Innovative and Comprehensive Curriculum

The essence of the management specialization is understanding organizational dynamics, strategic planning and change management, talent management, and effective leadership and teamwork. The curriculum includes organization-wide topics such as strategic management, organizational behavior, organizational design, and entrepreneurship; policy courses such as human resource management; and skill-building courses such as negotiation, leadership, cross-cultural management, operations management, and decision-making. The management curriculum includes a strong international and cross-cultural component embedded in a variety of courses, providing students with a competitive advantage in a global business context.

Our students develop core skill sets essential to success as managers of people and organizations. This toolkit includes intellectual skills, such as understanding a given situation and using critical thinking and analysis to resolve it. Other skills are technical, from database management to spreadsheet analysis. Yet others — like knowing how to motivate, recruit, and retain employees — are relational and people-oriented.

Management faculty focus on the relevance of the curriculum in the current business environment and incorporate real-world experiences and challenges. Our curriculum is oriented toward the future, incorporating courses on current and emerging topics in management, including change management, technology and innovation management, entrepreneurship, supply chain analytics, and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workforce. Employers highly value exposure to these areas and are eager to hire forward-thinking management hopefuls with the intellectual skills to adapt to change and challenges.

Our curriculum’s innovative character reflects our faculty’s strong academic research profile and outstanding teaching expertise. Their work is published in peer-reviewed journals and books and is presented at national and international conferences. Our faculty members also hold many professional certifications that recognize their management and leadership expertise.

Coursework and Tracks

The management specialization within the BSBA program provides both breadth across core business disciplines and depth within the specialized management area. All students in the BSBA program, regardless of specialization, acquire a common body of knowledge through required courses in economics, accounting, finance, marketing, and other business topics. Coursework in the management specialization builds on this business core, preparing students to manage and lead people and organizations.

Students master the skills and knowledge needed to motivate employees and develop their individual potential. They learn to devise the right organizational contexts — structure, culture, and process — to ensure that people and organizations excel. They develop strategies that enable the organization to compete in the global economy while balancing the interests of multiple diverse stakeholders in a complex legal, political, and ethical environment.

Students in the management specialization can pursue a broad course of study, rounding out the management curriculum with free electives that reflect their academic and professional interests. Students may choose the General Management track for a rounded view of management or pursue specialized tracks: Human Resources Management or Supply Chain Management.

• General Management Track
  Students will obtain a solid foundation in the management and leadership knowledge and skills needed to become high-performing managers, change agents, consultants, or entrepreneurs at a for-profit or nonprofit organization.
• Human Resources Management Track
  Students will obtain a strong foundation for effectively managing and developing an organization’s greatest asset — its people. They will prepare for a career as a human resources manager, compensation specialist, training and development professional, or recruiter, among other options. They will also have the proper foundation to pursue further HR management studies and specialty areas at the graduate level.
• Supply Chain Management Track
  Students will obtain a solid foundation for the design and planning of supply chain activities, as well as for the execution, control, and monitoring needed to build a company’s competitive infrastructure and create value. Students will prepare for a range of highly sought-after careers, such as supply chain analyst, procurement manager, inventory manager, demand planner, and logistics coordinator. They will be ready to manage the supply chain functions necessary to achieve competitive advantage in large, modern domestic and international firms.

Emphasis on Experiential Learning

The management curriculum is hands-on and practice-based, with courses that include team-based projects and simulations that mirror actual management and organizational scenarios. Students can conduct real-world projects with various organizations by addressing organizational challenges that need to be analyzed and resolved. For example, students in the Introduction to Leadership class work in teams to role-play as CEOs, making key decisions and receiving real-time feedback in a dynamic simulation to sharpen their leadership skills. Students in a strategic management class work on a boardroom exercise that simulates the conversations that directors and the top management team often have in the boardroom and helps students practice using strategic logic in strategy-related conversations. Students in a supply chain strategy class have an opportunity to design and manage the supply chain of a global firm in a multi-year simulation game, from product design to demand forecasting to supplier and inventory management, which helps students understand and balance competing priorities such as flexibility, efficiency, and effectiveness in a competitive supply chain setting. 

Students are encouraged to take advantage of study abroad opportunities to gain international experience and leadership skills in various student organizations, such as the Society for Human Resources Management chapter and the Entrepreneurship Club.  Our student organizations connect students with local professional organizations and management leaders through a slate of educational events, including guest lectures, panel discussions, and networking events. Each year over the past several years,  TCNJ’s student chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has obtained the SHRM Superior Merit award for their accomplishments and dedication to the HR profession, and SHRM chapter leaders receive awards and scholarships annually.

Students interested in research will find enthusiastic mentors among our faculty of respected scholars and widely published researchers. The work of these student researchers is showcased each year in the campus-wide Celebration of Student Achievement, as well as in presentations at teaching and scholarly conferences such as the Mid-Atlantic Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference and the Eastern Academy of Management Annual Conference.

Internship Opportunities

Internships are strongly encouraged, as they provide valuable on-the-job experience and training. They also give students the opportunity to show potential employers that they are self-starters, demonstrating responsibility and initiative for their own success. Most management majors complete at least one internship, and companies actively seek out our students. Students often receive permanent full-time job offers upon graduation from these internship experiences.

Our innovative, forward-looking, comprehensive curriculum gives management students an advantage in competing for attractive internships in various organizations and industries. Companies providing internships to management students in recent years include Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oreal, Accenture, Disney, JP Morgan Chase, MJH Life Sciences, Northwestern Mutual, Ralph Lauren, iCIMS,  Janssen J&J Neuroscience, Sanofi, Pfizer, PVH Corporation, among others.

Careers and Graduate Programs

Organizations in every industry need managers and demand special management skills and knowledge. Our management majors have succeeded across all business sectors, including commercial, industrial, financial, nonprofit, and public management. New graduates often find their first jobs as management trainees, account executives, analysts, client relationship specialists, and finance, retail, marketing, and sales professionals. A major in management is also an excellent foundation for those with entrepreneurial instincts who want to lead their own companies.

Graduates of the management program have found success with companies such as Johnson & Johnson, IBM Corporation, Amazon, Accenture, JP Morgan Chase, Church & Dwight Co., Bloomberg, M&T Bank, Cintas, Ferrero, Google, Audi, ADP, and Tapestry.

Most management majors who go on to advanced study do so after launching their careers to build a management portfolio and identify a specific area or industry of interest. Students in human resources, however, often choose to obtain a graduate degree before seeking employment, going directly from TCNJ into such programs as the Master of Human Resource Management at Rutgers University. Our graduates have earned acceptance into many other prestigious graduate programs, including, most recently, the Master of Health Services Administration at George Washington University, the Executive Master of Public Administration at CUNY, the  J.D. Program at Villanova Law School, and the Executive Management Program at the Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University, Miami Campus.

Active Alumni Network

The close bonds we form with our students extend beyond graduation. Our alumni are enthusiastic supporters of the program, visiting classes as guest lecturers and sharing their insights and experiences in panels at management alumni events and other on-campus panel discussions. By connecting with alumni, our students build professional networks while learning about the vast opportunities open to management professionals.