So You Want To Run an NFL Football Team…An Honors Interdisciplinary Project

Abstract

“How does one challenge bright young minds to explore mundane business topics?” A difficult question at best. Once every few years two of us (Boyer and Yermish) are faced with this challenge as we prepare for our two semester course, “The Business Entity: A Systems Approach”, taught within the St. Joseph’s University undergraduate honors program. The course is intended for non-business majors looking for some insights into business concepts. This sequence is part of the honors distribution requirements for these select students. It is not enough to teach them business fundamentals; we must make these concepts vibrant with experiential exercises. We must also be sure they have mastered those critical basic concepts without the boredom of incessant lecture. With these challenges in mind we have formulated a course sequence that mixes self-directed text-book study, experiential exercises and a major semester-long project. It is this semester project that is the focus of this paper.