Curriculum Overview

The undergraduate curriculum integrates core management competencies, key business disciplines, and the arts and sciences into foundation, intermediate, and advanced courses exposing students to business and liberal arts throughout all four years. Additionally, the curriculum breaks down the barriers between disciplines by emphasizing an integrated, holistic approach to learning. Babson's learning goals are introduced and reinforced as students progress through the undergraduate curriculum.

The Foundation Program lays the groundwork, raising students’ abilities to formulate, explore, and reflect critically. In the second year, students proceed to the Intermediate Program, which adds breadth, elaborates issues, and exposes them to more disciplinary and interdisciplinary analyses. The Advanced Program challenges students to think about issues with increased confidence, independence, and creativity.

Foundation Program

Including business and arts and sciences courses, the Foundation Program gives students the skills and knowledge on which the rest of their Babson education will be built. The program includes the Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship course, a yearlong immersion into the world of business. The Foundation Program also includes the unique history and society and arts and humanities courses that introduce the analytical and cognitive skills necessary to succeed in the arts and sciences.

In the Foundation Program, Babson students also study a wide range of topics including quantitative methods, science, business law, accounting, and rhetoric. They participate in a weekly First-Year seminar designed to address their transition to college life through topics such as teamwork, communication skills, study skills, and community living. In the spring semester, students participate in the Coaching for Leadership and Teamwork program, designed to help students develop their leadership, teamwork, decision-making, listening, oral communication, and ethical decision-making skills through alumni feedback.

Intermediate Program

The Intermediate Program covers the entire sophomore year and the first semester of the student’s junior year. The program’s management core is an integrated series of courses called Organizing for Effective Management and Managing in a Competitive Environment. This integrated management core offering incorporates accounting, economics, finance, marketing, organizational behavior, and operations. A team of professors from these disciplines teaches the key facets of business and how they relate to and interact with one another. Through carefully developed case studies, students examine actual business problems. In addition, students gain real-world experience by studying, touring, and making presentations on local companies.

As students progress through the Intermediate Program, the study of arts and sciences becomes more sophisticated. At this level, students develop their knowledge in history and the social sciences, literature and visual arts, and culture and values. In addition, students complete intermediate-level courses in quantitative methods and science. Students also participate in an advanced version of the Coaching for Leadership and Teamwork Program.

Advanced Program

In the Advanced Program, students are free to expand and fine-tune learning goals as they reflect on their career and life goals. Each student will complete a management capstone course in which they learn the fundamentals of strategy while integrating all of the other business disciplines. In addition, students also will take courses in advanced management and liberal arts electives as well as participating in field-based experiences such as an internship or consulting experience. A series of concentrations, many of which are integrated and cross-disciplinary, can guide the students’ choices in this part of the program.