“Before, we emphasized that students could ‘major in anything, succeed in business,’ but we only offered the one pathway, the co-curricular certificate of readiness through COES,” says David Chu, the Ciocca Center for Business, Ethics, and Society’s director of certificate programs and prebusiness advisor. “Now, we are going to give students multiple pathways to learn about business.”
Arthur “Art” Ciocca ’59, chairman emeritus of The Wine Group Inc., and his wife, Carlyse, have been significant supporters of “pre-business” programs over the years. With other alumni, parents and friends, their newest investment will greatly expand on the College’s current opportunities for students to study business alongside the liberal arts.
Chu will continue to oversee the certificate programs, which include a business fundamentals certificate and an entrepreneurship certificate. Students can complete the certificate programs over the course of their four years at Holy Cross. Requirements include a set of introductory business workshops, advanced training in Excel and spreadsheet data analysis, a summer internship and three relevant academic classes from options across the curriculum.
“The workshops cover finance, banking, marketing communications and advertising, sales, supply chain — all the various aspects of business that students need to be aware of for them to have a better idea of what business entails. It helps them tremendously in building their knowledge base and, therefore, to have confidence in an interview,” Chu says. “The workshops are designed to prepare students to have a basic level of business literacy and confidence to nail an entry-level position when they graduate from Holy Cross.”
Student interest in these business certificate programs is booming. This semester, there are more than 470 students participating, and they come from all majors. Enrollment in the workshop about supply chain management doubled from 2017 to 2018, from 20 to more than 40 students. The spring 2019 workshop on business ethics and principled leadership had so many students enroll that Chu hopes to offer multiple sessions in the future.
“My job is not to prepare students to go to business school or an MBA program, but to prepare them to get right into the business world if they choose,” Chu says. “With the center, we’re going to be able to significantly expand opportunities to meet student demand. The purpose of the center is to provide students with multiple pathways to learn about business — pathways that can complement any major in the curriculum. We don’t try to replicate a business school curriculum; we take a distinctively liberal arts approach.”
In addition to the co-curricular certificates, another pathway exists for students who are interested in studying business as a topic of analysis in connection with many of the fundamental ethical, political and economic questions facing our world today. The College has recently developed a new interdisciplinary minor in business, ethics, and society, offered through its Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. The minor draws on a range of liberal arts disciplines to help students develop historical, economic, political and philosophical perspectives on the world of business, while exploring overarching questions about the role of business in a just society. In addition to this coursework, students in the minor will complete an internship and participate in relevant workshops offered through the Ciocca Center.