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Southern Man
Fresh from Florida, new SCSU business dean Kraft eyes a national reputation for a school on the rise
Last month Kenneth L. Kraft assumed the deanship of the School of Business at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven. A native of Baltimore, Karft most recently was associate dean of academic affairs and a professor of management in the School of Business & Entrepreneurship at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. He earned bachelor's master's and doctoral degrees in business at the University of Maryland.
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Business New Haven
8/9/1999
By: BNH
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Does the School of Business encompass both graduate and undergraduate programs?
Correct. I am the dean of both graduate and undergraduate programs for the School of Business, which involves all of the functional areas of business - accounting, economics, finance, management, marketing. We have an undergraduate program and we have a graduate M.B.A. program.
How many students are there in each?
We have about 50 students in the M.B.A. program, and we have about 1,000 students in the undergraduate program.
How about faculty?
We have about 39 faculty positions here in the School of Business.
You came here from Florida. What made you choose Southern?
It seems like a school that has great potential. While it seems not to be terribly well-known in the community, it has the potential to be a major asset to southern Connecticut.
When you were hired, what was the mandate communicated to you by the administration?
My understanding is that the focus is to improve the overall quality and performance of the School of Business, and to do that by a number of different things. One is to take a look at how we can continuously improve our processes and our performance. We want to get to and achieve performance on the cutting edge of business schools; we'd like to do that through exploration and experimentation. We'd like to achieve national recognition - or improved national recognition - for our M.B.A. program, and for the whole school as well. I'd just like to think that our crowning jewel for the whole School of Business is the M.B.A. program, so it should be taking the lead in gaining national recognition for the school. A very important part of what I hope to do here is to globalize the School of Business.
What does that mean?
That means to spread the word around to Connecticut businesses and to other parts of the world, and to bring a greater awareness of global opportunities to this region.
Your academic background is in strategic planning. Is there an existing strategic plan for the School of Business itself?
There has been a process in place; I think there are ways to improve it. Of course, as a new dean I would like to go through a review process, one that involves all of our major constituencies: not just professors - although they are very important, because they are the excellence that we present to both our students and to the community - but also, staff, administrators, students, parents, alumni, employers, government agencies, special-interest groups. All of those folks, I think, need to be involved with how we develop our shared vision of our responsibility to academics in general and to the community both nationally and locally.
How would you characterize the School of Business' niche right now among the entire panoply of business schools? Where does Southern fit in today?
I think it has numerous advantages. One is its location in southern Connecticut. It's a fabulous area in all of the world. It's close to New York, so it has access to many of the large businesses. It has a regional mission to serve the businesses in this area, and even to connect the businesses in this area to other businesses here and outside the area. So it's location is certainly critical to our strategic thinking.
Does the school currently have more part-time or full-time students, and where in your view should the emphasis be?
Our program at the moment is a full-time program. In conjunction with the faculty I would like to open a discussion about how we can better serve the community, and believe that part of that discussion will involve our ability to deliver a superior part-time program.
So that will be open to discussion.
I expect it will be a very important part of our strategic-planning process, to talk about what we want to do as a next step with the M.B.A. program.
One of the things Yale has for so long been criticized for is that its graduates traditionally don't stay in and around New Haven to start new businesses and enrich the economic life of the community, unlike in places such as Cambridge, Mass. and Palo Alto, Calif. Have you look at how many SCSU graduates stay here and start businesses, and would that be a useful yardstick to measure how well the school is preparing students to be entrepreneurs?
I think that's a criterion that's certainly of interest to measure. But all in all, what we want to do is to produce good managers and leaders who can work in industries that are already here as well as to start new businesses. Historically, to the best of my knowledge, this has not been a school of entrepreneurship, specifically; the training has been aimed at serving the community by producing people who can run businesses and make the decisions in businesses of all sizes.
Ought businesses to teach entrepreneurship more than most of them now do?
I believe [entrepreneurship] is one thing all managers and administrators should know something about. So yes, in the sense that I'm not sure the best way to produce an entrepreneur is to put them through an undergraduate and graduate program in something called 'entrepreneurship.' I think much of that comes from the initiative of individuals. But I think the skills set that all managers should have should involve creativity, innovation and those things that contribute to successful entrepreneurial behavior and, perhaps even more important, entrepreneurial thinking.
Do you as part of your mission to talk with the business community and here what they have to say about what they need from business-school graduates?
Absolutely. I am beginning that process already. I am hoping to build an advisory board for the School of Business, and I would like to work closely with Carol Martin, who is our brand-new vice president for institutional advancement to strengthen the relationship between the university as a whole and the business community.
Aside from what you just mentioned, how do business-school deans generally stay on top of what graduates really need to function effectively and productively in the 'real world'? Because those needs are continually evolving.
Yes, they are. One of the ways for us to stay 'fresh' on the issue is to continue to have those conversations with people who are in business. One of the things we do in the M.B.A. program is to bring in practitioners to do presentations, lectures and speeches to students in the program. Another way to develop their skills is to have them do practical projects that they apply to real businesses. That's one of the most important things we try to accomplish in the M.B.A. program.
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