Undergraduate Major and Minor

The new major and minor is designed to equip students for productive careers focused on managing risks, both within enterprises (as a user of risk management techniques) or within the insurance industry (as a supplier of risk management products and services).  To that end, the courses in the major and minor strike a balance between providing a general risk management framework and providing specific insights into the insurance industry. 

In addition, the major and minor are designed so that any student seeking expertise in a specific aspect of risk management or insurance company operations has some freedom to select specialized courses in their specific area of interest.  The areas that students can specialize in include:

• Finance and investment management (FIM)
• Risk Analytics (RA)
• Health care (HC)
• Distribution and Sales (DS)

The abbreviations listed above identify courses that are suggested for a specific specialization.

The undergraduate IRM major is a Bachelors of Business Administration (BBA) degree option. In addition to the general core requirements for the BBA, the IRM Major consists of a total of 18 credit hours of course work. To complete the major, students must take all 12 credit hours of Required Courses and 6 credit hours from the list of Approved Elective Courses. The Insurance and Risk Management major is recommended to students interested in pursuing careers in risk management either within insurance or financial services firms or within corporations.

In addition to the general core requirements of the Bachelors of Business Administration (BBA) degree, the undergraduate IRM minor consists of a total of 12 credit hours, with nine credit hours of Required Courses and three credit hours from the list of Approved Electives.  The minor in Insurance and Risk Management is recommended for students who want to pursue employment opportunities in non-financial or non-analytical functional roles (e.g., human resources, management, sales) in insurance and insurance-related companies and need to have an understanding of the operations, functional roles, products, and services in the insurance industry; or students obtaining a major in finance, actuarial science, business analytics, information systems, or accounting who seek employment in functional roles in the insurance industry and want to have an understanding of the insurance industry as the context in which these functional skills will be applied.