Love School of Business 2026-2031 Strategic Plan

Approved by the LSB faculty April 28, 2026

Mission

To be leaders in the design and delivery of transformational educational experiences achieved through engaged learning, excellence in inclusive teaching, mission-driven applied and pedagogical scholarship and service, with a rigorous program of study that produces graduates who are able to provide principled leadership in the local and global community.

Vision

We cultivate ethical, professional, and innovative problem solvers with the vision that our graduates will lead purposeful, extraordinary lives with the skills and aspiration to make the future better for the organizations and communities in which they serve.

  • Ethical 鈥 We cultivate ethical leaders and innovators who approach problem-solving with integrity, humility, and thoughtful judgment. By developing a strong understanding of their responsibilities and personal values, we develop graduates who will transform their organizations and build a stronger future in a rapidly changing world.
  • Professional 鈥 We prepare students to be analytical professionals who are critical thinkers and sharp problem solvers with strong business acumen and common sense. Our graduates are AI confident, tech-savvy, organized, competent and work-ready – bringing relevant experience, skill, and reputation to make a meaningful impact at their workplace.
  • Innovative 鈥 We cultivate creative and curious innovators who approach problem-solving with a willingness to learn, adapt and navigate ambiguity. Through strong communication, collaboration and engaged leadership, they work as team players to turn bold ideas into meaningful progress.

Values

Excellence

We believe in the value of intellectual curiosity, rigor, critical thinking, and a shared commitment to excellence in teaching, mentorship, scholarship and service that makes a difference in the lives of our students and our community. We foster a community of accountability and support that allows all members of our community to define their goals and grow with intentionality.

Collaboration

We believe that the best solutions come from diverse and inclusive environments where all members of the community can effectively contribute ideas and engage in respectful and thoughtful dialogue. We therefore foster a culture of service and collaboration and value stewardship, honesty and fairness and we strive to ensure that these values guide our words and actions.

Future Orientation

We believe in centering our future, both within the LSB and the broader world, in our decision-making. We develop innovative curricula, research and community programs to address current and emerging needs beyond the walls of our program. We believe deeply in the transformative value of the liberal arts combined with innovative, cutting-edge business education in providing the skills, values and vision necessary to tackle meaningful challenges in a rapidly changing global environment. It is with that intention and focus that we all contribute meaningfully to the world鈥檚 most pressing problems.

Goals

I. Industry Engaged Experiential Edge | Boldly Elon: LEARN

Ensure every LSB graduate gains real-world, AI-integrated experience and the human, technical and analytical skills employers value most.

Objective 1: Institutionalize a school-wide, employer-validated competency model that defines, measures and continuously advances the future-ready capabilities of every LSB graduate.

Action Items:

  1. Define, embed, and regularly evaluate a shared LSB competency framework aligned with employer expectations across the business core, majors, and graduate programs, including ethical judgment, AI fluency, analytical reasoning, entrepreneurial thinking, technical skills and professional development and communication.
  2. Implement systems to track, validate and communicate competency attainment (e.g., portfolio, skill transcript, badges) across undergraduate and graduate pathways.
  3. Align each program to build intentionally on the shared core with clear advanced, field-specific expectations and measurable outcomes that adapt as roles, tools and employer needs evolve.

Objective 2: Scale high-impact experiential learning across all academic pathways, ensuring every student graduates with demonstrable applied expertise.

Action Items:

  1. Expand and sustain high-impact experiential opportunities 鈥 co-ops, client and center-supported projects, case competitions, community-based learning, community partnerships, course-embedded and independent student research, consulting sequences, and challenge-based experiences 鈥 leveraging North Carolina as a home-base ecosystem while extending reach through regional, national, and global collaborations, with clear competency evidence and the supports needed to scale.
  2. Advance graduate practicum/capstone experiences tied to employers and centers (e.g., MBA consulting practicum, MSBA analytics practicum) that produce employer-ready deliverables and contribute to positive societal impact.
  3. Track participation and quality in experiential learning and support students in articulating the value of these experiences to employers.

Objective 3: Explore innovative, flexible, and credentialed learning pathways that strengthen workforce relevance and lifelong learning.

