Zol Cendes Entrepreneurship and Software

I mprovement Continuous

KAIZENNewsletter of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship at Rockford University Editor: Stephen Hicks, Ph.D. Designer: Christopher Vaughan ISSUE 29 February 2014

Feature Zol Cendes Entrepreneurship and Software

Kaizen: You were a founder and chair- use in their own design process. I started Also inside: man of Ansoft, whose mission is developing Ansoft Corporation with the initial fund- software? ing from Alcoa, developed our first software Essay Contest Winners Cendes: That’s correct. In 1984 I was a program to simulate the electromagnetic professor at Carnegie Mellon University casting of aluminum ingots. In subsequent Guest Speaker John Chisholm (CMU) performing research in computer years we expanded our simulation capabili- simulation technology. I was approached ties to address thousands of other products Guest Speaker Robert Lawson by a member of the research staff at Alcoa in electrical and computer engineering to develop a computer program to model and grew Ansoft to a company worth $900 electromagnetic casting. At the time, mol- million. INTRODUCTION: ten aluminum was poured through mold Kaizen: Ansoft is now part of ANSYS, a $7 Dr. Zoltan Cendes was the co-founder, chairman and cooled to form ingots. Alcoa wanted billion corporation, but it’s not a company and chief technology officer of Ansoft Corporation, to develop a process where the aluminum that most of us know about. What does it do? now part of ANSYS. Prior to founding Ansoft, Mr. was supported through the molten column Cendes received his undergraduate degree at the Uni- Cendes: ANSYS is the leading company versity of Michigan and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees by an electromagnetic field rather than by in the engineering simulation market. It de- from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He a mold. In this way, the aluminum would velops software used by engineers as an aid was then an engineer with General Electric in Sche- form better ingots since it was cooled to design and development better products. nectady, New York, associate professor of engineering at without touching it. I proposed to Alcoa Consider the cell phone in your pocket. McGill, and professor at Carnegie Mellon University that I recruit a graduate student to perform There are literally billions of components in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For his achievements in research in this area. Alcoa replied that they in this cell phone. It is impossible for any- developing software tools for electromagnetic analysis didn’t want to fund research—they wanted one to understand all of the interactions and design, he received the Antennas and Propagation me to start a company and develop a com- Society Distinguished Achievement Award. mercial software program that they could Continued on Page 2 KAIZEN 22014 Zol Cendes continued by physics and as an undergraduate drifted between taking engineering courses and physics courses. I actually began my Mas- among these components without using ter’s study in the physics department at simulation software. Or consider the car McGill University but was assigned a bor- you drive. Engineers use simulation soft- ing Master’s project. Looking around, I ware to determine the mechanical integ- discovered groundbreaking research being rity of the components, the efficiency of performed by Professor Peter Silvester in the combustion in the cylinders, the forces the Electrical Engineering Department at due to airflow around the car, the interac- McGill. Professor Silvester’s work was cut- From the Executive Director tions of the electrical components in the ting edge. I switched departments to Elec- A study shows that Stanford Univer- car, and thousands of other concerns. trical Engineering and never looked back. sity alumni create nearly $3 trillion in Fifty years ago, products were designed by economic impact each year, and com- Kaizen: What were you thinking your trial and error—engineers and designers panies founded have created 5.4 mil- likely career path would be? would build a prototype of the product lion jobs. Stanford stands as a model Cendes: As a youth, I did not know what of how first-rate research and teach- and test it to see if it worked. Today, simu- ing can have win-win impact on the lation driven product development is the my career path would be except that it larger world outside the academy. norm; most of the products you buy and would involve understanding how the world works. Once I encountered Profes- So it is appropriate that our feature use today—from computers to airplanes to sor Silvester, I fixed my chosen area of interview is with former academic medical devices—are designed using engi- Zoltan Cendes. Mr. Cendes was a neering simulation software. study and supposed I’d be an academic the rest of my life. faculty member at McGill and Carne- Kaizen: Where did you grow up? gie-Mellon before leaving to start an Kaizen: You then got master’s and doc- Cendes: My background is diverse. I was enormously-successful engineering toral degrees in electrical engineering born in a Displaced Person’s Camp in Aus- software company. I spoke with Mr. from McGill. What was the focus of your tria of Hungarian parents. We immigrated Cendes in Naples, Florida, about his doctoral work? life and career, which began in Hun- to Canada when I was three. We were de- Cendes: My thesis advisor, Professor Sil- gary, involved time at a