In teaching about business, economics, and management of organizations, the emphasis at Virginia Wesleyan is not on telling and training students in "how to do" business, economics, or management, but is definitely about:
- Conveying ideas about "how to do" (including, most importantly, ideas about how to do learning),
- Facilitating the examination of attendant values surrounding those ideas.
Thus, our subject matter is taught as a "liberal art" (actually, as a "liberating" art) in that we strive to:
- Enhance the creative and critical thinking skills of students to enable their meaning-making,
- Enhance their communicative skills so they have a useful avenue to validate what meaning they have made.
About the Liberal Arts Management Program (LAMP)
Let us make something clear from the start. Virginia Wesleyan does not offer a major in business, nor a major in accounting, nor one in economics. We hold no such narrowly prescribed notions of undergraduate education. We believe narrowness ultimately inhibits growth, and undergraduate education should be about growth.
Though we teach about business and commercial activity, provide learning in management skills, and teach the tools for thinking about systems provided by the economics and accounting disciplines, our emphasis is on the broader notion of leveraging the intellectual and emotive power of individuals to make meaning of their lives and their surroundings---providing the basis for success in any future vocational choice.
We cherish our placement within the context of a "liberal arts" education, and wish to intentionally challenge students to think more broadly. We purposefully use that term in conjunction with "management" to name OUR MAJOR, the LIBERAL ARTS MANAGEMENT PROGRAM (LAMP).
We believe that management, which we see as a more encompassing label than business administration, is an "applied" discipline. It is learning how to successfully manage, which requires broad knowledge gained from many academic "fields". Beyond just that knowledge, however, management requires that it be used to generate ideas and value-based visions, then these ideas and visions must be translated into action through skills for effective stewardship of resources available to organizations, whether profit-making or not, whether the family business or the "political organization" for the planet.
We invite you to join with us in a major that can not only provide this broad base in conjunction with the general studies curriculum, but can also facilitate, through our faculty and your fellow students, the development and enhancement of the fundamental skills necessary for success in managing in any type or size organization.
Though the emphasis is on breadth and fundamental skills, the flexibility of our major does allow you to concentrate your studies at the upper class level toward a specific career interest.