Program Spotlight: UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Business With Heart: Inside UNC's Undergraduate Business Program
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, business education is about bold experiences, global awareness, and character-driven leadership. The UNC Kenan-Flagler Undergraduate Business Program stands as a testament to that philosophy. With a rich history rooted in excellence and a mission focused on experiential learning, global immersion, and values-based leadership, it's more than a degree. It's a launchpad for purposeful impact.
Associate Dean Shimul Melwani is an award-winning educator, researcher, and leader at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, where she serves as Associate Dean of the Undergraduate Business Program and teaches organizational behavior. A recipient of the prestigious 2025 Chapman Family Teaching Award, Melwani is recognized for her commitment to transformative teaching and student mentorship. Her mission: to create inclusive, empowering spaces where students grow not only as professionals, but as people. With her Chapman Award, she plans to expand leadership education and real-world service opportunities for all undergraduate business majors.
A Legacy of Leadership
UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School traces its origins back to 1919, when the university began offering formal business education. Over a century, it has grown into one of the top public business schools in the country. The undergraduate program, in particular, has built a strong reputation for preparing students not just to enter the workforce, but to shape it. Today, Kenan-Flagler continues to evolve to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world. In doing so, it has centered its undergraduate experience around three pillars that prepare students for more than just the job market: Experiential learning, global immersion, and leading with purpose, passion, and character.
THE 3 PILLARS: Experiential Learning, Global Immersion, Leading with Purpose, Passion, and Character
“It is vital for you to see how business works, not just in class. ”
Leading with Purpose, Passion, and Character
UNC Kenan-Flagler prepares students to lead with integrity, not just succeed in business. From day one, students are encouraged to explore who they want to become. With a focus on values-based leadership, the program promotes accountability, impact, and a collaborative culture where students support one another, share resources, and celebrate each other's wins.
Global Immersion
In today’s global economy, perspective is everything. UNC Kenan-Flagler offers 40+ study abroad and immersion programs designed for business students. These experiences go beyond travel; students engage with local leaders and return with broader horizons, enhanced cultural fluency, and a deeper understanding of what it means to do business responsibly in a global context.
Experiential Learning
At UNC Kenan-Flagler, learning goes beyond lectures. From day one, students engage in hands-on projects, real client work, and decision-making that mirrors real business. Programs like STAR pair undergrads with MBAs to solve challenges for companies, from startups to global firms. With simulations, case studies, and competitions, students build confidence, sharpen skills, and learn through experience, even failure.
BUSI 100 | Intro to Business | Connecting Theory to Practice From Day 1
UNC Kenan-Flagler’s BUSI 100 takes a bold approach to introducing students to business, blending classic liberal arts readings with hands-on learning. Created by Associate Dean Shimul Melwani and taught by Dr. Bradley Hendricks and Jeffrey Mittelstadt, the course explores the philosophical, historical, and moral dimensions of business through thinkers like Plato, Thoreau, and Du Bois. It covers the world of business, the major disciplines, and how those disciplines fit together, as well as how business can drive positive change in a rapidly changing world. To move beyond theory, BUSI 100 uses the Market Games simulation, giving students a practical, hands-on experience of the uncertainty and complexity of business.
Why Market Games?
The Market Games business simulation is an online exercise that introduces students to the realities of running a business through a fast-paced, team-based environment where they make real-time cross-functional decisions (product, marketing, operations, and finance) in a simulated business environment. By competing for market share and profits, students experience firsthand the pressures, tradeoffs, and interdependencies that define modern enterprise.
The simulation plays a critical role in achieving key course learning objectives:
Identify Interconnected Business Functions
The simulation gives students a hands-on experience of how businesses leverage the core business disciplines to drive goals. In the simulation, teams must coordinate their marketing plans with their production capacity, align product quality with customer expectations, and manage finances, all under the pressure of competition. This interconnectedness mirrors the real business world and helps demystify how firms function.
Critically Evaluate Firm Behavior.
Students also experience how key performance metrics influence business decisions (e.g, market share, revenues, gross margins, ROI) and what those metrics may obscure, prompting rich discussions about the limitations of performance measurement and the unseen costs of certain strategies. This back-and-forth between reading and doing deepens learning.
The simulation brings intensity, excitement, and urgency to the course. Students leave with a visceral understanding of how businesses operate, but more importantly, with a framework to ask better questions:
How should we define success?
Who are we accountable to?
What kind of leaders do we want to become?
By pairing timeless readings with the real-world complexity of the Market Games simulation, UNC Kenan-Flagler creates an unforgettable first-year experience, one that doesn’t just teach business but asks students to rethink it entirely.
The Takeaway: Business as a Force for Good
In an age where business can shape society more than ever, UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Undergraduate Business Program offers a refreshing and powerful vision: business as a force for good. Through immersive learning experiences, global engagement, and a values-driven approach to leadership, the program equips students not only to succeed but to lead with heart.
That’s why we’re proud to support the UNC Undergraduate Business Program. Because at UNC Kenan-Flagler, business isn’t just a career path, it’s a calling.