Maintenance of Accreditation Received
The Leon Hess Business School at Monmouth University has maintained its business accreditation by AACSB International—The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Founded in 1916, AACSB International is the longest serving global accrediting body for business schools that offer undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degrees in business and accounting.
AACSB Accreditation is the hallmark of excellence in business education, and has been earned by less than five percent of the world’s business programs. Today, there are 727 business schools in 48 countries and territories that maintain AACSB Accreditation. Similarly, 182 institutions maintain an additional specialized AACSB Accreditation for their accounting programs.
“It takes a great deal of commitment and determination to earn and maintain AACSB Accreditation,” said Robert D. Reid, executive vice president and chief accreditation officer of AACSB International. “Business schools must not only meet specific standards of excellence, but their deans, faculty, and professional staff must make a commitment to ongoing continuous improvement to ensure that the institution will continue to deliver the highest quality of education to students.”
“We’re delighted to receive the news that we have obtained affirmation of accreditation. It is a formidable and grueling process to go through that promotes continuous improvement of quality and distinction. It also confirms our status as one of the top 294 business schools in the nation and one of the top five percent in the world. Our faculty and other stakeholders worked very hard in making this a meaningful process. We thank the AACSB peer review team for their positive and thorough examinations that they conducted last spring,” said Donald Moliver, dean of the Leon Hess Business School.
The visiting team, led by Dr. Moustafa H. Abdelsamad of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi with members Prof. Paul Brazina of LaSalle University and Dr. Wade Thomas of SUNY College at Oneonta, made special note of the following characteristics of the School:
- The LHSB will open a substantial addition to the existing facility, has hired additional faculty, and fully supported faculty development and research. Despite difficult financial times, the University has invested resources in the School of Business with significant donor support for Pozycki Hall and Kislak Real Estate Institute.
- The School’s strengths, innovations, and unique features have been aptly described by the students to include mentoring, small class sizes, engagement with faculty, tutoring services, the Accounting Honors Employment Program, and the capstone client company simulation. The students felt that they had skills that were competitive with students from other institutions.
- The School has achieved a number of continuous improvement outcomes in alignment with its mission. Some examples of those outcomes are provided below:
- The Center for Entrepreneurship in cooperation with the capstone course instructors provides consulting expertise to local businesses, start-ups, and non- profits resulting in experiential learning opportunities for students. This initiative provides an excellent opportunity for student engagement and practicing strategic management in real world situations. Students that the team met were very complimentary and excited about this learning experience.
- Students are getting real world portfolio management experience through Hawk Capital Student Investment Club.
- A newly revised MBA program was developed and is going through the lengthy approval processes. A large number of faculty members were involved in that revision.
- LHSB led the revision of the University’s technology course taken by all undergraduate business students to include content necessary for business education with emphasis on Excel skills.
- Faculty members are actively engaged in different intellectual contribution activities. Peer reviewed journal articles are published by a substantive cross-section of faculty members in various disciplines.