Q&A … With Brian Klaas

PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2025

Q: What are you seeing in terms of enrollment trends—numbers of students, areas of academic focus, retention through graduation or other key indicators?
A: Right now with enrollment, we’re approaching our 10-year high. Over recent years, we have trended up. During Covid, we had some declines—but we’ve experienced steady growth overall and this year have about 2,000 students, both undergraduate and graduate.

Q: Any shifting in origin for those?
A: We are attracting heavily from the Kansas City metro area. That has been fairly steady, but we are seeing more interest from individuals in places like St. Louis and Wichita. But while we are getting more engagement from places outside the region, we still draw very heavily from the metro area. In terms of balance between undergraduate and graduate students, we have remained fairly steady there, with some recent growth on the undergrad side.

Q: What’s helping drive that rise?
A: We’re offering a value proposition that in today’s world is quite compelling. If you’re an undergraduate from the Kansas City area, you can get a great education that leads to a good first job. We have competitive tuition, good scholarship funding, and can get you connected with employers in ways that suggest a world of opportunities. And you can start working for these employers while you are going to school—our location and our partners provide incredible opportunities both for traditional internships and part-time work while taking a full-time load.

Q: Regarding the latter, what about placement success for graduates?
A: We assess career outcomes at six months after graduation. We are usually around 90 percent for positive career outcomes, with some variation depending on what is happening in the labor market. So we’re very competitive in that regard. In part, that’s a function of bringing in good students, providing them with outstanding experiences, and having a lot of employers in the region who are outstanding partners.

Q: With regard to curriculum updates, what are your biggest challenges with frequency of program updates, and their scope?
A: In terms of student demand, we’ve relatively recently launched a program in business analytics. We first launched with 16 students and now have 97. Similarly, we introduced a supply-chain emphasis area that has gotten traction as well. Real estate is another area where we’re seeing recent growth.

Q: Does the process to implement program changes allow schools to be responsive to business needs?
A: If we want to introduce a new emphasis within our undergraduate bachelor’s business degree, the faculty develop the curriculum and build out the courses. Faculty within the college vote on those changes, which work their way through the university. That’s not something that requires a multi-year approval process. We are trying to introduce two new emphasis areas this year. If all goes well, we will launch the offering in the coming academic year.

Q: How do you ensure those changes mesh with emerging business needs?
A: That requires great awareness from all of us. As we see things in the market that requires a new course or a modification to an existing course, we can make those changes fairly quickly.  If we’re introducing a new course in AI, it’s the same process that I just described. If we have a new course to offer, it goes through the review in the fall semester, we submit it to the university, and it’s available for the next fall. If we need to move more quickly, we can offer special topic classes with new content.

Q: Isn’t that more complicated for entire programs, rather than courses?
A: If you have new degree program, there are additional levels of approval. If you want a new master’s or PhD, that would require more levels of approval. It is important to ensure that there is strong justification before investing in the launch of a new degree program.

Q: How are those employers engaging with you to help their enterprises?
A: Employers participate on a regular basis and in various ways. For example, we do Coffee and Careers, Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning throughout the academic year. We invite employer-partners to come in and we invite students to stop by and engage. Not as a formal interview; it’s making a connection, it’s learning more about an industry, allowing that freshman student to walk up to a Lockton employee and say ‘I’ve heard great things about your culture and business; can you tell me more about what  you look for in talent, what a career path in insurance looks like?’ Students who take advantage of that can talk with a Hallmark, an H&R Block, or a NorthPoint Development. It’s an incredible opportunity for students to understand what some of the employment opportunities are here in the region and build a picture for themselves about what they need to do to be career ready. We don’t want it to be overwhelming for anyone, so employers are here for about an hour and a half. If they get a steady flow of 50 to 60 students over that time, we call that a win for everybody.

