Gies College of Business


Gies College of Business is the business school for both nongraduate and graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The school offers on-campus undergraduate program, on-campus specialized masters program, Ph.D. program and online programs. The school is accredited by the AACSB International.
As of 2019, there are over 70,000 alumni in the world, including several Fulbright scholars. In 2013, 2014 and 2016, the college was ranked among top 5 sources of CFOs to Fortune 500 and S&P 500 firms.

College History

The University Senate approved the College of Commerce and Business Administration on June 9, 1914 at the request of David Kinley, a University Vice-President who would later serve as President of the University of Illinois. The College was officially formed on April 27, 1915 through a vote of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees . The college began with three departments: Economics, Business Organization and Operation, and Transportation.
Since 2015, Gies College of Business has partnered with Coursera to offer online MBA program and an online MSA program. The school started with 113 students in the beginning for the online programs and later grown to more than 3,200 degree-seeking students from 46 states in United States and more than 90 countries in the world. The selectivity and acceptance rate to the program initially was 20.9% and is currently at 53%.
In 2019, the school announced that it was suspending its on-campus full-time MBA, part-time MBA, and executive MBA. The online program has been termed by media and nationally as a "breakthrough".

Donations and gifts

In 2017, alumnus Larry Gies and his wife Beth Gies donated US$150 million to the school, which was renamed the Gies College of Business in their honor. Further in 2020, alumnus Don Edwards donated US$10 million to Gies College of Business.

Campus

Gies College of Business is located in Champaign, Illinois. The campus is located around the intersection of Gregory Street and Sixth Street. This is the current home of Gies College of Business. When the College was first formed, however, it occupied the Commerce Building, now the East half of the Administration Building on the Main Quad. The Commerce building, dedicated in 1913, was built at a cost of $100 thousand.
The College currently occupies three buildings: Wohlers Hall, Business Instructional Facility, and the Irwin Doctoral Study Hall. This area is known as the Business Quad and is considered part of the South Campus.
Wohlers Hall, formerly known as Commerce West, was built in 1963. Albert H. and Jane Wohlers provided a $6 million naming gift in 2000 for renovations.
The Business Instructional Facility, approved by the UI Board of Trustees on July 14, 2004, stands opposite of Wohlers Hall across Sixth Street. The $62 million project, designed by architect Cesar Pelli, is LEED-certified because of its "green", environmentally friendly elements.

Academic departments

Gies College of Business houses three departments: Accountancy, Business Administration, and Finance.

Accountancy

The Department of Accountancy was founded in 1953.
The University offered courses in accounting before the creation of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign College of Business. The courses in the university were offered through the Department of Economics from 1902 to 1915. The college began the first PhD program in 1937 and has graduated more accountancy PhD candidates than any other accountancy department in the United States. After the formation of the college, the accountancy program was moved into the Department of Business Organization until the Department's reorganization in the 1950s.
In 1919, H. T. Scovill helped establish the Beta Alpha Psi accounting honor society.

Business Administration

The Department of Business Administration was founded in 1968 through the mergers of the Department of Industrial Administration and Marketing and the Graduate School of Business Administration. Students can receive degrees in Information Systems, Management, Marketing, Operational Management, Strategic Business Development and Entrepreneurship, and Supply Chain Management. They can also receive a Master's degree in Business Administration, Technology Management, and Management also they are providing the same courses online through coursera app where you can enroll for various types of courses. It allows students to even get a certification on completion of digital marketing course offered and demonstrated by their own faculty members on a wide range of topics and examples.

Finance

In 1957, the UI Board of Trustees approved the Dean's proposal to create a Department of Finance.
The MSF program began in 1958.

Academies and centers

University of Illinois-Deloitte Foundation Center for Business Analytics

The was established on October 25, 2016 thanks to a $5 million gift from the Deloitte Foundation and Deloitte's retired and current partners, principals, managing directors and employees.

Illinois MakerLab

The is the world's first business school 3D printing lab located on the third floor of the Business Instructional Facility. After opening in Spring of 2013, the MakerLab has provided printing, custom designing and prototyping, educational, and other related services for both the Urbana-Champaign and University of Illinois community. The lab is equipped with over 20 Ultimaker 3D printers and is run by undergraduate and graduate students. The lab was co-founded by Aric Rindfleisch and Vishal Sachdev.

Origin Ventures Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership

The is responsible for cross-campus and multidisciplinary programs for entrepreneurial students from all backgrounds including the award-winning iVenture Accelerator and Illinois Social Innovation. The Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership was established in 2004. In 2018, Bruce Barron and the REAM Foundation providing a naming gift to create the Origin Ventures Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership. The REAM Foundation gift was made in honor of Steven Miller, who joined Barron in co-founding Origin Ventures, a venture capital firm in Chicago.

Faculty Achivements

Today, Gies faculty prepare more than 6,000 future business leaders from around the world to put their purpose into practice and provide transformative leadership in a global economy.

Rankings

In 2019, Public Accounting Report’s Annual Professors Survey has ranked the college under top 3 for undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. accounting programs.
Undergraduate
Graduate
Overall

Alumni

Gies College of Business has many notable alumni. Alumni are denoted by their area of study: accountancy, business administration, finance, or general/unassigned or MBA.

Academia