WSB Venture Fund, Schemes and Mind Maps of Lease Finance and Investment Banking

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VENTURE

FUND

WISCONSIN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Career Pathways Pilot: Finance
• MS Degree Portfolio Enhancement
• WSB Venture Fund Overview
• Professional MBA Program Launch

WSB VENTURE FUND

Professional MBA

Program Launch

Professional MBA Program Launch | 3

Executive Summary

In pursuit of WSB’s priority to build a market-driven graduate portfolio, and long-term aspiration to become a global partner in Business Badger Lifelong Learning, we propose a revamp of our current Evening MBA degree to increase flexibility, expand enrollment, and pilot innovations in the delivery of a modular program built upon digital badges.

Enrollment in the Wisconsin Evening MBA Program has persistently declined over the past five years. While this decline generally mirrors the recent national trend of part-time MBA programs, many of our peer schools’ program enrollment are two to five times the enrollment of our evening program. This decrease in scale at WSB threatens program profitability and limits delivery of quality education to a broader population of lifelong education seekers. Our goal is to move enrollment numbers from the current enrollment of 60 students (two cohorts of 30) per year to three cohorts totaling 140 students per year by 2023.

While enrollment for our part-time program has decreased, inquiries for the program have increased significantly since 2014, and the target population within Madison is growing as well. Through a large sample survey of our target population, we confirmed our hypothesis that the features of our current structure, which include only face-to-face instruction, a general management degree, weekday evening classes, and three-year completion within a persistent cohort is the lowest desired structure for our target audience. This supports the premise that many millennials with strong career prospects are unable to commit to a three-year, face-to-face program because their career advancement

demands substantial travel and they see themselves as geographically mobile.

Professional MBA Program Launch

Professional MBA Program Launch | 4

Program Launch Investment

To create and launch the proposed Professional MBA program, we will need to create the blended curriculum of 50% online and 50% face-to-face, and the infrastructure from which to deliver it. This will require an estimated $500,000 in seed funding to prepare and launch the program along the following dimensions:

Course conversion: To convert courses that are currently offered 100% face-to-face, we will need instructional designers and faculty to work together to create an engaging and high-quality blended learning experience. Whether it is in developing video-based, narrated presentations, engaging discussion forums, or other online activities, an instructional designer provides technological support and pedagogical guidance to complement the content expertise of a faculty member.

Classroom infrastructure: We currently do not have enough classrooms that are equipped with the technology needed to facilitate interaction between the instructor and online learners. We will outfit at least two classrooms with the necessary video and audio technology to provide a high-fidelity experience for all students.

Technology training and support: Skilled individual(s) to provide training and support for a number of programs that will be leveraged to create an engaging virtual learning experience.

Learner support: We will need to invest in new resources to support our students virtually, providing training and help desk support.

Marketing expenses: It’s critical that we solidly promote the reformatted program in our core markets, and develop a recognized presence in currently underrepresented regions.

Building this program within our current structure to replace a former program allows us to leverage many of the same student support resources already in-house that support the existing evening and executive MBA programs. We anticipate the added costs of the program at full scale will be approximately $950,000 annually with an annual net profit of more than $2.5 million. See enrollment and revenue projections chart at the end of this document.

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Return on Investment

With sufficient support to build, launch, and market this new program, we anticipate the following returns:

Reach: We plan to launch the Wisconsin Professional MBA Program with its first class in Fall 2021 with a goal of 40 students. We plan to steadily grow our annual enrollment toward a capacity of 100 new students annually by fall 2026, thereby potentially increasing the reach of our previous program by a factor of 6, while also growing the diversity of perspectives we can bring into the classroom.

Revenue: Not only will the Wisconsin Professional MBA Program generate revenue that will enable it to sustain itself financially, this particular project will generate additional resources for overall school needs. At full capacity we project the program will generate more than $2.5 million in profit annually, a 400% increase on the program it replaces.

Reputation: The innovative modular structure of this program is unique among MBA programs and is our first foray into creating an accessible, customizable platform to facilitate lifelong learning. We believe the platform built for this program will create capabilities to innovate within many of our other programs and establish us as a player, perhaps even a leader, in lifelong learning.

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Milestones and Exit Strategy

With school and campus approvals now in hand, we will begin the process of building the program per the design specifications identified, namely redesigning the courses to suit a 50/50 blended online/live delivery. At the same time, we plan to begin marketing the new program this fall, aiming to enroll our first class in Fall 2021.

