Major Maps

Associate of Science: Business Administration

Completing the associate degree will waive VCU's general education requirements.

The activity of management is concerned with setting an organization’s strategic goals and formulating processes to achieve them. Managers carry out their administrative roles by handling such duties as preparing and administering budgets, planning and directing operations, and coordinating employees’ activities.

The concentration in human resource management gives students a broad overview of the knowledge base and applications used by professionals in the field. Students receive exposure to a wide range of topics reflecting the body of knowledge recommended by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) standards for coursework in HR.. After graduation, students are prepared for employment in the public or private sector as human resource management generalists or as specialists in human resource management functions such as recruiting, compensation management or benefits administration.

The management/business administration concentration provides students with a broad-based study of management and other business disciplines. The course options in the curriculum give students flexibility in developing a program of study that can lead to a variety of entry-level positions in private and public organizations.

Human resource management is a major functional area of all businesses and includes employee recruitment and selection, training and development, employee relations, compensation and benefits, performance evaluation, and human resource planning. Individuals working in human resources undertake a full range of activities related to attracting and selecting employees to work in an organization, motivating and facilitating high performance, and retaining employee talent. Decisions made in organizations about how to structure jobs, who to hire, how to reward them contribute directly to organizational effectiveness and a firm’s competitive advantage. These processes can be applied in small, medium, and large firms as well as non-profits. Early career opportunities typically include compensation analyst, employee benefits specialist, human resource assistant, human resource manager, employment recruiter, employment interviewer, and training and development specialist. Later stages may see transitions into senior management positions including chief human resource officer.

The management/business administration concentration crosses all areas of business and as such prepares you to have many choices for a career path upon graduating.  Important skills such as communication, leadership, decision making, data analysis, and strategic thinking are developed in this concentration and are critical for all types of business careers.  Typical managers address a wide variety of problems: financial, operational, human, legal, and political, on a routine basis.  Private, public and government agencies all require employees with strong management skills. Typical titles upon graduating include account manager, business analyst, management trainee, sales representative, and recruiter. Because the business administration degree provides a broad business background, it’s important for students to pursue internship and externship experience to gain depth and specialization in their future fields of work.

The management/international management concentration provides a firm grounding on all aspects of business coupled with concentrated study on international topics including international management, international marketing, and international financial management.  This concentrating extends your knowledge of business to the global arena.  Students often combine this degree with study abroad opportunities or participation in the International Consulting Program.  You will be prepared to take entry level positions such as account managers, business analyst or management trainees in international divisions of U.S. companies, and for careers in government agencies involved with international trade, and in nonprofit organizations.

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about the mechanics of how to start and grow a business (although you’ll certainly pick up some of those skills in the program). Rather, it is a mindset that enables you to seek opportunities, take risks, recover from failure, leverage your resources, and overcome obstacles to push an idea to implementation or to solve a difficult problem. Students in the entrepreneurship concentration develop an understanding of the whole entrepreneurial process, from the initial idea generation to the launch of a new business or social venture. They develop strong research skills, learning how to analyze markets for potential opportunities, and also develop the ability to identify and acquire resources needed to start new ventures. So, while entrepreneurship may mean starting a new business for some of our graduates, entrepreneurial careers can be found in just about every field where there are opportunities for creating new products, services, and other innovations. Most of our graduates will in fact go to work for traditional companies, applying the entrepreneurial mindset and complementary skill set needed to provide creative solutions to organizational problems.  Job titles of recent graduates include project manager, workflow coordinator, customer logistics manager, business analyst, sales representative, and VP of Strategy & Business Development.

Traditional supply chain programs educate students on how to interact with suppliers and customers to meet their needs and may work in careers in procurement, operations and logistics.  The SCMA department prepares students for these traditional roles but integrates these areas with analytics so as to produce students who use data to make more informed decisions aimed at improving systems, lowering costs, and enhancing firm performance.