COE may be an unfamiliar acronym to students whose studies have not included economics. However, Assistant Provost Brian Casey hopes the new interdisciplinary concentration behind the initials - Commerce, Organization and Entrepre-neurship - will attract students across the academic spectrum.
Casey will lead an information session with Professor of Economics Ivo Welch and others at 8 p.m. today in MacMillan 115 to inform students about the new program, which he hopes will emerge as an intellectual approach to commerce distinct from job-oriented business programs at other colleges. "I want to disabuse them of the notion that this is simply, uninterestingly a business program," Casey said. "I would be very happy if students in the program thought of themselves as intellectual cohorts ... not social cohorts, not just as 'I hope we play golf together when we're partners at Morgan Stanley.' "
The concentration, which bridges the departments of Sociology and Economics and the Division of Engineering, will be available to rising sophomores as well as juniors capable of completing its requirements in their remaining two years. COE will replace the Business Economics, Engineering and Economics and Public and Private Sector Organizations concentrations, though students already enrolled in those programs will be allowed to finish.
"We are inventing, in many ways, what we want to do. This kind of program doesn't exist," said Welch, who was a professor at the Yale School of Management until last year. Welch said COE should assist Brown students entering the workforce in competition against graduates from peer institutions with stronger technical business programs.
"What we basically want to do is pick out the good parts of a business school, develop them, make it more intellectual and tie that in with a broader perspective of a liberal arts program," Welch said.
However, COE extends beyond business. Associate Professor of Sociology Ann Dill and others involved in the program's conception stressed its breadth as a liberal arts - not preprofessional business - program.
"I don't see COE as equated with business," Dill said.
A study of those courses PPSO and business economics concentrators were already taking inspired the eight core requirements for the COE concentration. The program's three tracks - business economics, organizational studies and entrepreneurship and technology - will require an additional six, seven or eight courses respectively.
The large number of requirements led Freya Zaheer '06 to vote against the proposal when it came before the College Curri-culum Council. An economics concentrator with an interest in business, Zaheer's concern is not whether there is a demand for the concentration, but whether the proposed program will satisfy Brown's need for a stronger business and organizational curriculum.
In order to create a "synergistic concentration" and avoid shortchanging any single discipline, the COE proposal included large, unappealing lecture classes, Zaheer said. "Students at Brown don't like requirements. We like having choice. This just has so many (requirements), that I wonder if students are going to choose this concentration," Zaheer said.
Although Dill said she expects strong student interest in COE this fall, the existing program will likely be subject to change. "We didn't mean it as cast in stone," Dill said.
Dean of Engineering Clyde Briant said the program's administrators would remain cognizant of whether certain core courses - including EN 3: "Introduction to Engineering" - deter students from the concentration.
Current priorities, however, include informing students about the program's unique nature and developing syllabuses for new courses to be offered next year, many of which are not listed in the Course Announce-ment Bulletin. Although the COE initiative will ideally include co-curricular lectures, workshops and events in the fall, Dill said the scale of available resources would determine how much of that would be realized.
Both Welch and Casey emphasized the critical importance of new faculty hires and financial resources to the initiative's success. Ross Levine, currently a professor at the University of Minnesota and the third-most referenced economist in the world, according to Welch, will begin teaching at the University this fall. His wife, Maria Carkovic, a senior fellow at Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, has been hired as the program's director.
COE's success will require three or four faculty hires in each of the departments involved, said Welch. But he said that Levine, "an absolute world authority in economic growth," represents a good start - particularly because COE still lacks an official budget.
"We've got to be able to engage our outside community to really support this venture. If not, no matter what we want to do, we will not have resources to pull this off," Welch said.
Welch said he hopes COE will serve as a catalyst to elevate Brown to a "world-class, top-five institution."
"We have to use this opportunity to attract the absolute best faculty," Welch said. "Brown traditionally has had extremely wonderful students ... but has lagged in terms of academics behind its peers."
"What we don't want to do is hire people to come in from (Wall) Street and tell (business war) stories," Welch added.
Although none of those directly involved in COE termed it a "marketing tool" as Zaheer did, professors and administrators agreed that a strong program would spark interest and contributions - whether academic or financial - from alums.
"Clearly a purpose was to serve the interest of alumni," Dill said. The initiative includes a proposal for alumni fellows or executives in residence who could contribute to classes or teach for a semester.
"You could call this almost a startup," said Josef Mittlemann '72 P'00, P'04, an adjunct lecturer in engineering who currently serves as COO of Silverstein Properties in New York. He added that the program has a good plan, but will now require careful execution, strong leadership and sufficient funding, like any new venture. "If this is three silos banded together, it's not going to work," he said.
