ANN ARBOR – Thomas C. Jones, a University of Michigan business school alumnus, has given $10 million to the U-M’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business to make it possible for undergraduates to experience many of the programs usually provided only to MBA students.
Jones, retired president of CIGNA Retirement & Investment Services, was the Ross School’s first executive-in-residence and director of its bachelor of business administration degree program in 2003-04. He says his gift will help make a highly rated undergraduate business program even better.
The gift will establish the Thomas C. Jones Center for BBA Education, which will offer more opportunities for students to apply classroom theory to real business situations, incorporate liberal arts into the business curriculum and develop leadership skills.
“The challenge is to take undergraduate business education at Michigan to a new level,” said Jones, who received a BBA from Michigan in 1968 and an MBA in 1971. “Success ultimately will be the impact the BBA program has on the lives and professional development of students.
The gift also will provide the necessary resources to develop a series of “capstone” action-based learning courses that integrate interdisciplinary skills needed to solve complex business problems. For example, the school will be able to offer more undergraduate courses like “Strategic Management of Knowledge in Professional Services Firms,” in which students participate in a business case competition before an actual company’s executives, and “The Corporation in Society,” in which students visit companies and other organizations in foreign countries to study business issues.
“We’ll have even more integration of action-based learning activities both inside and outside the classroom,” Jones said. “Students won’t just live in a world of finance or management. They’ll have a complete educational experience that integrates all business disciplines to meet the real world challenges.”
Jones previously gave $1.5 million to the Ross School for the Jane M. and Chester R. Jones Undergraduate Scholarship in memory of his parents and for the Dean’s Innovation Fund, which helps finance innovative faculty and student projects and programs.
Jones retired in 2002 as president of CIGNA’s Retirement & Investment Services Division, one of the nation’s leading asset management and retirement services firms with assets of more than $80 billion. After joining CIGNA in 1994, he also served as president of several of its other divisions, including property and casualty reinsurance, individual insurance and investment management.