We plan to launch the program with a minimum of 40 (and up to 60) students in Fall 2021, allowing us to test and refine the model. We will begin to see a profit margin for the Professional MBA Program at a total enrollment of 100+ students, likely in its second year. Our ability to scale will rely on our ability to build a brand in Chicago. We anticipate growing the size of the entering class to 100 students by 2025. See enrollment and revenue projections table.

WSB VENTURE FUND

Career Pathways

Pilot: Finance

Career Pathways Pilot: Finance | 9

Career Pathways Pilot: Finance

Executive Summary

In May 2019, the Department of Finance, Investment, and Banking assembled a task force to enhance career pathways to support students who desire a career in finance. This task force was convened to respond to the following trends:

Increased demand from the finance industry for our graduates across many verticals, and most notably in niche areas such as investment banking, consulting, and sales and trading.

The recruitment of finance professionals has become increasingly competitive. As a result, the timeline for recruitment (and time for preparation) has shifted dramatically in the past 20 years, with the recruitment process beginning as early as sophomore year.

Student interest in a career in finance has increased dramatically as well. Finance is currently WSB’s largest undergraduate major with over 1,200 students in pursuit. Along with this demand, we find that students enter the major with a wide range of knowledge and experience related to the fields of finance.

An assessment of our current finance student experience included a review of our curriculum, coaching and support, student-led co-curricular opportunities, and administrative functions. This review identified the following gaps:

Curriculum sequencing and integration of learning: Our current curriculum, originally built for students who join the school as juniors, does not prepare students early enough to help them both explore and adequately prepare for a particular career path in sync with recruitment timelines.

Inconsistent and insufficient career coaching and support: Students have inconsistent preparatory experiences based on the finance path they are pursuing.

Lack of applied programming: Many of our competitors have integrated applied learning activities with curricular and career support, whereas WSB currently relies on student organizations to facilitate career treks and other applied learning activities, leading to uneven access and often lack of preparation for the majority of students who might want to pursue a particular path.

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Program Leadership

We are delighted that our former Director of Career Services for the Undergraduate Program, Jamie (Marsh) Macias, has agreed to step into the role of Finance Program Director, bringing deep expertise and relationships from her years working to place students in the finance industry. Jamie will be a member of the finance department and will partner closely with Department Chair Erwan Quintin and the rest of the faculty and instructional staff of the finance department.

Program Launch Investment

To launch the finance career pathway and strengthen our career placement outcomes, we request $750,000 spent over three years on the following investments:

$150,000: Support the new Finance Program Director with resources to create programming, mentoring, and coaching opportunities that help connect students with learning experiences and industry professionals throughout their student experience.

$450,000: Support the creation of new courses and co-curricular programming that will address increasing demand for finance majors and careers.

$150,000: Provide student experience funds to encourage all students to participate in experiential learning opportunities that will help them determine their career pathway and help them build the skills and network to successfully launch their career.

3. Enhance access to co-curricular experiences and develop finance

industry networks and experiences

Co-curricular experiences such as involvement in student organizations, career treks, case competitions, study abroad, and especially internships are critical components to a student’s learning. We aim to provide financial support that will enable all finance students to participate in multiple applied learning experiences, ideally starting in their freshman or sophomore year. To support this learning and create interesting applied experiences, we will identify new, creative ways to engage our alumni/ employer population in helping our students explore various career paths, prepare for their chosen path, and develop long-lasting networks.

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Return on Investment

With support to build and launch the finance career pathway, we expect the following returns:

Reach: Already the School’s largest major, we expect future growth of the undergraduate program to bring even greater numbers of students interested in pursuing careers in finance. Not only will these pathways help to expand our capacity, we will also be able to be more nimble in supporting students interested in emerging career paths within the industry.

Reputation: One of three major initiatives toward the WSB goal of offering a top 10 undergraduate program is enhancing career pathways for students, ultimately enhancing the placement success of our graduates. The finance department is the first to pilot this new approach to helping our students navigate their career path. Based on our learnings from the effort in finance, we anticipate developing a model that we can replicate in other majors as well. Ultimately, success in this area will mean increased placement rates (currently 93%) and starting salaries (currently averaging $68,000) for our graduates.

Revenue: While this program is not a revenue generator on its own, it is in support of growth in our undergraduate program over the next five years, which will generate more flexible revenue for the school to invest in innovation and expanding access.

Milestones and Exit Strategy

Our new Finance Program Director will be in place in September 2020. We will begin designing the Careers in Finance introductory course for launch in Fall 2021. We will use startup funds to launch innovations in coaching and applied learning space, especially to meet the need for virtual learning, coaching, and networking.

