Innovation and Improvement of Curricula for OM and IT Majors in Colleges of Business through Industry Engagement

We propose innovations and improvements of curricula for majors in Operations Management (OM) and Information Technology (IT). New methodologies for optimizing curricula for OM and IT consider the latest needs of employee markets served by these two majors. A holistic, learning-centric approach seeks to increase the capacity of OM and IT students to achieve the future they want. Overlooked subject areas for these curricula often include soft skills, change management, systems thinking, and testing, among others. We use the paradigm of the supply chain to suggest how industry engagement can influence OM and IT curricula. Such content could then be expanded over more than just four collegiate years by including OM and IT course content in high school curricula. We suggest a methodology for employer-driven valuation/grading of every potential and actual course in the OM and IT curricula. We take a holistic, systemic view that will help stimulate and pilot new ideas for OM and IT curricula.