Honors Program

The School of Management (SoM) offers an honors curriculum comprising two courses. Together they provide students with an integrated, balanced and demanding learning experience.

The SoM Honors curriculum presents a unique learning opportunity combining rigor with practical experience. You will have the chance to learn in small classes that enable faculty to provide a more personalized learning environment. 

Over the course of two semesters, you will work with a team of highly motivated, high achieving students on a “challenge” proposed by a nonprofit organization.  The challenge will be an organizational/managerial problem faced by the nonprofit organization. Why nonprofit organizations?

• Nonprofit organizations are complex organizational environments where two sets of objectives (economic and social) coexist;
• Nonprofit organizations can have an immediate benefit from improved managerial and organizational processes;
• Nonprofit organizations are important for our community in San Jose and beyond: contributing to their success is meaningful to all of us!

In the Fall each team analyzes the organizational context and comes up with initial ideas on how to address the identified issues; during the Spring each student team refines and implements the solution (or a prototype of it) in the nonprofit organization.

The Business Honors Program will help you grow into more flexible and rigorous thinkers, and provide valuable experience dealing with real business problems. Completing the program will certainly set you apart from other students in the job market. But we hope that it will do more than just get you a good job; we hope that the experience will be of value to you in your professional lives for many years to come.

Find out more...

• The Curriculum

  • The SoM Honors curriculum comprises two courses:

    Honors Seminar (Bus 169A)

    This course introduces students to the common approaches that social scientists use to understand groups and individuals in organizations. The object of the seminar is to broaden students’ understanding of organizations, organizational life and the way organizations function by focusing on key research methods and topics in organization and management. A major objective is to improve students' analytical thinking and data analysis skills, as part of preparation for graduate school, law school or a management career. The course covers research approaches such as interviews, observations, surveys, and design thinking. It also covers topics such as diversity, cooperation, culture, power, politics and resource dependency. Students are expected to immediately apply concepts and approaches to the analysis of a real organizational problem. Student teams will work with nonprofit organizations to provide a rich analysis of a specific organizational challenge and a preliminary set of solutions that will be further elaborated during the second semester.  

    Honors Practicum (Bus 169B)

    This course provides an applied practical experience under the supervision of a faculty member. This will involve working as part of a team of students with a nonprofit company. Using the insights from the analysis conducted during the Fall semester (Bus 169A), students will propose, refine, and implement recommendations for the managerial effectiveness of nonprofit organizations. Participation in the project will be unpaid. The teams will meet once a week with the supervising faculty member.

    While Bus 169 A and B projects are normally performed in teams of two-to-four SoM students, they may also be asked to participate in cross-functional teams with other Business Honors Program students. Information for prospective sponsors can be found at the Business Honors Program web pages.

    In the past, Bus 169A and B students have worked on projects for nonprofits and government agencies, including City of San Jose, Eclipse Foundation and SolarTech. They have also worked for a range of nationally known companies, including Accenture, Barnes & Noble, Cisco, IBM, Nike and Oracle. 

    For more information on these courses, please contact Assistant Professors Elisa Mattarelli or Matthew Maguire for details.

• Application Requirements

  • In addition to the college-wide minimum honors admission requirements (GPA, coursework), each department has its own requirements. Prior to enrollment in the SoM honors program, applicants are expected to:

    Have completed Bus 160 or Bus 161A; Bus 161B is recommended but not required;

    Have passed 100W with a C or better;

    Have completed at least nine units of upper division courses in the College of Business; and

    Provide a reference from at least one SoM faculty member, to be collected during the application process.

    Application Essay Topic

    The application form will ask you to submit an essay of not more than 500 words on a topic requested by each department. The SoM essay topic is: “Discuss the best and worst grades you have earned in business courses you have taken at SJSU and explain why.”

    Completion of prerequisites

    The admission of students who would not meet admission requirements until the end of the semester may be deferred until final semester grades become available. While students are expected to follow the recommended sequence of upper division courses in their concentration, exceptional students may be admitted contingent on concurrent enrollment in a prerequisite course.

• Application Process 

  • Applying in Fall or Spring

    Except in unusual circumstances, you are expected to complete Bus 169A prior to enrolling in Bus 169B. Although new students will be admitted in both the fall and spring semesters, students are highly encouraged to apply in the spring in order to begin the program in the fall semester.

    For SoM students, applications to start the sequence in the spring semester are normally accepted only for students graduating in the next two semesters, and the admissions criteria are usually more strict than for students entering the program in the proper sequence.

    Most students are only eligible to apply to the program in April of their junior year. In past years, otherwise qualified students have been turned down because they missed this key deadline.

    If you are not sure whether (or when) you are eligible to apply for the Business Honors Program, feel free to contact one of the honors faculty.

    An information night for prospective students is held each semester.  To find the date and time for the current semester please visit: www.sjsu.edu/cob/students/sbona-honors/index.php

• Study Abroad (principally International Business students)

  • We know that some SoM students (particularly International Business majors) choose to study abroad for one or more semesters. Some of them have joined the honors program.

    However, admissions to the Business Honors Program is based primarily on upper division B.S.B.A. courses completed at the SJSU College of Business, and the recommendation of a SoM faculty member. You may need to carefully schedule the courses you take before you leave SJSU — including requesting a recommendation before you leave — or plan for one semester of eligible courses after you return from studying abroad.

An open house for prospective students from all concentrations is normally held 2-3 weeks prior to the application deadline; see the Business Honors Program home page for specific dates.