With a new doctorate and a program in India, Fairfield Dolan is becoming a worldwide presence.
The vision is straightforward: we are a very highly recognized Jesuit business school in the nation, and want to continue to build on that strength.
— Zhan Li, DBA, Dean
The Charles F. Dolan School of Business may be located in America’s third-smallest state by area, but the school is making a national — indeed global — impression with its latest programs. This spring, the acclaimed business school announced an innovative applied executive doctoral program, and expanded its international presence beyond China by adding an advanced degree program in India.
That expansion is deliberate and part of a larger vision and mission, said Zhan Li, DBA, dean of the Dolan School. “The vision is straightforward: we are a very highly recognized Jesuit business school in the nation, and want to continue to build on that strength.”
“The vision is aspirational. The mission is what we do day-to-day,” Dean Li continued. “We develop principled leaders for a better world and lifelong success. We have to look globally for this. We have to look at the greater view of the world.”
Dolan School graduate programs already have impressive rankings; they’re among the top 20 in the United States for accounting, business analytics, finance, and marketing, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2023-24 list of best graduate schools. “The rankings really are a reflection and reconfirmation of our high-quality programs,” Dean Li said.
Fairfield Dolan began its global reach in 2020, when it opened an MBA program in Shanghai. The program is led by Fairfield professors and currently focuses on finance. Students take classes in the evenings and weekends, and end with a final Wall Street immersion session on the Fairfield, Connecticut campus. The program targets senior executives and managers.
Expanding to India was the next logical step in developing global business leaders, according to Dean Li.
One of Dolan’s 36 classroom spaces, fully equipped with leadingedge technology.
“Fairfield has a strong global presence in Europe,” he noted, ticking off undergraduate programs in Spain, the U.K., and the Netherlands. “We do not have as large a footprint in Asia. If you look at global economies, China and India are among the largest on the Asian continent. For our students, especially business students, to become successful leaders down the road, they have to understand the whole world, so Dolan is taking a leadership role in the two biggest developing countries.”
The India program will be taught in partnership with Imarticus Learning, an award-winning educational firm that collaborates with colleges and universities to offer industry-endorsed programs in financial services, business analysis, and business analytics. Students will take classes online from India and then come to Fairfield to complete their two-year advanced degree, culminating in a master’s degree in business analytics (MSBA). Dolan also plans to launch an MSBA in China next spring, as it expands its presence in China.
“The China program built a footprint for ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ÊÓƵÎÞÏÞÖƹۿ´ into the world beyond North America,” Dean Li said. “We learned so much about offering degree programs hybrid and remotely, and also about program design. We are leveraging that experience in India, into course design and delivery.”
“This is a great undertaking for launching international programs,” he added, noting the school is considering the Middle East and Latin America for additional programs. “We are thinking about where we should be geographically.”
This global expansion is a continuation of the Jesuit mission that is behind everything Fairfield Dolan considers, Dean Li said. “Another motivation to expand to Shanghai and India is to carry out the Jesuit mission and core values, one of which is to ‘meet students where they are,’” he added. “Many students in China and India desire to have a U.S. education but cannot come to the U.S. for study due to various reasons. We bring Jesuit business education to them.”
Dean Li addressed the Class of 2027 during Orientation.
In addition to expanding its worldwide presence, Fairfield Dolan is also building its reputation with a new applied Executive Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) program. The program is unique among DBAs because it is designed to be finished in three years — traditional PhD programs often require four to seven years of full-time study before students even begin their dissertations. Dolan DBA students can customize their studies by focusing their dissertations on areas of interest most relevant to their own business experience and career goals.
Additionally, students complete one chapter of their dissertations during each course to ensure the degree can be completed within the three years. To further assist students, most of whom are working full-time in addition to going to school, the Fairfield Dolan program has synchronous classes that meet online during the weekends. Two inperson weekends take place at the beginning of each semester.
“Offering a doctoral degree signifies our effort to achieve the highest possible academic excellence and qualities,” Dean Li said. MBAs and master’s degrees are so commonplace, he added, that they’re “no longer a differentiation factor for people professionally. Offering a DBA degree is really a response to market demand for people who want a degree to further their career, differentiate themselves from their peers, and make more impactful decisions in the business world.”
And, furthering Fairfield Dolan’s vision, the DBA curriculum is infused with Jesuit values. “Jesuit social responsibility is a big part of the program. There are a lot of ethical areas to reaching decisions. The ethics and social responsibility piece are inherent in everything we do and teach.”
“Our goal is to develop scholarly practitioners. They really train with theory and methodology but at the end of the day, they are practitioners who have to solve realworld problems,” Dean Li said.
To help business leaders learn more about the changes at Fairfield Dolan, the school is making a more direct effort to spread the word within business circles. “Fairfield Dolan has been offering high quality programs, but now we are making an explicit effort [to tell leaders] that we are offering high quality programs,” he said. “We have done that before, but are doing more now. We are inviting more people to our campus to learn about Fairfield Dolan. Inviting C-level people and CEOs is another way to let people know we’re a high-caliber business school.”
Fairfield Dolan’s focus and new programs are already gaining recognition for the business school. The student body has grown nearly 40 percent, from 1,800 students in 2018 to today’s nearly 2,600. At the same time the acceptance rate is down; it was 70 percent in 2017, and is now around 45 percent, Dean Li said. “As we grow [our enrollment], we also grow the quality.”
