The future: the only constant is change. The only certainty is uncertainty. So how do you prepare today for what might come tomorrow? In this introductory, interdisciplinary course unique to Excelsior University, you will learn through questions, not answers. You will challenge your prior assumptions, open your mind, and consider society s future dilemmas, progress, and crises. You will plan and question your own future your educational path, career trajectories, personal interests, ambitions, and mindsets. And you will build the foundational skills and flexibility of mind research and writing, critical thinking, argumentative reasoning, metacognition, and self-regulation to help you navigate the uncertainty and change of our future societies, workplaces, and selves. Note: This course must be completed with a grade of C or higher. Registration in this course is restricted to incoming students with fewer than 60 transfer credits. This course duplicates IND301 and CCS120. Credit for only one of these courses will be applied toward graduation. The Cornerstone cannot be completed in the same term as a Capstone course.

Information literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, interpret, and use information legally, ethically, and effectively. This course provides a broad overview of information literacy concepts, including the differences between academic and popular research methods, finding and evaluating sources, reading sources critically, writing with sources, and safely navigating information networks such as the internet. Students must complete information literacy within their first 13 credits at Excelsior.

In this interdisciplinary course, students will develop the analytical skills necessary to examine ethical issues in the workplace. Students explore conventional ethical theories and principles, develop ethical decision-making, and resolve common dilemmas. Students discuss the multiple challenges faced by professionals and identify ethical practices or codes that apply to each of their own professions.

This class provides students with foundational knowledge and skills to prepare them for academic and professional writing. By analyzing the work of other writers, students will learn to approach writing from a rhetorical and genre-based perspective. They will practice sentence- and paragraph-level writing, learning to revise and correct their own work. They will also work on finding, documenting, and effectively integrating sources into a research-based essay. Both traditional (textual) and multimodal (textual and visual) composition will be addressed.

This course will provide students with knowledge and skills to effectively communicate in global business environments. Students will identify and use computer technologies and social media tools for conducting interpersonal communications with diverse organizations. Additionally, students will develop and evaluate both written and oral business communications.

The goal of this course is to help students develop mathematical reasoning and problem solving skills that will serve them well in their lives both in and out of school. Topics will include the important real-world applications of measurement units, managing money, statistics in the media, the mathematics of voting, and mathematics in the arts and nature. Providing correct solutions to routine problems is not the goal; more important is the ability to communicate effectively about mathematical reasoning and to solve realistic, practical problems both collaboratively with other students and individually. This is a survey course introducing the student to a variety of mathematical topics. It does not prepare a student for future courses that require a knowledge of algebra (e.g. PreCalculus or Statistics).

This course develops data literacy and statistical thinking and essential skills for business process improvement. Topics covered include descriptive statistics and data visualization, distributions, sampling, Central Limit Theorem, estimation using confidence intervals, statistical inference, and single and multiple regression analysis.

This course offers an introduction to the major concepts, theoretical perspectives, research methods, and scholarship in sociology. Sociology is the scientific study of human social behavior, and this course examines several important sociological topics, including: culture; socialization; deviance; social inequality; social institutions; and social change. This course also explores various socio-historical and socio-cultural frameworks across the world, promoting an appreciation for unique cultural identities and institutions. Students will improve their analysis, understanding and interpretation of contemporary social issues in this rapidly changing world. This course encourages the practice of "doing" sociology through exploration of students' everyday social world, and the often invisible and taken-for-granted social forces that shape it.

In this course, students will not only begin to understand what accounting means, but they will further examine how important accounting really is. Accounting knowledge can be applied to any industry, at any level of the organization. As the business world has come under tremendous scrutiny, all business professionals are expected to have a general knowledge of accounting and are thus held much more accountable for their financial practices. Accountants are responsible for providing data that is used to determine the present and future economic stability of an organization. This course presents an interesting opportunity for working professionals to examine the fundamentals of basic accounting concepts, assumptions, and principles. The topics chosen in this course will benefit any student who is responsible for managing budgets, reading financial statements, or making business decisions. 

