Points of Pride

In the summer of 2021, the Lucas College and Graduate School of Business was reaccredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the most prestigious business school accrediting body in the world. Only 5% of business colleges worldwide have this accreditation.

As part of this process, we have highlighted the many ways that our mission and core values are strongly aligned with the overarching AACSB themes of engagement, innovation and impact.  Below is a sample of our accomplishments for the review period (2016-2020).

                              Engagement - Innovation - Impact 

Local

• The LCoB sponsors several annual conferences attracting hundreds of students, faculty, and community members. The Women in Leadership League Conference features speakers from Silicon Valley tech companies (Cisco, HPE, Apple, etc.) and attracts about 500 students, 40 professionals and several other community members.  The SJSU Economic Summit recently drew more than 1,000 managers/owners of Silicon Valley businesses, non-profit organizations, and community members.
  
  
• 19 student organizations sponsor college events, such as “meet the firms”, employer treks and speaker events, providing practical knowledge, career development, and networking opportunities with local businesses and non-profits.
  
  
• Since 2018, the LCoB coordinates a new university-wide speaker series, Insights, focusing on business, economics and global affairs (funded by a generous gift from the Valley Foundation).  Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich have been among the featured speakers to date.
  
  
• The Silicon Valley Center for Entrepreneurship (SVCE) hosts a Business Plan Competition, an Innovation Challenge and Eminent Speaker Series.
  
  
• Over 130 community members, including top executives, serve as external advisory board members for LCoB’s 7 Centers and 3 Institutes.  A 30-member Dean’s Advisory Board provides strategic, branding and fundraising advice to the Dean; a 9-member Community Engagement Board links alumni with current students and sponsors an alumni newsletter.
  
  
• The college hosts the Richard and Sandi Conniff Business Ethics Speaker Series that each year brings a distinguished speaker to campus.  In 2018, James Alderson, the whistleblower in the largest health care fraud case in US history, was featured.
  
  
• The LCoB received a $2.5 million gift commitment in 2017 from an alum to support scholarships and student professional and career development. Additional six- and seven-figure gifts for scholarships were received in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

National

• A national leader on surface transportation policy and management, the college’s Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI), a Tier One Transit Focused University Transportation Center, hosts several national programs including a National Transportation Finance Summit and the Garrett Morgan Sustainable Transportation Program. 
  
  
• LCoB faculty presented at numerous professional events including Academy of Management, INFORMS, IEEE, Academy of International Business, Society for Case Research, Financial Management Association, and American Accounting Association.
  
  
• The college’s Silicon Valley Center for Entrepreneurship, in conjunction with Rutgers University’s Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, hosted an Inclusive Innovation Summit [pdf] in Spring 2018 focusing on linking female and under-represented minority entrepreneurs with various funding sources.
  
  
• A Lucas Graduate School of Business-led cross disciplinary team of MIS, MBA and Engineering students won the 2018 National ANSI Standards Simulation Competition.
  
  
• In 2017 and 2018, two LCoB teams placed first and third for overall performance at the International Collegiate Business Strategy In 2019 one team placed first for financial performance.
  
  
• LCoB student teams participate annually in the Chartered Financial Analyst Research Challenge and the University of Michigan Student Stock Pitch competition
  
  
• In 2017, two student teams participated in the SHRM Case Competition and one of the teams composed of undergraduate and graduate students won 2^nd place in the competition.
  
  
• The LCoB Gamma Xi chapter of Beta Alpha Psi, the International Honor Organization for Accounting and Financial Information students, was recognized as a distinguished chapter during the academic years 2016-2017 and 2019-2020.

Global

• The Thompson Global Internship program provides students with consulting engagements in a non-US location of the global company, Crown Worldwide.  Recent participants were based in Hong Kong, the Czech Republic and the UK.
  
  
• LCoB students participate in the university’s study abroad and short-term faculty led programs.  Recent LCoB faculty-led short study trips occurred in Germany, Hong Kong, and Brazil.
  
  
• The Global Leadership Advancement Center prepares students for international experiences and helps local executives build skills for leading global companies.
  
