PROGRAM GROWTH
The College of Business and Public Administration actively pursues new programs to serve new audiences, as well as students at a distance. The department of Accountancy has developed a stage II proposal for the Masters degree in Accountancy.  This program is moving through the approval process and will be in place in the Fall of 2007.  Three other programs passed through the stage I process and will be followed by stage II proposals during the current academic year.  These programs include Sport Business, Supply Chain Management, and Human Resource Management.

We continue to expand our efforts on an international scale. In the 2005-2006 academic year, three students completed internships in Shanghai, China.  We have also enhanced our student exchange by bringing five University of Shanghai Science and Technology (USST) students to the UND campus to attend graduate school.  These students participated in internships provided by Ernst and Young in New York City over the summer of 2006.  Thus the exchange has taken on all aspects of a complete exchange.

Dr. C. Ray Diez reestablished our exchange with National Kaohsiung Normal University in Taiwan through his visit as part of his developmental leave in spring of 2006.  Dr. Assion Lawson-Body traveled with 10 UND students to Metz, France during the summer of 2006 in an exchange with ESIDEC.  We will continue this program during the summer of 2007.  And finally, CoBPA hired Fathollah Bagheri as the CoBPA International Programs Director to oversee other international business offerings in the College.  He is working closely with the CoBPA International Committee on this effort. 

Thanks to the financial assistance from Cargill, Inc., we were able improve the current educational experience for Information Systems majors. For example, an initiative to familiarize students with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, specifically SAP, will begin in the fall of 2005. The Cargill funding will continue to be shared between Computer Science and the BPA for this initiative. Ultimately, the desired result is to continue to support cooperative efforts between our groups to result in graduates from both programs having exposure to material from both business and computer science.

CoBPA OUTREACH GROWTH
The Government Rural Outreach (GRO) program is completing its third round of funding from the General Services Administration (GSA). Recently, the Shakopee Mdewakanton (Dakota) Sioux Community provided funding to extend the reach of this project.  The many rural communities and tribal reservations have been established for this project to make government services available at a distance in a secure environment.  There are four targeted groups in offering these services: Native Americans, farmers, senior citizens, and veterans. 

The Rural Service Delivery (RSD) initiative, in cooperation with the School of Medicine, is focused to enhance the delivery of health, social, and information systems in rural areas.  RSD has been declared as a Center of Excellence for UND and we also applied to have this center considered as one of the governor’s centers of excellence.  As a result of the RSD Initiative, the Turtle Mountain community has received over $2.1 million in Social Security income distribution due to the installation of video conferencing equipment.  Direct benefits of $700,000 were provided to community members as well as $1.4 million in third party reimbursements through Indian Health Services.  Furthermore, the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University, in cooperation with the Council for Excellence in Government, announced that the University of North Dakota’s Rural Service Delivery partnership with the Social Security Administration is one of the Top 50 Government Innovations for 2006.

Our non-academic units, the Center for Innovation and the ND Small Business Development Center (SBDC), continue our outreach by further connecting our faculty and students to the business community. The SBDC provides one-on-one consulting services to small businesses across the state and CoBPA is proud to be a partner with this program.  This year, the SBDC program served 896 clients, providing almost 7,000 hours of assistance.  Economic outcomes of this program involve close to $43.8 million in small business loans acquired by clients, which were used to purchase business assets, many of these in local markets.  In addition clients raised $9.1 million in equity capital.  The SBDC reports that 643 full time jobs and 510 part time jobs were created or retained in North Dakota, many of which are small businesses that access SBDC services.

The Center for Innovation fosters entrepreneur ventures by assisting faculty, student and regional entrepreneurs, and innovators with the infrastructure necessary to launch a business idea.  In 2006, the Center for Innovation helped secure over 60 angel investors to establish $1 million angel funds for the communities in Bismarck, Grand Forks and Fargo.  The angel funds are held and affiliated with RAIN Source Capital of St Paul, which is led by UND alumnus. The Center for Innovation also held its annual angel investor conferences and hosted Midwest Association of Seed & Venture Funds conference in Fargo in January 2006. A Center of Innovation benefactor also established a student-run Venture Fund as well as student internship for angel capital investing. UND is among 4 universities nationwide with a student-run venture fund. Over 20 student ventures were launched in 2005-06 working with Entrepreneur Director and Chair of Entrepreneurship.