Q: And you have other structures for business owners and executives to engage, correct?
A: Yes, we do have many advisory boards, and we love having people from various industries engage—we’re always looking for new members. Anyone interested can email me directly and I’ll make sure they get connected. In addition to our advisory boards, with donor support we recently launched the Bloch Consulting Lab. Teams of students, both  through required courses and being paid through donor funds, work in teams under faculty supervision on projects for entrepreneurs in this region. If an entrepreneur wants marketing research, for example, or assistance with a financial project or accounting, it presents students with great opportunities to apply what they’re learning the classrooms. Plus, it provides a valuable resource for entrepreneurs in the region. Of course, we have to ensure that entrepreneurs are willing to participate in an active and meaningful way—we can do good work only if it’s highly collaborative.

Q: Can  you tell us more about the structure and role of your business advisory boards?
A: We have a number of very active advisory boards in the Bloch School. We have a school-wide advisory board to advise us on big, strategic issues, including how to be responsive to changes in the market. In addition, we have advisory boards for different disciplines with senior leaders from those specific fields—a statement about the business community in Kansas City and its willingness to support this school. We have boards in accounting, business analytics, HR, marketing, real estate, banking, entrepreneurship, and public affairs.

Q: That sounds like a tall order to get everything focused on a broader mission.
A: For all different areas, the goal is to have engagement with the business community. We are committed to asking about their needs and to getting feedback about what we can do differently, what we can add, and what are critical components of the program. These boards meet quarterly, and that does allow us to respond in a timely way.

Q: What are some of the business trends those boards are wrestling with?
A: There are some very robust conversations around the implications of AI and emerging tech, in terms of what we should be teaching and how, what jobs will be key jobs going forward, and how we ensure we’re preparing students for a business world that is rapidly changing.

Q: How do you balance all of that with the speed of change taking place in technology and business operations?
A: One thing we’re focused on, and it’s part of One thing we’re focused on, and it’s part of the conversation about how AI will affect things, is not just what we teach but how we teach, focusing not only on the technology tools and techniques, but also helping students build durable skills that allow people to pivot as market conditions change. We are working to do a better job of building critical thinking skills, helping people problem solve when the data is messy. We are working to do a better job of preparing students to handle unstructured problems and develop solutions for situations that don’t look anything like what might appear in a textbook. That’s always been important, but it’s becoming more important because students need to be able to make contributions that go beyond what might be offered from AI.

Q: How is the concept of experiential learning being applied?
A: That’s another area where we’re trying to make progress, to make sure that experiential learning is a robust part of our program. That only happens with strong involvement by the business community. In fact, we’re about to hire someone who is going to be an experiential learning coordinator, tasked with bringing in businesses with live business cases. A firm might come in and present a case, sharing information about the firm’s business, competitive situation, and overall context. They then would share information about a challenge they are facing in specific area, such as marketing. Different executives would speak to the class to tell the story. Then students would work on analyzing options for the firm and making recommendations. The students would present their work to representatives from the firm and receive feedback about their recommendations and about their presentation. We are trying to make it easier for businesses to engage with our classes and our students and to provide opportunities for transformational learning.

Q: So with AI, that means new programs for things like prompt-engineering?
A: Yes, that’s something we have addressed with undergraduate and graduate courses, trying to take some key courses to another level. We are urgently working to develop new courses so that we have a set of new offerings, including some fairly technical offerings on prompt engineering ready for next fall. We also working to ensure that even those who are less technically focused have a foundation in AI and emerging technology.

Q: How has the addition of the Plaster Free Enterprise Center helped the university and business school in leveraging its mission to promote entrepreneurship?
A: It’s another outstanding piece, one of many things being done. It is a great resource for entrepreneurs who might want to go in and develop a prototype using a 3-D Printer. The AR/VR labs there are another outstanding resource for entrepreneurs. Plaster is an excellent maker’s space to use in development of a product. We try to help connect entrepreneurs with the Plaster Free Enterprise Center whenever possible, and the connections run both ways.