Beginning Fall 2025, the Iovine and Young Academy and Marshall School of Business will collaborate to offer a Bachelor of Science in business of innovation. 

Prior to this announcement, IYA offered only one bachelor’s degree: a Bachelor of Science in arts, technology and the business of innovation. This major is paired with 36 units of a major elective that ranges across fields such as design strategy, interactive technologies and business of innovation. 

Daily headlines, sent straight to your inbox.

Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the latest at and around USC.

Patrick Dent, associate dean for academic affairs at IYA, said the schools created the degree because of student desire for a heavier business perspective in the arts, technology and the business of innovation degree. 

“We know that some students have wanted to straddle a traditional, deeper business education with the more [challenge-based reflective learning] focus of ours,” Dent said. “Rather than students having to choose between the two separate degrees, we definitely heard loud and clear from students that there was an interest to have one that kind of lives in the space between the two schools.”

To obtain a bachelor’s degree in this field, students are required to complete 44 units of IYA coursework focusing on design and technology, as well as 44 units of a business-focused curriculum.

Florenta Teodoridis, the academic director for business and innovation, elaborated on the expectations from the program. 

“The goal of the program is to prepare innovators who are more informed about the challenges of bringing a creative idea into the market,” Teodoridis wrote in a statement to the Daily Trojan, “[as well as] how to navigate the landscape of turning one’s creative pursuits into an entrepreneurial career.”

Dent said they foresee the biggest challenges with the degree will be logistical due to the coordination between the two schools in their schedules. It is imperative to ensure flexibility for students to have the opportunity to obtain required courses on both ends. 

Ana Murguia, a senior majoring in business administration with an emphasis in marketing, said she was disappointed not to have been able to pursue the degree during her time at USC. 

“When I saw [the degree announcement], it was kind of sad that I was going to graduate,” Murguia said. “I think it is a really cool degree and I really like the joint [collaboration]. I am glad that they are doing this because I feel like there is a lot of overlap and similarities in both schools.”

This degree is Marshall’s fifth joint degree with another USC school and Marshall’s announcement of the degree stated that it prepares students to be leaders in innovation centered around human-centered design. 

Ramandeep Randhawa, senior vice dean for academic programs at Marshall, said that the BUIN degree emphasizes key aspects of both schools.

“Joint degrees offer a seamlessly integrated curriculum that equally emphasizes disciplines across two schools,” Randhawa wrote in a statement to the Daily Trojan. “The BUIN degree offers the best of IYA and Marshall to establish a unique and comprehensive educational experience encompassing leadership, innovation and experiential learning.”

Students pursuing the BUIN degree will have IYA as their home department, but through coordination by Marshall and IYA’s student affairs divisions, student advisers will be selected and assigned from both schools. Five faculty leads have already been determined, including Tina Sharkey, who will be the lecturer for BUIN students.

Marshall will offer students mentorship, career pathways and core programs while IYA will offer prototyping facilities, business incubators and laser cutters available for BUIN students. 

Dent said the school’s challenge-based, reflective learning gives students relevant experience in the field.

“We are using actual prompts and challenges from industry and society as a way of learning,” Dent said. “It is one of the ways that our school is more professionally focused than academically focused. The primary purpose of our degree is to launch students into industries, whether that is starting their own businesses or getting jobs as engineers. We were able to keep that core focus and philosophy of our degree, but expand into a much deeper Marshall catalog of classes.”

To complete a BUIN degree, students will be expected to participate in a two- semester senior capstone project where they will have the opportunity to develop a potential product for the market. 

If the project meets certain expectations through testing and planning, IYA offers electives to all IYA students where the focus is to secure funds to fully launch the product. 

Although approximately 200 students have expressed interest in the degree, Dent believes that the starting class may be significantly smaller. 

“I anticipate we may only offer 20 to 30 seats to start in the degree,” Dent said. “Part of it is also trying to keep the cohort model that [IYA] does which is focused on smaller classes of students and creating a cohort bonding experience within the program.”