1. Background

UC Merced has envisioned a School of Management since the opening of the campus. The existing undergraduate management curriculum at UC Merced was designed to be a temporary major by the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, with the strong leadership of the Economics faculty.  In 2012, UC Merced hired three faculty dedicated to Management. The challenge for building Management now is two pronged: it must support academic programs that are already in place, and it must find a unique positioning for Management that takes advantage of campus strengths and builds smartly upon this foundation.  The UC system has many great Management programs, and the best way to add value within the system is to build a unique and innovative program at UC Merced.  In this document, we present a cross-disciplinary faculty vision for this future.

2. Approach

UC Merced is currently building research strength and academic programs in two areas related to Management: (1) in Economics, and (2) in Management of Innovation, Sustainability and Technology (MIST).  Both are focused and distinct from traditional models of business education and research, yet both promise concerted delivery of joint programs of research and education that will be in high demand and distinguish the University of California at Merced. By collaborating in the short-term and the long-term, aligning efforts toward eventual creation of a new School of Management and Economics, we expect to bring MIST, Economics, and related programs together by 2020. 

The Economics program administers two undergraduate degrees, one in Economics and the other in Management & Business Economics (currently labeled “Management”).  An Economics Ph.D. program is planned to start in Fall of 2015.  Under an over-arching focus on rigor in quantitative reasoning and methods, the Economics group aims to build international distinction in three thematic fields: Environmental Economics & Management, Health Economics & Management, and Regional Development & International Trade.  While current faculty have international reputations in these fields, the thematic foci are particularly appropriate to UC Merced both because of interdisciplinary complementarities and because of growing demand for related research and training in the marketplace for ideas and academic talent.  Scholars in econometrics, experimental economics, and economic theory will complement faculty in the thematic fields.  Consonant with these thematic and methodological fields, Economics will be hiring to complement its Management-related educational offerings in Marketing / Industrial Organization, Strategy, Finance, and quantitative methods. 

Management faculty and others at UC Merced have proposed new education and research programs in Management of Innovation, Sustainability, and Technology (MIST). Building from existing faculty and campus strengths, which include services, logistics, math, cognition, health, the environment, and technology, MIST will focus on areas such as analytics, value networks, technology management, resource management, and service management.  Initially, MIST will focus on delivering graduate programs: a professional graduate masters program in Management, and other specialized executive and graduate programs (such as the National Parks Institute and the California State Parks Institute).  Some of these professional programs are already in place. The related MIST proposal outlines the plan in more detail. 

Both Economics (in SSHA) and MIST (in SoE) are building respective programs in collaboration with one another over the coming several years.  This proposal sets the stage for the long-term goal of housing the two programs in a joint School of Management and Economics.  The advantages of a School of Management and Economics include:

• Cross-fertilization of business, economics, and management research.
• Administrative economies of scale in related program administration.
• Coherence of programmatic development and implementation, including involvement of all related faculty in all Management related programs, undergraduate, graduate, research, and outreach.
• Facilitating the creation of inter-disciplinary research projects that will increase the level of external funding generated.
• Vastly enhanced prospects for endowment opportunities, which will facilitate excellence in faculty hiring, support graduate programs, and promote related research across the campus.
• Energizing students, alumni, faculty, and lecture staff around common and significant goals and themes.

3. The Proposal and Timeline

Through 2020, Economics and MIST will each build their own programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, but will remain closely aligned through sharing plans, resources, and courses. At the undergraduate level, Economics will target two broad undergraduates majors, one in Economics (250 students) and one in Management and Business Economics (500-600 students); and MIST will target one major, possibly with several tracks (50-100 majors).  These undergraduate majors will necessarily share some common courses, including for instance, the accounting, finance, and economics courses of the MBE program.  At the graduate level, Economics will target a PhD in Economics, with anticipated enrollments of about 30 supported predominantly by TAships; and MIST will target self-supporting professional masters degrees, with anticipated enrollment of about 60, self-supporting executive education programs, with anticipated enrollments of about 100, and a PhD program with anticipated enrollments of about 10. Overall, we anticipate that our Management-related programs will serve about 10 percent of the University, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. 

By 2020, Economics and MIST together will have roughly 35-40 ladder-rank faculty. Economics will have additional instructional staff of 10-12 lecturers, and MIST will have an additional instructional staff of 2-4 lecturers.  This proposal sets the stage for merging the two faculties and programs into a new School of Management and Economics that will have its own administration and a distinct UCM building to house faculty, administration, students, and related programs. 

Resource commitments for a new School do not involve costs above those that thriving programs would otherwise require.  Indeed, the inception of a new School of Management and Economics promises delivery of endowment, grant, and tuition resources that will cross-subsidize many of these costs and thereby reduce the University’s financial commitments overall.   Robust endowment support will be created not only by naming opportunities for the School and new building, but also by contributions from the business community and alumni.  Income from these endowments will help defray some of the required off-scale increments to faculty, support graduate students, cover some administrative expenses, and support extra-curricular programs (including conferences and faculty research funds). 

In sum, our strategy requires several broad commitments at the campus level: (1) commitment to building the two prongs to the proposed SME over the coming decade (see individual proposals of Economics and MIST); (2) commitment to incorporating the ultimate SME building in space planning for the University; and (3) commitment to administrative planning for the inception of the SME, planning to start by AY 2017-18 for anticipated School opening in AY 2020-21. 

4. Cross-Campus Synergies and Linkages

This proposal represents a cross-disciplinary and cross-campus approach.  The new School of Management and Economics and its faculty will be intertwined with the fabric of the campus in multiple ways. 

Economics will be closely tied to multi-disciplinary initiatives and programs related to its thematic foci.  Our environmental economics staff will be linked with both SNRI and hopefully to a new center focusing on the social science of the environment.  Our health economics staff will join with related faculty in the Health Services area of UC Merced’s public health program.  Our regional development and trade faculty will be linked with scholars in Sociology and the new Blum Center for Community Development.  And all faculty will be engaged in quantitative research that aligns with the proposed Center for Quantitative Research, and policy relevant research that engages the Political Science community. 

MIST depends on cross-functional knowledge already available across the campus, including business analytics (computer science, mathematics, geography, economics, cognitive science, and management), decision-analysis (cognitive science, psychology, management), logistics (science, mathematics, geography, engineering, and management), resource management (environmental science, engineering, and management), and services (engineering, cognitive science, psychology, and management). Plans for MIST are tied to all existing campus ORUs, (CITRIS, SNRI, HSRI, ERI), the new cross-UC California Center for Service Science, the Blum Center at UC Merced, proposed Center for Theory and Computation, proposed Center for Human Adaptive Systems and Environments, proposed Center for the Environment and Sustainability, proposed Hard Rock Reserves Institute, proposed new focus areas of Cognitive and Information Sciences in data science and human-technology interaction, among others. Together, the connections of Economics and MIST reach virtually all parts of the campus.  The goal of a new School of Management and Economics will be to take these connections one step further, creating an interdisciplinary hub for all research and education related to business on campus, in the local community, across the state, and beyond.