Santa Clara University

Leavey School of Business: Academic Department Mission Statements

These mission statements were prepared by each academic department in the Leavey School of Business during Fall 2004. In most cases subcommittees within a department constructed an initial draft, which was then discussed, critiqued and revised with input from departmental faculty collectively.

These initial drafts were collated and circulated back to the departments with comments from the Dean’s office during Winter 2005. Thus, each department in the school had an opportunity to see the initial efforts of every other department prior to finalizing their own mission statement. Departments used the guidelines for mission statements in the 2004-2005 Program Review document prepared by Santa Clara University. The attached mission statements are the final versions that resulted.

The collected mission statements thus issue from a process of reflective engagement extending over most of an academic year in which virtually all tenure-track faculty in the Leavey School participated to some degree.

Selecting the department name below will take you to its website.

Department of Accounting
The mission of the Santa Clara University Accounting Department is to advance the knowledge and practice of accounting by providing high quality accounting instruction, research, and service for our students, the accounting profession, and the business community.

The Accounting Department shares with the University its fundamental mission to make student learning its central focus. Our goal is to develop superior students who will be sought for their skills, integrity, and professional attitude. We fulfill this mission through our involvement in several academic programs in which we strive to impart the accounting knowledge and ethical values that students in these programs need to understand and use accounting information in their professional business careers. We facilitate our students’ transition from the academic community to the professional community by promoting accounting scholarships, internships, and events that encourage student interaction with practicing accountants.

The Accounting Department promotes its overall mission by engaging in empirically- driven discipline-based scholarship, practice-driven advances, and pedagogical research on important accounting issues that is disseminated to our students, accounting scholars, and the business community through classroom settings, workshop presentations, and peer-reviewed articles. Our goal is to continuously improve the classroom experience and lead accounting thought through a mix of original research and thought-provoking commentary on accounting-related topics.

Department of Economics
The mission of the Department of Economics is to advance the understanding of economics. We educate undergraduate and master’s level students; we advance knowledge within the discipline; and we help our local, national, and international communities probe the economic dilemmas of the world today.

We do this through teaching, scholarly research, and community outreach involving:

• The analytical tools for understanding how economic choices are made and the repercussions of those choices.
• The empirical methods needed to explore economic issues using the data of the contemporary world and of the past.
• The application of analysis and empirical methods to illuminate debates about important issues of the day, such as poverty, economic development and growth, globalization, and economic and social policy.

Our understanding of economics is shaped by the recognition that economics serves society and that at the heart of each economic decision is a human being.

Department of Finance
The mission of the Department of Finance is to educate our students, at the undergraduate and graduate levels, to serve their organizations and society in the Jesuit tradition. We do that by teaching the concepts and tools necessary to understand the role of finance within organizations and society. We also do that by teaching our students to act in ways that enhance the value of the resources available to organizations and society.

We take pride in combining financial theory with financial practice. We contribute to the practice of finance in the US and abroad through our scholarship and work with practitioners and we share that knowledge with our students.

We nurture a unique relationship with Silicon Valley companies. Executives of Silicon Valley companies, as well venture capitalists and other members of the Silicon Valley community, participate regularly in our courses. We also offer an internship program that enables students to gain experience through work in Silicon Valley companies.

We have special expertise in behavioral finance, where we seek to improve the behavior of managers and investors who are subject to cognitive biases and emotions, in financial engineering, where we design financial structures and instruments, such as derivatives, that enhance the value of enterprises and the efficiency of markets, in new ventures, where we seek better ways to bring business ideas to life, and in corporate governance and valuation, where we seek to find structures that would direct managers to enhance the value of their enterprises.

Department of Management
The mission of the Management Department is to advance knowledge and practice in management, organizational design, and organizational strategy--with a special focus on producing ethical leaders for the global, highly technical environment of Silicon Valley and for the greater good of society.

The Department teaches undergraduate and masters level business school courses that provide students with a theoretical and practical understanding of organizations, of individual and group behavior within organizations, and of strategic ways of positioning organizations in their industrial, social, legal, and international environments.

The Department is committed to broadening our understanding of these topics and of sharing this knowledge with our students, by researching the social and international environments of business, the strategic management of organizations, the organizational dynamics of information technologies, and managerial decision-making particularly within ethical frameworks.

The Department provides a distinctive service to the University through the leadership roles its members play in the University’s Centers of Distinction and Business School Admininstration and Institutes.

Department of Marketing
The mission of the Marketing Department is to educate students in the marketing process; namely, to collect, analyze, and evaluate information from and about customers and the marketing environment relative to a specific marketing problem or opportunity, and to facilitate a solution that produces enhanced marketplace success and satisfies the organization’s stakeholders.

We serve the educational needs of students at different educational levels (the undergraduate business program, and particularly our marketing majors; MBA, Executive MBA, and management development programs) and for a variety of industry and market sectors, particularly in Silicon Valley, including technology, consumer marketing, and retailing. Our students, who are ultimately products of the Leavey School of Business and the University, are necessarily expected to be discerning and contributing citizens of the world in which they live, both in their professional accomplishments as well as in their societal contributions.

To accomplish this mission, we have developed a Marketing faculty that addresses marketing problems by utilizing consumer and market information and information technology skills. Our collaborative approach to scholarship has enabled the marketing faculty to span a core set of scholarly interests and specializations which contribute to our distinction, including e-commerce, technology marketing, and multi-channel retailing, all of which are important to the stakeholders that the department serves.

Department of Operations & Management Information Systems
The OMIS Department specializes in both Management Information Systems (MIS) and Operations Management (OM). It offers undergraduate major and minor degrees in MIS, grants a Master of Science degree in Information Systems (MSIS), administers the MIS and OM concentrations in the MBA program, and is responsible for core requirements relating to MIS and OM in both the undergraduate and graduate programs.

Our mission is to develop business leaders who:

1. Deliver strategic value to contemporary organizations by their mastery of state-of-the-art information technology and quantitative and analytical methods, acquired by learning topics like e-business technologies and applications, business intelligence and operations management,
2. Can leverage their knowledge of theory and practice of information systems by applying it to different functional areas of business such as Accounting, Finance and Manufacturing, facilitated by training in Enterprise Resource Planning, Financial Information Systems, Supply Chain Management and Quality Control and Improvement,
3. Can lead through innovation and enhance their careers, by learning topics such as Information Systems Analysis and Design, and Software Project Management,
4. Contribute to the society as a whole in the Jesuit tradition by being sensitive to ethical and societal issues relating to the use of information technology, through studying topics like Information Technology – Ethics and Policy, Information Policy and Strategy and Information Security Management.

Embracing the university’s teaching scholar model, the department encourages its faculty to include one or more of the topics listed above in their own individual research foci. The department borrows from, and contributes to, the high-tech environment of Silicon Valley in its promotion of cutting edge practices in information technology and business intelligence.