James Madison University Mission Statement
We are committed to preparing students to be educated and enlightened citizens who will lead productive and meaningful lives.
College of Business Mission Statement
The College of Business is committed to preparing students to be active and engaged citizens who are exceptionally well qualified leaders for success in a global competitive marketplace.
Shared Values and Goals
- The JMU CoB aspires to be among the top ten percent of undergraduate business programs in the nation, striving for excellence and continuous improvement in undergraduate learning. Its student body comes primarily from the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and, to a growing extent, from the Northeast.
- Directed toward a full-time, traditional-age student population, the CoB's undergraduate programs are based on solid foundations in general education and an integrated business core curriculum. Beyond these foundations, the CoB offers students a wide variety of programs that emphasize theory, application, and experiential learning in a business discipline.
- CoB faculty are committed to providing an exceptional educational experience for students, with an emphasis on developing leadership, technology, communication and integrative skills.
- The CoB will be a preferred source of student talent for employers in the Mid-Atlantic region.
- The CoB takes an entrepreneurial approach to graduate programs, developing niche programs for which there is a need and for which the faculty has competence.
- Student learning is assessed frequently. Assurance of learning programs are designed to assess learning in the business core, each of the undergraduate majors, and each of the degree programs within the CoB. Consistent with academic freedom, faculty members are encouraged to take an active role in innovative curriculum development and assessment processes designed to improve the educational experience.
- The CoB recognizes that students and faculty face ethical choices. As such, it maintains the highest expectations for students regarding JMU's Honor Code. Furthermore, the CoB strives to prepare students for the ethical tensions and dilemmas they will face in the course of their professional lives. Additionally, the CoB demands the utmost in professional and ethical conduct by its faculty towards students, the community of scholars, and society at large.
- CoB faculty members believe that a balance between teaching and research is the most effective way to educate their students. Scholarly contributions complement classroom teaching by helping faculty members maintain currency in their discipline. Furthermore, students gain a deeper understanding of subject matter, a greater appreciation of a discipline's body of knowledge, and added enthusiasm for learning when they are taught by active scholars.
- Faculty members are committed to a broad array of intellectual pursuits and scholarly output in discipline-based scholarship, contributions to practice, and learning and pedagogical research. The relative emphasis on these three areas will vary from one faculty member to another depending upon education, experience, and interests, but the pursuit of knowledge in each area will be used to enhance students' learning experiences.