war-refugee posited on a farm in October in the mid- camp in Austria and hardship growing dle nowhere with no money, no food, no vester, was a pioneer in applying computer up in Canada, before he achieved ac- car, or anything. My father, who had two methods to simulate electromagnetic fields. ademic and entrepreneurial success. Ph.D. degrees but spoke no English, found Let me begin by saying that electromag- In this issue of Kaizen, we also report a job in a automobile parts factory where netic fields are one of the most fundamen- on guest speakers John Chisholm he worked for several years. I grew up very tal quantities in nature. There are only four and Robert Lawson, who visited us poor with periods of hunger and depriva- known forces in the universe—gravity, from San Francisco and Dallas, re- tion. However, I always knew that life was electromagnetics, and the strong and the spectively, and the excellent work of full of possibilities. My father eventually weak nuclear forces. Electromagnetic fields two students in the Business and Eco- became a Math Professor, first in Canada are at the heart of all electrical engineer- nomic Ethics course—Amour Muro and then in the USA at Central Michigan ing and, indeed, much of your life. The and Alex Patnou. University. My desire for learning was fos- equations describing electromagnetic fields All of our previous issues of Kaizen tered by my parents who understood the were discovered by James Clerk Maxwell are available there featuring our importance of intellectual achievement. in 1864 and describe macroscopic electro- news and extended interviews with magnetic phenomena perfectly and com- Kaizen: Were you technically-oriented as entrepreneurs in a wide variety of pletely. However, these equations are very a youth? exciting fields—from architecture to difficult to solve except in the simplest of technology to marketing to venture Cendes: Yes. One of my earliest memo- circumstances. My doctoral thesis was to capital to sports and more. Please ries is drawing pictures of rockets going to solve Maxwell’s equations in more com- feel welcome to visit us online at the moon when I was perhaps four years www.EthicsandEntrepreneurship.org. plex, real-life cases using a new computer old. Growing up I loved to read books simulation technique called the finite ele- about rockets and all things scientific. I ment method. loved to build things with my Erector set, Kaizen: After that you became a professor? and built a telescope and electrical devices as a teenager. I was always fascinated by Cendes: No, I first went to work at the the world, wanted to understand it, and General Electric Company in Schenectady, dreamed of inventing something that New York, first in the Large Steam-Tur- would change the world. bine Generator Division and then in the GE Corporate Research and Develop- Kaizen: What led you to choose engi- Stephen Hicks, Ph.D. ment Center. At GE, I developed com- neering as your undergraduate major? puter programs to simulate the behavior Cendes: My path to engineering was not of electric power transformers and genera- a straight line. As a youth, I was fascinated 2 tors. Using the finite element method to compute the electromagnetic fields inside transformers and generators provides a much higher level of knowledge about transformer or generator performance CeE News than can be obtained by measurements alone. CEE Essay Contest Winners: At one point, I received a letter from the Vice President of GE’s Transformer Divi- sion stating that by designing more effi- cient transformers our software simulations had saved the company over one million dollars during the past year. Kaizen: What motivated you to leave GE and become a professor? Cendes: Professor Silvester asked me to return to McGill as a professor. The offer was very appealing because being a professor is much more entrepreneurial than working in a large corporation. While GE Amour Muro Alex Patnou was an excellent place to work, it still had Students in the Business and Economic Ethics course wrote on the topic: What does success in a large bureaucracy. A good professor is business require? a mini-CEO—he is self-starting, sets his The essays were judged on their accuracy and depth of interpretation as well as their independence own direction, assembles a team of stu- of thought. A cash prize was awarded to the contest winners. Congratulations to our winners! dents, raises his own funding and achieves goals. I went to McGill and started teach- ing and doing research. Two years later, I Guest Speakers: John Chisholm and Robert Lawson received an even better offer from Carn- egie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and moved there. Kaizen: You started Ansoft in 1984. Why did you decide to go entrepreneurial rather than remaining a professor? Cendes: There were several reasons. I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur— Ansoft was third company I had started. And there was the nudge by Alcoa. But, beyond that, commercializing the research San Francisco’s John Chisholm, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, gave a talk entitled “Un- in computer simulation technology was in leash Your Inner Company.” He spoke about the values that motivate entrepreneurs, his the air at that time. Several other profes- own entrepreneurial experiences, the similarities and differences between companies sors, including my advisor Peter Silvester, such as Apple, H-P, and IBM, and the ethics of entrepreneurship. started