  
• SVCE hosted international teams at both the innovation challenge and business plan competition.
  
  
• A formal partnership with Feng-Chia University in Taiwan has brought more than 70 students as transfers to LCoB in the past couple of years to study business analytics.
  
  
• The Lucas Graduate School of Business is part of a 10 member international consortium that offers a short-term study abroad opportunity for graduate students.  The school hosts students from across these universities for a week each fall.
  
  

The Silicon Valley Center for Operations and Technology Management regularly runs education programs each summer for government officials from Korea, China and other countries

Campus-Based Innovations

• An information systems pedagogical innovation, Max Labs, developed by a faculty member in the college’s School of Information Systems and Technology, is integrated into the core MIS class taken by all College of Business students and has now been adopted by several other business schools in the U.S.
  
  
• In 2017, the college launched a career readiness initiative that helps students build strong professional, job search and networking skills through curricular and co-curricular activities.  The LCoB has raised more than $650,000 in seed money for this effort.
  
  
• The MBA program features the “Silicon Valley Experience” course as part of the curriculum.  Students participate in a variety of professional development activities, including company visits, career counseling, and networking events.
  
  
• A local angel investor mentors students in an ELAB course in which students intern with/develop startups.
  
  
• LCoB donors and the Center for Banking and Financial Services seeded two student-managed investment funds.  The Spartan Fund, created in fall 2014, is a fund with the investment objective of creating a well-diversified portfolio investing in S&P 500 securities. Since the last accreditation, the college also created The Silicon Valley (Aggressive Growth) Fund in Spring 2017, which invests in equity securities belonging to a custom-benchmark, the Spartan Bay Area Index, which includes Bay Area public companies listed in the Russell 2000 index.  The LCoB houses a trading classroom to facilitate these efforts.
  
  
• Business Honors Program students complete 25-30 projects per year at for-profit and non-profit organizations including PwC, Cisco, IBM, and HPE.
  
  
• The Online Initiatives program offers a set of training resources on specific online education technologies for faculty members. As a result, the college was well-positioned to manage the sudden pivot to all online learning in Spring 2020.
  
  
• In Spring 2020, the LCoB created an Oral Communication Lab outfitted with video recording and editing equipment so that students can practice their presentations and receive coaching.
  
  
• Starting in Fall 2019 the Lucas Graduate School of Business (LGSB) integrated an AI software platform – Quantified Communications – in some of the courses to provide student feedback on 24 dimensions related to verbal and non-verbal communication.

Innovation Partnerships with Silicon Valley

• The Innovation, Design, Entrepreneurship Accelerator (IDEA) nurtures start-up ideas at SJSU.  In 2017, alum Ray Zinn, the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley, sponsored the ZinnStarter program, which provides small grants to student teams to further their new ventures.
  
  
• The Center for Banking and Financial Services partners with Heritage Bank to offer a Credit Analyst Certificate.  Every year 16 students are selected for the program, which entails a final group competition where the members of the two top performing teams are awarded $500 - $1,000 individual scholarships.
  
  
• LCoB’s Generation of Aspirational Leaders (G.o.A.L) program, which focuses on intersection of community, career and curriculum for under-represented minority students, partners with a variety of Silicon Valley organizations, including PWC and VISA, to help with the professional development of these students.
  
  
• The college’s High Tech Tax Institute partners each year with the Tax Executives Institute to run an annual conference attended by 250 – 300 Silicon Valley technology tax professionals.  In addition, the institute also runs a Small Business Tax Institute in conjunction with the IRS.
  
  
• In 2017, Salesforce sponsored 100 Lucas College and Graduate School of Business students to attend Dreamforce, its annual user conference in San Francisco.
  
  
• An annual Social Innovation Leadership Forum brings together industry, non-profit, governmental and academic representatives to discuss innovative ways of tackling social issues.  Recent topics include Big Data and Social Innovation and Design Thinking and Social Innovation.
  
  
• SVCE and SJSU host a Silicon Valley Innovation Challenge in which teams compete and receive feedback on early stage ideas.

