Calvin Coolidge said it best. "The business of America is business." Inventing, producing, selling, buying, investing. It's what we do and we do it brilliantly.

If you're considering a career in business -- whether your aim is to run your own enterprise, influence decision making in a major company, or improve how commerce is done -- you can find a program in Southern's School of Business that will lead you to your goal. And in the process, you'll discover meaningful ways to contribute to the community you live in.

Southern students work hard in the classroom, learning a wide range of theory and business operations. They reinforce that hard work by going into area businesses to put their learning into practice through enriching internships.

And because the needs and concerns of Connecticut's communities and businesses are important to Southern faculty, graduates enter the business world enthusiastic about making a positive difference to life in their region.

The School of Business produces some of the best prepared, most energetic graduates in the field. Many have established successful businesses in the area. Those businesses now provide current students with mentors, hands-on instruction, career contacts, and financial support -- in a word, opportunity.

For Southern business students, professional training is built on a broad intellectual foundation of the liberal arts. The School of Business is committed to a comprehensive education emphasizing the adaptability, innovation, and creativity necessary for a worthwhile and successful career.

Following is a selection of some of the specialized study opportunities available to motivated students at Southern.

This four-year program for academically outstanding, incoming students features a series of eight interdisciplinary courses centered around challenging questions and themes and designed to develop exceptional critical thinking and writing skills. Students accepted to the Honors College experience a strong sense of community as they go through the rigorous program together. The capstone of the Honors College experience is the senior year Honors thesis or creative project. The majority of students who complete the Honors College program do so on full Presidential Merit scholarships.

This program gives students an opportunity to earn course credit through paid employment before graduating. Advisers match students' credentials and career goals with the needs of potential employers. Students have the opportunity to try out career options and gain valuable work experience. Some of the employers who have hired Cooperative Education students from Southern are Yale-New Haven Hospital, Pratt and Whitney, Pitney Bowes, Brooks Brothers, and the Walt Disney Company.

Rather than pursue a traditional major, the highly focused students in this program combine a number of established minors -- or design their own interdisciplinary minors -- to create a unique and innovative educational experience that meets their own academic, personal, and career goals. Students majoring in elementary education and elementary/special education may choose Liberal Studies as a subject-area major. Minors may be pursued in any subject area except those offered by the School of Education. (For more information, contact the School of Extended Learning.)

Many graduates earn advanced degrees in their disciplines or in fields like law, medicine, and business. In fact, Southern's innovative MBA program offers a challenging range of graduate opportunity. (See page 8 for details.) Southern graduates also have gone on to study at universities across the country and around the world. In addition, they've continued their education in the high quality and rigorous programs offered through Southern's School of Graduate Studies. Among the Southern graduate program areas of particular interest to students who majored in business are journalism, psychology, public health, political science, social work, foreign languages, and sociology.

It's an educational rule of thumb: a quality MBA program often indicates that the faculty is doing the sort of advanced scholarship that makes undergraduate courses especially enriching.

Southern's MBA program is that kind of program. Ninety percent of courses in the School of Business are taught by full-time faculty with terminal degrees in their field. Students focus on three major areas: general theories and methods of basic business disciplines, functional skills like accounting, and the interaction of business and society. With flexibility in mind, Southern's program is taught in both full-time and part-time formats. And with the number of credit hours required to earn the degree reduced from 60 to 48, students can now graduate in as few as two years.

This is an exciting time for graduate programs in business administration because American corporations are spending $170 million per year on continuing education for their employees. They are beginning to see employees as not just workers but as "knowledge capital" that needs to be invested in wisely.

And Greater New Haven is an exciting area for the kind of mobile business career an MBA degree affords. The three largest pharmaceutical companies in the country are nearby and the biotech industry is blossoming here. Those companies are sending some of the most ambitious employees in business today to Southern for their graduate study.

The School of Business believes strongly that broader interaction between the faculty and the outside world enriches the experience of undergraduate students. Two new centers will give professors the experience they need to meet two important goals -- educating undergraduates about the local business environment and giving them a global perspective of business.

The Business Resource Center will be a direct link to the local business community, providing training programs, consulting services, and market research for area businesses. In effect, it will "bring the classroom into the community" by engaging faculty and students in projects that will benefit local businesses and provide participants with practical experience.

The Global Center arranges travel abroad programs for faculty. The center is currently working on projects that will take business professors to a Russian university to teach American Studies courses, to a university in Azerbaijan to help develop a business curriculum, and to a university in Romania to instruct business leaders on Western marketing principles.

Southern's department of economics and finance offers the only certified treasury management program in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, or Vermont. Because there are so few schools training students for such critical jobs as cash managers, debt managers, inventory managers, and credit managers, there is a lot of opportunity for qualified graduates. Professionals in the field command high salaries at the entry level. In addition, they enjoy the responsibility of managing large parts of a corporation's assets and often move up the ranks to chief financial officer of a company.