The second piece in the series of College of Business and Economics is the management department.

Good news for management students: not only are you are in high demand after graduation, companies are willing to pay good money.

Dr. Robert Stoll is an associate professor of supply chain, and chair of the management department.

Within the management department, there are four majors: entrepreneurship, supply chain, international business and business management.

“We have more demand than we can actually fill with students,” Stoll said.

In business management, the focus is on human resources; learning things such as employment law, legal and illegal hiring processes and negotiating union contracts.

Stoll describes supply chain as “everything that Amazon does.” Everything to do with inventory is taught: how and when to inventory, logistics, such as moving product “efficiently and effectively,” and computer systems. Robots play a huge part in shipping products, so students learn analysis.

“International business is the global perspective,” Stoll said. “Most companies are global in nature, even if they’re not located globally, a lot of their suppliers that they buy from and also their customers live globally. We have a little bit more international perspective on that.”

About half the students in the entrepreneurship program are there so they can learn how to take over their family’s business. They learn skills such as writing business plans and going to the bank to get loans.

As mentioned in the previous article, all students in COBE are required to complete at least one internship. Some students do two, even three.

After graduating, students have gotten jobs at Smuckers, IMCD in Cleveland, insurance companies in Columbus and Bendix in Elyria, just to name a few. However, sports-interested students are generally not from the Ohio area. Those students have been placed in Texas, Lockheed Martin, in West Palm Beach, Florida.

This is Stoll’s fourth year as chair and has been at Ashland University since 2012.

“I actually came out of the industry after 30 years and I completed my doctorate,” Stoll said. “I was an adjunct professor for many years prior to that and I was a lecturer at Cleveland State for two years. I saw the job posting and I wanted a tenure track position and I applied, interviewed and got the position.”

Stoll stressed the need for more students to enroll in the management department.

“A lot of people do not understand what entrepreneurship is and teaches,” Stoll said, “but it is really the chain of companies that supply the final finished goods, manufactured, taking it all the way from raw materials all the way to selling it and the retail store and there is just a lot of opportunities for our students will great futures and great paying jobs.”

If students have questions, they can contact Stoll at [email protected].