Institution of Opportunity

• The LCoB is a key contributor to the SJSU ranking as the #1 “Most Transformative College” in the nation by Money magazine in 2020.  In the same publication, the LCoB ranked #6 in the “Best Colleges for Business Majors.” The LCoB serves approximately 6000 undergraduate students and 450 graduate students.
  
  
• The LCoB network includes 50,000 alumni, the largest number of business graduates in Silicon Valley.
  
  
• During the AY 2019-2020 more than 45,000 full-time jobs and 13,000 internships were posted with SJSU’s Career Center.

Silicon Valley Impact

• During the past few years, the college has created a CFO Alumni Affiliate Network, identifying more than 800 alumni who are current or former CFOs in Silicon Valley.
  
  
• The college has formed two new centers/institutes since the last accreditation visit, the Institute for People and Performance and the Center for Organizational Resilience.  The Institute for People and Performance works to advance the knowledge of human capital management through education and training.  It currently partners with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) to offer a SHRM certification program designed for HR practitioners.  The Center for Organizational Resilience focuses on creating and disseminating knowledge on cyber risk management.
  
  
• The LCoB provides financial support to the Silicon Valley chapter of Prospanica (formerly the Hispanic MBA association), and is working with their members to consider part-time teaching opportunities in the college.
  
  
• The executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute was honored in 2017 as one of the “100 Women of Influence” in Silicon Valley by the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

National Impact

• The college’s Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI), has secured more than $17 million in federal and state funding since 2016.  MTI is the lead institution on a $7 million-dollar federal Department of Transportation grant, a $3.65 million California of Department of Transportation Grant and an additional $6 million from California’s new Senate Bill 1.
  
  
• The LCoB created the Alan and Lori Kessler Endowed Professor in order to attract faculty talent in the field of management.
  
  
• An LCoB tax faculty member testified before the US Congress [pdf] in 2017 and provided webinars and presentations on taxation sponsored by organizations such as the American Institute of CPAs.
  
  
• An LCoB faculty member received the 2018 CSU Chancellor's award for Faculty Excellence and Innovation.
  
  
• An LCoB faculty member was named by the American Institute of CPA’s Chair of its Tax Executive Committee.
  
  
• LCoB faculty members continue to publish in reputable academic journals.  During the accreditation period, the LCoB faculty published 313 unique articles in 210 unique peer-reviewed journals. Among these, 60 peer-reviewed outlets were classified as A or A* (the highest ranking possible) according to the Australian Business Deans Council. 
  
  
• For over 15 years, an LCoB faculty member wrote the Digital Domain column and has been an op-ed contributor for The New York Times.  The faculty member has authored the books Planet Google, The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator and, in 2018, A Practical Education: Why Liberal Arts Majors Make Great Employees.
  
  
• An LCoB faculty member’s book, Advances in Global Leadership, won the “Scholarship and Critical Thinking” award at the Outstanding Leadership Book Awards.

Global Impact

• The LCoB is a member of the EMBA consortium and every year hosts a cohort of students from the other international partners for an intense week of executive education focusing on entrepreneurship and innovation.  In 2017, the LCoB hosted a one-week executive education program for a group of professionals enrolled in the MBA program at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.  In 2019 the LCoB hosted a group of professionals enrolled in the MBA program at the Bologna Business School, Italy.
  
  
• An LCoB faculty member has chaired an annual conference in Asia on supply chain management since 2012 and another chaired an IEEE conference in China in Spring 2018.
  
  
• LCoB faculty presented to groups including the Peace Corps, USAID, and Foreign Service Institute.
  
  
• LCoB faculty are regular visiting professors at top Asian universities such as Chulalongkorn University (Bank, Thailand), Indian Institute of Technology (New Delhi, India), and Sophia University (Tokyo, Japan).
  
  
• A faculty member received a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation.
  
  
• A faculty member was selected for the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award for India.
  
  
• The LCoB regularly hosts international visiting scholars and recently hosted two different Fulbright scholars.

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