order to provide industry-specific skills that may not be offered in their regular academic programs. Guest speakers will include businessmen from SAIC, a project-oriented business, and the film industry, as well as entrepreneurs, lawyers and marketing, intellectual property and finance experts.

Cliff Notes written by Neda Oreizy, ’08