electromagnetic field simulation software companies at that time. I was fortunate to be working in this field at the dawn of a new industry. Kaizen: Your specific challenge was to develop software to solve Maxwell’s equations. What does that mean, in layman’s terms? Cendes: As I mentioned earlier, Maxwell’s equations describe electromagnetics per- Professor Robert Lawson of Southern Methodist University spoke at Rockford fectly but they are very difficult to solve in University on the Economic Freedom of the World Index, which measures various real-life situations. The difficulty lies in the dimensions of economic freedom—contractual rights, labor mobility, property rights, complex interactions that exist between and so on—and the relationship between economic freedom and other values such as fields in three-dimensional (3D) geome- civil rights, life expectancy, and environmental health. Continued on Page 4 3 Cendes: I was still in Pittsburgh at the times less than a computer used to solve time. I resigned my tenured professorship some engineering problems today—and at CMU in 1996—the year Ansoft went there was no graphical user interface. We public. had to work around these and many other Kaizen: You had a co-founder. Who was limitations. that? Nevertheless, a start-up company is the Cendes: There were two co-founders— most fun place to work imaginable. Every my brother Nick and his business partner day is filled with challenges and adven- Tom Miller. tures and each person can make signifi- Kaizen: What was the division of labor cant contributions to the success of the among you? organization. Cendes: Nick and Tom had business Kaizen: Any special challenges marketing backgrounds so they were focused on Ansoft’s software? ANSYS 3D electromagnetic field simulation administration, finances, and investor rela- Cendes: Ansoft entered a quintessential tions. I was focused developing the tech- “blue ocean” market in which there were zol cendes, continued nology, products and markets. few competitors. We were pioneers in an tries. The finite element method on which Kaizen: How much capital did it take entirely new landscape in which electro- I had worked on my dissertation solves this to develop and launch Ansoft, and what magnetic problems could be solved for problem by breaking the geometry into a sources of funding were you using? the first time. A few visionary customers understood our value proposition and pur- myriad of little pieces called finite elements. Cendes: Ansoft grew organically. In ad- chased the software readily. Maxwell’s equations are approximated over dition to our first funding from Alcoa, we each finite element and the entire problem received contracts from such companies More often than not, however, we faced a solved by assembling and computing all of as Kodak and Amp totaling over a mil- “missionary sale” in which we needed to the interactions on a computer. lion dollars. We also began to get revenue convert the customer from his reliance on Kaizen: What were the technical chal- from software sales but this varied from the old way of doing things to the new. lenges in doing this from a commercial around $10,000 to $50,000 a month in It took a lot of effort in the early years to point of view? the early years. convince engineers that computer simula- Cendes: There were two principle tech- tion of electromagnetic fields was real and nical challenges. The first came from the that they could save thousands of dollars need to automate finite element mesh gen- “a start-up company is by buying our software instead of building eration—the process of breaking complex the most fun place prototypes. 3D geometries into little pieces. At GE, we Kaizen: A big step for Ansoft was a con- had developed specific programs to gener- to work imaginable.” nection with Hewlett-Packard in 1989. ate finite element meshes for individual How did that come about? Fortunately, the capital expense in launch- transformer or generator geometries. How- Cendes: Ansoft’s agreement with the ing a software company was small. We ever, commercial software needs to be flex- Hewlett-Packard Corporation was the best bought a couple of personal computers ible—the program designer has no idea of thing that ever happened to us—and the with the initial Alcoa money. The big- the geometries customers wish to solve. So most harrowing thing that ever happened gest expense was salaries. Because sales we developed new algorithms to automati- to us. HP approached us in 1988 about and contract revenues were erratic in the cally subdivide any geometry into a finite developing an electromagnetic simulation early years, some months Nick, Tom and I element mesh. software program for them to sell to mi- would have to borrow money on our per- crowave engineers. In the resulting OEM The second challenge was the nature of sonal accounts to meet payroll. In our fifth agreement, Ansoft would develop a pro- the finite element approximation itself. It year, we did receive $500,000 from a ven- gram called HFSS for use by microwave turned out that the standard finite element ture capital firm, but this was a relatively engineers, HP would sell the software, and process developed by mathematicians earli- small addition to the revenue we made by Ansoft would get a royalty on every copy er gave incorrect results in many situations. that time. We invented new types of finite elements sold. HP gave Ansoft a $325,000 advance Kaizen: Did you have any early difficulties called edge elements that