Action Items:

  1. Expand industry-recognized credentials, micro-credentials, and digital badges that demonstrate learner skills, including licensure-aligned pathways where relevant and emphasize practical, workforce-ready experiences.
  2. Broaden flexible learning pathways that support undergraduate, graduate, and alumni learners (e.g., accelerated 4+1/3+1 options, dual degrees, co-op pathways, cohort-based programs and flexible delivery models).

II. Team Excellence | Boldly Elon: THRIVE

Build a high-performing, industry-connected faculty and staff community recognized nationally for excellence in teaching, scholarship, mentorship and impact.

Objective 1: Design and implement a faculty and staff talent strategy that attracts, develops, and rewards excellence in teaching, applied scholarship, industry engagement and measurable societal impact

Action Items:

  1. Elevate LSB’s national research profile by prioritizing funding for high-quality, mission-driven applied and pedagogical scholarship, as well as scholarship aligned with societal impact focus areas.
  2. Increase support for professional development in AI-enabled teaching, analytics, leadership and innovation for faculty and staff.
  3. Invest in every staff member’s growth and professional development through AI-enabled workflow training, productivity tools, and clear advancement pathways that build skills, expand career potential and support well-being.
  4. Formalize mentorship structures, onboarding processes and access to professional development to ensure transparent career pathways and equitable opportunities for growth for faculty and staff.
  5. Implement coordinated recognition and communication strategies that highlight teaching excellence, applied scholarship, industry collaboration and student-mentored research, while strengthening internal transparency and coordination.
  6. Strengthen on-campus shared learning opportunities (e.g., brown bag lunches, CATL workshops, research community of practice, scholarship sharing sessions and works-in-progress forums).

Objective 2: Align hiring, workload, portfolio mix and resource allocation with strategic priorities to enable innovation, sustainable growth and institutional focus.

Action Items:

  1. Conduct a comprehensive capacity assessment aligned with strategy (enrollment trends, workloads, student-to-faculty ratios, benchmarking within Elon and against LSB peer and aspirant institutions).
  2. Conduct a strategic review of the undergraduate and graduate program portfolio to ensure alignment with market demand, enrollment sustainability and institutional priorities.
  3. Clarify roles, responsibilities and workload expectations through transparent structures and a shared operating model (e.g., a shared faculty and staff handbook or a student-facing fact sheet to improve clarity on roles).
  4. Align staffing, incentives and resources to strategic priorities.

Objective 3: Integrate teaching, scholarship, industry engagement and societal impact into a cohesive teacher-scholar-mentor model that differentiates LSB nationally.

Action Items:

  1. Integrate industry and community partners into faculty teaching, scholarship and mentorship (e.g., embedding leaders as teaching partners, center collaborators, curriculum co-designers and applied research partners), including those aligned with the school鈥檚 societal impact priorities.
  2. Develop opportunities and resources to support faculty in translating their academic research to practitioner and community audiences to broaden the reach of their research and connect disciplinary expertise to communities that can benefit from it.

III. Network-Powered Career Launch | Boldly Elon: CONNECT

Graduate ethical, innovative problem solvers with real-world experience, employer-valued skills and the network to launch purposeful careers.

Objective 1: Institutionalize a structured, multi-year career readiness pathway that equips every student to articulate and pursue a purposeful career direction with measurable milestones and outcomes.

Action Items:

  1. Develop a structured, multi-year career readiness experience (incorporating advising touchpoints, co-curricular programming, and curricular integration) aligned with academic progression that increases student engagement through structured milestones, early employer interaction and integrated ethical and professional skill development.
  2. Implement a career advancement model for graduate students aligned to degree pathways (e.g., executive communication, leadership presence, negotiation, career pivot support, technical interview readiness where relevant).
  3. Expand early opportunities for career exploration and sustain employer engagement across the student journey by institutionalizing structured touchpoints 鈥 events, course partnerships, mentoring and recruiting 鈥 that connect students to industry at increasing levels of responsibility.
  4. Launch a centralized system to track individual student career touchpoints and use employment outcomes and employer satisfaction to drive continuous improvement across undergraduate and graduate programs.
  5. Establish faculty enablement resources to integrate career development into courses (e.g., funding pool for site visits, corporate field trips, case competitions and employer-connected course experiences).

Objective 2: Design and institutionalize a coordinated alumni and employer network that expands access, deepens engagement and delivers measurable career outcomes across industries and regions.