In this course, you'll apply psychological principles and theory to your everyday life.  In addition to foundational topics like psychology as a science, learning and memory, human development, and consciousness, you will learn about some more specific topics like stress and health, psychological disorders and therapy, and human sexuality. Concepts learned in this course can be applied in any career to better understand behavior, thought, and emotion. Note: This course uses lower cost interactive courseware instead of textbooks.  

This course is intended to help students develop an understanding of the process of identifying, measuring, analyzing, interpreting, and communicating information in pursuit of an organization's goals.  By the end of the course, students should be familiar with technical skills for solving problems such as the fundamentals of basic unit costs, cost flow management systems and processes, budgeting and performance measurement, and cost analysis and pricing decisions.  As a manager, students should be able to identify relevant information, the appropriate methods for analyzing information, and working together with a team of addressing global and ethical issues.  Students will be able to think on their feet and address real-world business issues.

The purpose of this course is to give the student an overview of current and emerging trends in science and technology so that s/he will be able to make informed decisions and be an informed consumer. The course will introduce the scientific method and terminology used in reporting scientific results. A survey of current topical science issues will be covered as examples. This course will also prepare the student to read accounts about scientific, technological, and medical advances in the press and assess the scientific conclusions presented.

Free elective credit may be earned in any field of collegiate study. Please contact your academic advisor to discuss course options.

This course helps students to develop their skill as public speakers and oral communicators. Designed to provide students with a supportive environment where they can  overcome the anxiety they may feel about public speaking, the class emphasizes techniques and practices for effective speech construction and delivery. Students will also develop critical thinking and listening skills. Students taking this course will need access to recording equipment for the purpose of creating podcasts, voiced-over PowerPoint presentations and videotaped speeches.

This course provides an analysis of key legal issues affecting businesses. There is an emphasis on the development of legal strategies to support the venture over its expected life cycle. This course also focuses on the legal environment of the United States. Students examine a series of real-world scenarios and apply the legal tools developed during the course to those cases.

Free elective credit may be earned in any field of collegiate study. Please contact your academic advisor to discuss course options.

Free elective credit may be earned in any field of collegiate study. Please contact your academic advisor to discuss course options.

Free elective credit may be earned in any field of collegiate study. Please contact your academic advisor to discuss course options.

Questions of ethics seem inextricably intertwined with business these days: Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Wells Fargo, and Harvey Weinstein. The manager in today s workplace, whether they are in the private or public sector, needs to understand the ethical climate in which they are operating and navigate a path that allows them to acknowledge, understand, and act appropriately when faced with an ethical dilemma. This course will encourage you to prepare for the ethical challenges that you might face, through an exploration of ethical theory and the way in which personal values and ethical behaviors impact the culture of an organization. On completing this course, you will gain a greater understanding of how ethical principles relate to organizations within which they operate and how the perception of ethics can impact an organization in terms of reputation, functioning, and performance.

In this course, we'll examine and analyze global business in its historical, theoretical, environmental, and functional dimensions. Our focus will be on understanding the growing economic interdependence of nations and the impact of that interdependence on managerial and corporate policy decisions that transcend national boundaries. This course will also provide an introduction to globalization and the cultural, economic, political, and legal environments of international business, including an overview of risks, challenges, and opportunities of competing in the global marketplace. Your key challenge will be to develop and present a business plan to launch a product or service of your choice in a foreign market.

An online portfolio development experience that requires students to reflect on their past academic and professional experiences and use the information gained from this reflective exercise to develop learning statements related to the Associate of Applied Science in Administration/Management Studies degree outcomes. The learning statements must be supported by documented evidence that demonstrates that the outcomes have been met. Students learn how to develop an online portfolio during the first module of the course and then work under the guidance of a faculty mentor during the remainder of the semester to compose learning statements, compile appropriate evidence, and create the Integrated Business and Management Assessment report.