Kate Rafey:  Tell me about some of the accomplishments you’re most proud of since becoming Dean of the Business School.

Dr. David Jordan: There have been numerous initiatives that our faculty, staff and students have accomplished this past academic year, all of which give me a sense pride. Our MBA degrees earned a top 100 ranking by the US News & World Report among all business schools in the U.S. – an exemplary accomplishment underscoring our faculty’s commitment to maintaining exceptional rigor in classroom.  This coming Fall ‘25 we’re launching a new MBA concentration in “Healthcare Analytics”, which is a degree we expect will have great appeal both domestically and internationally. Our partnerships with international schools have expanded to allow students to begin their studies in their home country and complete their CUSB degree on our campus. We also launched a new undergraduate program in Accounting, as well as graduate programs in Marketing Analytics and Accounting Analytics – each having a STEM oriented foundation. We’ve grown the ‘Deans Alumni Advisory Council’ to include nearly 25 CUSB alumni from around the world who provide their counsel and expertise on a number of issues. We moved the Small Business Development Center back under the purview of our business school, which has allowed for even greater interaction and collaboration for our students in terms of internships and working directly with small and medium businesses throughout Central Massachusetts.

There are certainly many more noteworthy accomplishments over this past year – including our formal name change from the School of Management to the School of Business. The change in our identity more accurately reflects the breadth of our existing Graduate and Undergraduate student body. By any measure we’ve done a great deal in a very short period of time! 

Rafey:  How have alumni served to support the goings-on of the school?

Dr. Jordan: As I mentioned, we have grown our ‘Deans Alumni Advisory Council’  to include nearly 25 business school alumni who care deeply about the advancement and success of Clark. This council provides me invaluable thoughts and advice on propelling the School of Business into the new age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Machine Learning, and more. We also have numerous alumni who return as guest speakers in our classrooms or with our Stevenish Career Management Center. We are asking our alumni to assist with internship possibilities for our students. This is an area we are hoping to grow and expand. We’re also hoping to grow our Student Success Fund which financially supports our students in attending B-School competitions as well as enrolling in a variety of online certificate programs delivered by Google, Amazon, LinkedIn and leading universities around the world.  These supplemental certificates in areas such as Supply Chain Management or Sales, etc, extend our classroom instruction and allow our students to gain precious insight into cutting edge industry needs.  Our ‘Student Success Fund’ also allows our students to attend conferences throughout the U.S. at a discounted or no cost.  We are always in search of individual or corporate financial support for this vital student fund. 

Rafey:  What are some of your hopes for the future? Do you have any priorities for the future of CUSB?

Dr. Jordan: There are three areas that I’m focused on and have prioritized for our business school over the next 3-5 years.   First, we need to renovate Carlson Hall and expand our footprint to create a modern, robust business school for our students and teaching faculty.   We need updated labs, more Bloomberg Terminals, a real time news and stock ticker… a variety of things that would give our students the feeling of learning and working in a modern business environment.

Secondly, we are hoping to significantly broaden our student experience through the launch of a new ‘Student Experiential Learning Fund.’  Experiential learning –  true, hands-on work with a business or organization beyond the Clark campus – is fundamental to our educational offerings already. We need now to expand this to allow students to make an impact not just locally but around the world by linking their classroom instruction with social and economic development issues around the world.  Our new tagline and philosophic guidepost at the School of Business is “business driven and socially focused.”  That is, offering students the hard skills needed to succeed in business while also advancing a philosophy of ” doing well AND doing good” in one’s career.  I recently took three Clark business school students on a trip to Sierra Leone and Ghana to visit various nonprofit organizations and medical clinics in order to assess their most pressing needs, and offer whatever economic or social training or assistance we could. 2025 marks the beginning of my 15th year taking Clark B-School students to one of 8 emerging countries to join the business training our students receive with a variety of social needs. My hope is to instigate a new and robust Experiential Learning Initiative at CUSB that could financially support students to go on life-changing journeys across the globe every year. A fully- funded Experiential Learning Fund would allow us to do that.

Thirdly, we hope to identify an individual or company that could establish a permanent ‘Chair’ and naming opportunity for our soon-to-be-launched “Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.” We have numerous alumni, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, who have benefited from the fantastic events and programs that our entrepreneurship program has sponsored over the years with many going on to start their own businesses. We also have alumni who are back teaching in the entrepreneurship program, as well as local business leaders who share their knowledge and experiences with our students. A new “Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation” presents a unique opportunity for someone – or a business organization – to step forward and put their name on it as an acknowledgement to the creative achievements of entrepreneurs. 

Rafey:  Is there something I didn’t ask that you’re hoping I would address?

Dr. Jordan: I think we covered a good deal of ground thus far and my thanks to you and the Clark Advancement Office for this opportunity to speak to our Business School alumni.  Let me sum up by highlighting the more salient ways in which our alumni could help us:

 1.  We are always looking for student internship opportunities during both the academic year and during the summer months. Our students want and need to engage in meaningful real business world experiences as part of the education. Please let us know if any of our alum could offer a student an internship. 

2.  We’re hoping to identify an individual or business who could endow a permanent teaching Chair and associate their name with our new ‘Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation.”

3.  Experiential Learning must be at the heart of all of our academic offerings allowing students to receive financial support in traveling – with mentoring faculty- to engage with businesses or nonprofits throughout the world, and

4.  We are hoping to either transform our existing Carlson Hall or build a new business school facility which can better serve our future B-School students and faculty.

Our Clark School of Business is “on the move” and preparing itself to provide preeminent business training for the next generation of business professionals – both domestically or around the world.