Action Items:

  1. Build an integrated alumni, parents, friends and employer engagement strategy, including executives in residence, to strengthen mentorship and recruiting pipelines, provide structured access and opportunity for every learner, and cultivate rich regional and industry-specific alumni-to-alumni networks.
  2. Activate regional alumni and employer hubs in priority markets, starting in North Carolina with repeatable programming (mentorship, recruiting nights, micro-treks) that directly support internships, jobs and graduate outcomes.
  3. Convert alumni, trustee, friend and center relationships into sustained recruiting partnerships that expand industry representation and generate measurable hiring outcomes.

Objective 3: Position LSB as a preferred strategic talent partner and thought leader to employers, industry and community stakeholders.

Action Items:

  1. Use alumni, employer, government and community engagement 鈥 starting in North Carolina with a focus on Charlotte 鈥 to identify and source partners for centers, classes, and applied projects.
  2. Build the infrastructure and training for faculty and students to ensure that students are ready to execute high-impact, mutually beneficial applied projects and are able to measure and communicate outcomes of this work clearly.
  3. Highlight student and faculty applied work that addresses timely business and societal challenges and translate faculty and center work for practitioner and student audiences to increase visibility, accessibility and real-world uptake.
  4. Strengthen relationships with industry and community leaders through centers, community partners, executives in residence engagement and professional certificate collaborations.

IV. National Reputation & Distinction | Boldly Elon: RISE

Elevate the LSB鈥檚 national visibility and Top 30 momentum through a distinctive identity strategy, compelling storytelling and credible proof of our distinctive strengths and student outcomes aligned with Elon鈥檚 institutional brand.

Objective 1: Lead the development of the Elon Innovation and Technology Hub, a regional center for student learning and economic development to advance community partnerships and student experiential learning through a cross-campus hub for innovation, entrepreneurship and regional economic development.

Action items:

  1. Complete a comprehensive framework for the Elon Innovation and Technology Hub, establishing an on-campus, student-accessible center that integrates existing assets, including the Doherty Center for Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Maker Hub, Design Thinking Lab, and AI Sandbox into a unified cross-disciplinary ecosystem.
  2. Build the Hub鈥檚 regional innovation ecosystem by establishing strategic partnerships with the Alamance Chamber of Commerce, Alamance Community College and Burlington Economic Development, creating flexible co-working and event space serving 200鈥300 members and 150+ companies, and designing programming that fosters co-creation among students, founders, faculty, alumni and employers, positioning the Hub as Elon鈥檚 regional innovation front door.
  3. Develop a financially sustainable model for the Hub by securing initial funding commitments, piloting programming and student engagement initiatives, and establishing outcome-tracking measures (e.g., companies launched, jobs created, student participation, community partnerships) that demonstrate LSB鈥檚 and Elon鈥檚 national distinction as a model for university-driven regional entrepreneurship and economic development.

Objective 2: Build and sustain a communications and institutional identity framework to strengthen LSB鈥檚 national visibility, reputation and competitive positioning.

Action items:

  1. Scale an LSB marketing function aligned with ambition and resources, with clear governance, staffing, budget and oversight to execute LSB brand strategy.
  2. Define LSB鈥檚 distinctive position and messaging architecture (鈥淲hy the Love School of Business?鈥) and apply it consistently across communications and stakeholder engagement, including undergraduate and graduate portfolio positioning.
  3. Develop and sustain a strategic, audience-driven digital presence and content cadence tied to admissions, employer, graduate recruitment and alumni cycles across key channels.

Objective 3: Demonstrate LSB鈥檚 distinctive value through consistently reported outcomes, nationally recognized signature experiences and credible evidence of impact.

Action items:

  1. Develop a coordinated outcomes narrative that highlights students鈥 people-first capabilities, ROI, flagship experiences (AI integration, experiential learning, ethical leadership, societal impact, study abroad, fellows/cohorts), graduate program outcomes and faculty impact.
  2. Showcase alumni success and applied student and faculty work on timely business and societal challenges, including developing shareable cases and materials that other institutions can adopt, with a specific emphasis on our focused impact areas.
  3. Build a consistent cadence of outcome reporting and proof points (e.g., placement outcomes, experiential participation, employer satisfaction, graduate outcomes) to support brand credibility.

Objective 4: Integrate advancement and alumni engagement into a unified growth strategy that expands philanthropic investment, advocacy, and long-term institutional influence.

