Cross-functional concentrations merge IT and business concepts

The College of Management at UMass Boston developed a set of cross functional / cross departmental concentrations involving mixing both IT courses and management courses in the business functional areas of finance and marketing. Although interdisciplinary concentrations aren't a new concept, these particular combinations, and their placement in a traditional school of management provide an innovative and integrative educational experience for UMass Boston students. In addition, these new concentration were specifically designed to provide an attractive pathway for students from area community colleges with 2-year IT related degrees who wish to expand their education into management. UMass Boston is a member of the Boston Area Advanced Technological Education Connections (BATEC), a National Science Foundation center. This Center is designed among other things, to develop a coordinated Information Technology (IT) education delivery system that integrates IT education across high schools, community colleges, ad the university. These cross functional concentrations benefited from BATEC activities and support BATEC goals.These new concentrations, launched in Fall 2005, involve mostly existing courses from multiple departments within the College of Management along with a small number of IT related courses already in preparation to update the primary IT concentrations. Beyond their required management core, concentrators take a carefully selected set of core and elective courses from each of two departments. This structure allows us to offer (in spite of limited resources) a range of cross functional / cross departmental concentrations that are intellectually rigorous and managerially useful.We shall describe the motivation for the new concentrations, the concentrations themselves, and discuss the organizational process of formulating and implementing them.