Industry and professional leaders are providing input to help develop leading-edge, commercially-oriented programs to be offered from February 1999 at UQ Ipswich.
Faculty of Business, Economics and Law Executive Dean at the University of Queensland Professor John Longworth said undergraduate programs were being designed to foster knowledge and skills that would be in great demand as the next millennium unfolded.
For those students with an information technology bent, a new Internet degree, bachelor of electronic commerce, should open up a whole new suite of opportunities, Professor Longworth said.
The program is believed to be the first undergraduate program in the Asia-Pacific region designed to meet further educational needs in this exciting field.
Electronic commerce refers to the conduct of customer-to-organisation and organisation-to-organisation business transactions via information technologies and, in particular, data communication technologies.
Professor Longworth said the bachelor of electronic commerce would teach students innovative methods of doing business and the information systems skills necessary to meet some of the challenges of electronic business in the 21st century.
'Few emerging aspects of modern business offer greater challenges to the next generation of business managers, accountants and auditors than the application of IT to facilitate and record commercial transactions,' Professor Longworth said.
'In the near future, many traditional aspects of accounting and commercial law, in particular, will need to be completely transformed to incorporate developments in electronic commerce.'
Professor Longworth said graduates of the degree would be able to work in teams with both end-users and technologists to contribute to the effective and efficient development,
implementation, operation, maintenance, and management of electronic commerce application systems within organisations.
According to Professor Longworth the longstanding and widely-acclaimed bachelor of business formerly offered at the Gatton campus with specialisations in either tourism or travel management will be upgraded and expanded at UQ Ipswich to include leisure management as a third option.
Property studies, another specialisation within the bachelor of business previously available at Gatton, will be taught at UQ Ipswich.
Professor Longworth said the availability of the new flexible delivery options at UQ Ipswich would allow this already widely accepted program to move into a new era.
'A much broader spectrum of professionals in the property industry will now be able to access this program to upgrade their qualifications, and the best possible training will be available for people seeking to enter the property professions,' he said.
Professor Longworth said the new bachelor of business (communication) would set new standards for modern undergraduate business education relevant to students with a keen interest in business communications of the human kind.
The new courses will be offered at UQ Ipswich, set to open in February 1999 with an expected intake of 580 students.
Construction started in May at the campus site, which has a history dating from 1878 and 17 buildings heritage-listed
.
For further information contact Professor Longworth on (07) 3365 6775