Action items:

  1. Define 3鈥5 signature giving priorities aligned to the plan (e.g., experiential learning, access/fellowships, career immersion, faculty innovation, societal impact initiatives).
  2. Build an LSB case-for-support and stewardship cadence that ties gifts to measurable outcomes and 鈥渇lagship鈥 stories.
  3. Activate alumni/friends in priority markets, starting with North Carolina, as ambassadors, mentors and hosts to expand engagement, employer connections, and philanthropic support.

Societal Impact

The Love School of Business believes business education is a force for good. We advance societal impact by applying our strengths in experiential learning, applied scholarship, analytics and human-centered leadership to address pressing economic, organizational and human challenges.

LSB recognizes a responsibility to close the gap between traditional business education and the ethical, civic and human-centered leadership demands facing organizations and society. As expectations for values-driven leadership intensify, business schools must be intentional in developing ethical judgment and character, not as an elective enhancement, but as a foundational element of professional preparation.

Over the next five years, LSB will concentrate its impact in three mission-aligned focus areas. In each, we will integrate curriculum, scholarship and engagement 鈥 ensuring that societal contribution is embedded in how we educate students, conduct research and partner with organizations and communities.

Focus Area 1: Ethical Leadership & Humanity in Business

Establish LSB as a nationally distinctive model for character-centered, experiential business education by embedding ethical reasoning and human-centered leadership across programs as a foundational expectation of professional preparation.

  • Expand Lessons from Leaders and executive engagement to bring real ethical tensions and decision contexts into student learning.
  • Advance the Center for Humanity in Business (CHB) as a signature model integrating character development with immersive professional residency experiences in Charlotte and North Carolina鈥檚 business ecosystem.
  • Strengthen ethics integration across courses through scalable cases, modules and faculty-ready tools.
  • Sustain and expand LSB’s nationally recognized human trafficking awareness and prevention initiative 鈥 leveraging faculty research, cross-sector partnerships and student engagement to address a critical societal challenge.

Impact will be demonstrated through expanded student participation in immersive leadership experiences, visible integration of ethics across programs and growing external recognition of LSB鈥檚 character-centered model.

Curriculum: 1.1.1, 1.2.1, 1.2.2, 1.2.3 Scholarship: 2.1.1, 2.3.1, 2.3.2, Engagement: 2.3.1, 聽 3.3.3

Focus Area 2: Financial Empowerment & Inclusive Opportunity

Expand financial empowerment as a pathway to economic mobility, professional access and community resilience by leveraging the Center for Financial Literacy to scale community-facing education and strengthen equitable access to mentorship, experiential learning and career pathways.

  • Scale repeatable financial literacy programs through sustained partnerships with schools, nonprofits and community organizations.
  • Expand student participation as peer educators and applied project teams, strengthening professional skills while broadening community benefit.
  • Increase structured access to mentorship, experiential opportunities and career networks so professional advancement is not dependent on informal relationships.
  • Support transparent growth pathways for faculty and staff to reinforce a culture of inclusive excellence.

Impact will be reflected in expanded program reach, increased student engagement, strengthened mentorship access and improved career outcomes across diverse learner populations.

Curriculum: 1.2.1, 1.2.2, Scholarship: 2.3.1, 2.3.2, Engagement: 3.1.1, 3.2.1

Focus Area 3: Community & Workforce Development

Position LSB as a catalytic regional partner advancing workforce readiness, organizational performance and small business growth by aligning student expertise, faculty scholarship and center capacity to address real community and workforce challenges across Burlington, Alamance County and surrounding regions.

  • Establish an Innovation Hub that builds an entrepreneurial ecosystem through partnerships with local organizations, small business support, workforce programming and applied student engagement.
  • Expand the Center for Applied Analytics and AI鈥檚 partnerships with regional employers to deliver data-informed performance improvement and workforce insights.
  • Increase community-engaged courses and applied projects that enable students to learn business by solving real community challenges.

Impact will be demonstrated through sustained regional partnerships, documented organizational improvements, expanded student participation in applied work and recognition of LSB as a trusted community partner.

Curriculum: 1.2.1, 1.2.2, Scholarship: 2.3.1, 2.3.2, Engagement: 1.2.1, 1.2.2, 3.2.1