Greetings From Dean Maxfield – June 2024
Dear Friends,
It is fitting that we send our Friar students off into the world with their diplomas as summer is unfolding in New England. As my garden blooms, our graduates spread their wings. Whether heading for prestigious masters’ programs or Goldman Sachs or impactful non-profits, they are our best brand ambassadors; they represent the academic excellence and diversity of thought at the heart of Providence College’s ambitions for the next decade.
As all PC alumni know, this institution prizes interdisciplinary teaching and learning, exemplified by the Development of Western Civilization program that has been in place for more than 50 years as the foundational element of the college’s liberal arts-based curriculum. Making connections across varied disciplines, integrating different perspectives into new approaches, and finding unity across diversity are all part of what we mean when we speak about interdisciplinarity. For example, we are currently exploring ways to more fully integrate technology and computational thinking across of our teaching and research activities.
In addition to the liberal arts core comprising 50% of their studies, business students are exposed to a curriculum that further emphasizes interdisciplinarity. A set of required courses ensures that each business student learns the essential concepts associated with each of the disciplines within the school – accountancy, finance, management, and marketing.
Lauren Viveiros, a finance and management double major exemplifies the disciplinary interconnection that unfolds naturally. She took full advantage of everything the PC business school offers and graduated at the top of the Class of 2024 with a perfect 4.0 GPA. She is headed to Boston College’s Carroll School of Management to study for an MBA. After that, she plans to become a third-generation manager of a family business. We are all looking forward to seeing what great things Lauren accomplishes in the future.
The value of interdisciplinary engagement and diverse experience is also critically important to excellence in teaching and scholarly research. Our colleagues who hold professor of practice titles are often our students’ favorites because they effectively integrate theory and practice and illustrate the messy ways in which discipline-based boundaries blur in the real world.
And it is common for PC business faculty members to collaborate on research projects, such as the one finance professor Dr. Liu Wang and I recently published in the journal Corporate Governance. It uses statistical methods drawn from biology and health sciences and combines insights from the fields of psychology, economics, management, and finance.
Not only did this project cross disciplinary boundaries, but it was very personal for me given my own career trajectory. We analyzed the results of 193 previous studies to gain a more precise understanding of the role board gender diversity plays in corporate performance. This study corroborates the idea that downside risks to corporate performance – such as those related to misconduct – are less likely when boards are more diverse. At the same time, there is no evidence that gender diversity has a negative impact on innovation and corporate growth. There is a timely element to this work, as women across all business sectors continue to prove themselves and grow into senior leadership roles, while corporate leaders are examining board composition and focusing on new and continued growth strategies. And then there are continued examples in the news, such as the recent report on the pervasiveness of a toxic culture at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, demonstrating beyond a doubt the paramount need for continued attention to board composition. Evidence-based studies like ours can be useful in affecting change.
This research – and the cross-disciplinary integration illustrated in dozens of other similar projects involving business school faculty members, has a real impact on our students’ academic experiences. Our students benefit from direct contact with professors whose expertise and creativity lead to new discoveries and insights and to more engaging ways of teaching.
Interdisciplinarity is also reflected in another aspect of PC’s ambitions for the next decade, the desire to leverage our reputation related to athletics as an element of strategic growth. As an early and high-profile example, are developing a new business school graduate program in sports administration that emphasizes rigorous instruction in finance, law, marketing, ethics and data analytics. The kick-off event for this program will be a Dean’s Symposium event in the fall featuring Rich Gotham, a 1986 Providence College marketing graduate and the president of the Boston Celtics. Rich has long been a School of Business advocate and advisor, including recently concluded meritorious service on the Board of Trustees. Banner 18 has a Providence College imprint, and we could not be more proud.
Thank you for your continued interest in the School of Business, and best wishes for an enjoyable summer.
Sincerely,
Sylvia Maxfield, Ph.D.
Dean