While the current pandemic will create new challenges in preparing and placing our students, we hope that our new pathways as well as investment in industry partnerships will begin to pay dividends and increase the number of students we are able to place in the finance field of their choice by 2023. After three years of funding, we expect the growth of the BBA will allow the finance department and School to absorb the ongoing costs for this program.

Career Pathways Pilot: Finance | 13

Executive Summary

New technologies and digital transformations are fueling a rising tide of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in today’s business environments. As a consequence, business professionals must continually upskill and reskill themselves to be resilient and adaptive. At the same time, technologies are catalyzing new educational models, presenting opportunities for accessible, flexible, and customizable means of learning and growth.

Business schools must respond to these transformational opportunities with nimble degree portfolios that offer on-demand modes of lifelong learning. These portfolios should address the skill needs of a diverse set of learners at varied points in their careers.

At the Wisconsin School of Business (WSB), we are well poised to respond to this demand. The reputational assets of our established programs combined with our strengths in applied learning build upon the multidisciplinary excellence of our campus and a deep bench of successful leaders among our alumni community. WSB will leverage these assets to establish leadership in emerging fields and transform the Business Badger Experience into a lifelong learning tradition.

MS Degree Portfolio Enhancement

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Expanding Our Portfolio of Applied Master’s Degree Programs

The WSB has grown new enrollment in our graduate portfolio by 36% over the last three years. With 358 students joining our programs in 2020, it is the largest entering cohort we’ve seen since the early 2000s. Our fulltime MBA had 96 students join its entering class in Fall 2020. We also enrolled 84 students this academic year in our portfolio of new master’s programs in business analytics, supply chain management, and real estate. Our early moves to launch one-year master’s (MS) programs have complemented growth and innovation in our MBA programs and have been in areas ripe for the taking.

Our MS programs serve many important strategic roles for the school. They attract a diverse set of students who will have opportunities to interact with and strengthen the broader WSB community. We will leverage these programs to attract high quality faculty who can build programs that tap into their expertise. In addition to offering undergraduates at UW–Madison new opportunities to differentiate themselves before joining the workforce, our MS programs can also serve as a pipeline to our MBA programs. Finally, the structure of one-year MS programs can serve as an excellent point of entry to partner globally with other UW–Madison schools and colleges on dual and blended degree offerings.

The immediate return on investment for our master’s portfolio is the opportunity to create new sources of revenue that we can then reinvest in the school to attract diverse and talented faculty, staff, and students. We aspire to scale our existing programs and add new, high-demand degrees to grow revenue for our full graduate portfolio from $7 million in 2020 to at least $12 million annually by 2025.

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Program Leadership

Enno Siemsen, associate dean of the MBA and master’s programs, has led the launch of our MS portfolio, including building the administrative and programmatic infrastructure and piloting initial programs. To allow Siemsen to turn his focus to our new Professional MBA Program launch, we plan to identify an associate dean of lifelong learning by June

2021. This new role will report directly to the dean, and will champion our portfolio of specialty master’s programs building scale and sustainability for the portfolio. The key responsibilities of this associate dean will be:

Oversee the building and refreshing of curricula along with the requisite applied learning experiences for new programs

Develop growth projections for specific master’s programs to achieve overall revenue goals

Champion digital and hybrid delivery models to scale programs in response to market needs for accessibility, flexibility, and personalization

Develop marketing and student acquisition strategies for the MS portfolio

Manage the administrative approval process to launch new degrees and courses

Program Launch Investment

We have had the opportunity to learn from the first few launches of MS programs in 2019 and also to capitalize on disruptions of 2020 to quickly understand the requirements to launch and grow a new graduate degree. In addition to confirming significant demand for one-year, applied master’s degrees that target specific disciplines, we are seeing interest in both broad programs like business analytics as well as specialized tracks within, including digital marketing, insurance analytics, and supply chain analytics. We’ve also learned that to achieve scale in the audiences we serve and create a sustainable program, we need to strengthen our platform for virtual learning by better equipping our instructors with the training, curriculum design, and facilitation tools to create a meaningful virtual learning experience. These important evolutions have crystallized the strategy and requirements for building out a sustainable portfolio of MS programs. We are seeking $750,000 in startup funds to launch and/or scale at least three MS programs. The startup costs to build, launch, and scale MS programs typically include:

Program leadership to develop curriculum and establish industry partnerships

Program marketing and scholarship funds to promote the new programs

Investment in virtual learning tools to facilitate an engaging learning experience, including resources to help instructors modify their courses for a virtual format and tools that help facilitate engagement including online discussions, manage group collaboration, and enabling students to gather feedback.