Message from Dr. Michael Weber | Dean, Barney Barnett School of Business & Free Enterprise
The Barney Barnett School of Business and Free Enterprise has doubled in size since our initial AACSB accreditation in 2013, and we now have approximately 850 students and 30 full-time faculty. With your support, we continue to achieve great outcomes and recognitions, as our 2023 rankings reflect. Poets & Quants rank our undergraduate program #44, just ahead of schools such as the University of Arizona and Carnegie Mellon. The MBA program is receiving its fair share of accolades as well, being ranked #35 by The Princeton Review and #51 by U.S. News & World Report. These types of rankings are a reflection of our faculty’s commitment to excellence, and their focus on providing an engaged and experiential learning environment. Student outcomes also influence our rankings, such as our 2022 graduating class employment rate of 98.57% within three months of graduations.
The faculty have developed a variety of new programs and innovations that are enhancing the learning experience for our students. With the support of the FSC Board of Trustees, we have launched a Student Managed Investment Fund and started an Investment Club, so that the finance and accounting students get hands-on experience with investing real money. The Investment Club meets in our trading room, which is equipped with 12 Bloomberg terminals, providing real-time data for investment decision-making. Students majoring in finance or participating in the investment club have the opportunity to earn Bloomberg Certifications. We have also been adding new majors and minors, such as Business Analytics, to meet the growing employer demand for analysts. FSC is located in the middle of a major logistics hub in Central Florida, so we also added a new minor in Supply Chain and Logistics.
Our Center for Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship offers a Seed-to-Scale program for all entrepreneurial-minded students. This is an innovative business incubator designed to deliver experiential and entrepreneurial education to students from all majors. In the past year, the CFEE has supported more than 50 student-based startup projects/businesses, and it has helped students win more than $60,000 in startup funding at various competitions or VC based events.
We hope you will consider making a contribution toward the continued growth and accomplishments of the students and faculty in the Barney Barnett School of Business and Free Enterprise. Contributions to the Dean’s Excellence Fund help support student travel and participation at national conferences, and they also help support faculty-student research projects. Funding scholarships is always a critical need so that we can attract, retain, and support the best and brightest students. Please consider supporting the CFEE’s Plant the Seed Fund, which provides micro-grants for student-based start-up projects in the discovery/seed phase. We are always happy to discuss the many ways that your generosity can help our students and faculty continue to achieve great outcomes and accolades.
Areas to Support
