Recently, Stevens and its Howe School of Technology Management was named a 'Center of Excellence in Business Process Innovation' by SAP and IDS Scheer.

You may recognize this as the same part of Stevens that offers the Business & Technology major. This is also the portion of the institute that is having a shiny new building constructed - the Lawrence T. Babbio, Jr. Center for Technology Management. Referred to by some students as the "biz-tech building;" once completed it will be home to offices and classes for the undergraduate Business & Technology program as well as the graduate management and business programs.

I am sure many of you have noticed the Stevens advertisements in PATH cars. You have probably also noticed which particular area of the institute is being advertised: the Howe School and its business and management courses.

Last time I checked, this college was still known as 'Stevens Institute of Technology" (emphasis mine, of course). The engineering program is the largest undergraduate program, followed by computer science and then the sciences; physics, chemistry, etc. Near the bottom of this list is the business & technology program. While each new year brings more biz-tech majors to the school, they are still outnumbered by engineering, computer science, and science majors.

It seems to be the trend that the business portion of Stevens is what is being most actively pushed. For an "institute of technology," this seems to be the wrong focus. There are plenty of schools that are focused on educating students in business; it is not the sort of thing you would expect to find at a tech school.

Perhaps, if Stevens integrated business education into its other majors, this push to expand the business program would not seem as awkward. As it is now, though, the management and business courses are generally kept separate from the engineering and science programs. Engineering students are required to take a Technogenesis course, and computer science majors are required to take an economics class, but other than that, there are no business or management classes taken by non-biz-techs.

Somewhere down the line, it may be reasonable for Stevens to rename itself "Stevens Institute of Business." At least, that is a possibility if this trend continues. It is interesting to consider what such a change might do to a B.E. or B.S. degree earned from the school; would employers expect them to have more business knowledge, or would they look down on Stevens engineering and science graduates?