This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Biscayne Bay campus (BBC) of Florida International University. It also heralds the expansion of two of the College of Business Administration’s undergraduate majors, making both a management and a marketing major fully attainable at this north campus site.

“About 900 of our students consider BBC their home campus, and we have taken a number of steps to increase our service to them.”

—Clifford Perry, associate dean, Landon Undergraduate School

“About 900 of our students consider BBC their home campus, and we have taken a number of steps to increase our service to them—by providing the courses needed for a major in two of our most popular programs: management and marketing,” said Clifford Perry, associate dean, Landon Undergraduate School. “Although we currently only offer a complete set of management and marketing upper level courses that make possible a start-to-finish degree at the Biscayne Bay campus, we will continue to deliver courses in the other major areas that fall under the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree: finance, real estate, management information systems, international business, and human resource management.”

College invests in personnel to ensure high-quality student experience.

Clifford Perry

“We previously offered ten core courses in the management and marketing majors at BBC, but now we will make the seven required courses for the management or marketing major, along with three electives, available to students in those majors,” Perry said.

To handle the teaching load, the college hired two new faculty members—Eric Cartaya, visiting faculty member, Department of Management and International Business; and Vivien Chen, visiting lecturer, Department of Marketing—who will be dedicated to the campus and will teach four courses each semester. Many management and marketing faculty members will teach part time, bringing the total offerings up to the required number for the full major in both the management and marketing disciplines.

Beyond the significant commitment of faculty resources, the college has taken other steps to ensure that students get the support they need for questions about advising and about ways to resolve non-classroom issues.

“We have assigned two academic advisors to BBC in a job-sharing mode, giving us a full week’s coverage,” Perry said. “Either Angela Bullard or Margie Tavarez will be present from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays, and from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Bettina Lett will serve as secretary for the advising unit.”

The college also hired a secretary, Rosa Aponte, to handle the needs of the full- and part-time faculty.

Year ahead promises excitement at BBC—academically and socially.

BBC, which officially celebrated its milestone anniversary on June 12, 2007, plans a number of events over the coming year to bring greater attention to the many advantages of the full-service campus.

“The thirtieth anniversary of the campus’s founding presents us with a great opportunity to focus attention on our spectacular home and its remarkable history,” said Vice Provost Damian Fernández. “We will build on our past and inaugurate a new era of educational excellence.”

The BBC campus, attended by 8,000 students, has four academic buildings, a library, and a state-of-the-art conference center among its facilities.