solve Maxwell’s on royalties to enable us to develop the with the developing the software? equations correctly. The combination of product. automatic mesh generation and reliable Cendes: A start-up company has a mil- We were ecstatic. At that time we were a electromagnetic solutions propelled Ansoft lion difficulties. All of the people we hired small, inexperienced company with zero to lead in the electromagnetic field simula- were straight out of school, assignments marketing and sales force. HP was a large, tion industry. were fluid and flexible, and everyone was top-of-the-line company with thousands jockeying for position and authority. At Kaizen: Where were you geographically at of sales people around the world. We went the time, personal computers had 640 this point? to work feverishly and had everyone in kilobytes of memory—literally a million Ansoft developing the product. The only 4 ANSYS simulations used to test drag reducing Speedo Fastskin3 cap, worn in the 2012 Olympics by Michael Phelps and others problem was: HP’s standards were much Cendes: In the first year we had 5 people and self-starting. Due to my academic higher than I had anticipated. Product but this grew to around 25 in five years. background, we fostered an open, loosely- shipment was delayed by over a year. Our growth was constant—our revenue structured environment where every em- We burned through the royalty advance and our personnel grew at roughly 30% ployee possessed a great deal of freedom and were running on vapors. Finally, HP year after year for many years. and responsibility. shipped HFSS in October 1990. Kaizen: And by 2008, how many people Kaizen: You took Ansoft public in 1996. Of course, our initial royalty revenues were were working at Ansoft? What goes into that process? cut because we had to repay the royalty ad- Cendes: Approximately 300—roughly Cendes: The universe of high finance vance. And HFSS sales were below forecast 200 in the USA and 100 around the and the universe of academic engineers initially as well. We were running out of world. An interesting aspect of modern couldn’t be more different. In the IPO, the money, and HP approached us with an of- technology is its international nature. We investment backers took us around in lim- fer to buy the company at a very low price. had direct sales and support offices in ousines to expensive offices in New York I am aware of two other microwave soft- twelve countries. While we were a small and other financial centers; as an academic, ware companies that HP bought in this company, we used to joke that the sun I was more used to the lower end of travel way. They too had developed software for never sets on “the Ansoft empire.” arrangements. HP using royalty advances and sold out to In the IPO, I was giving talks to one or HP when their finances dried up. Fortu- two financers at a time, avoiding the use nately I had put an escape clause into the “management of equations (although I did have one slide HP agreement. HP wanted us to develop skills are largely showing Maxwell’s equations), and talking software for microwave engineers but I about industry trends; at academic confer- suggested that we develop software for the same as inter- ences, my talks would contain lots of equa- antenna engineers as well. HP said no, that personal skills.” tions and engineering detail. As everyone their initial interest was for the microwave knows, the uncertainty in business plans is market only, and so I added a clause into Kaizen: As Ansoft grew you became high; an engineering paper presents defini- the agreement specifically excluding soft- the head of a much bigger organization, tive results. ware for antenna design. which brings with it new management To illustrate this point, our investment Fortunately, HP didn’t realize that with challenges. Did developing the necessary banker had just before us taken a company the simulation technology we were using, management skills come naturally, or was public called Legends of the Past—a com- microwave design was a subset of antenna it something you had to work at? pany with Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Pre- design. So we added antenna capabilities to Cendes: I believe that management skills sley impersonators, among others. You can HFSS and were allowed under the agree- are largely the same as interpersonal skills. imagine that presenting the Ansoft story ment to sell this improved, more capable You have to be aware of people’s strengths to an investor who has previously heard a product. The long and short of it is that we and weaknesses as well as their wants and pitch from Legends of the Past is different were able to generate a secondary revenue needs. If you care about the people in the than presenting it to engineers. steam and started prospering. If I had not organization, and judge their abilities cor- Kaizen: Ansoft had been very successful, inserted the exclusion of antenna simula- rectly, it is natural to grow an innovative, and that led to a merger with or sale to tion software into the Ansoft-HP agree- dynamic organization. ANSYS in 2008? ment, Ansoft would have become a small People who joined Ansoft were coming Cendes: Yes. Interestingly, both Ansoft part of HP and you wouldn’t be talking to to a new, high-tech company that was and ANSYS were headquartered in Pitts- me today. changing the way electrical engineering Continued on Page 6 Kaizen: When you started Ansoft, how was done. They were highly motivated many people were involved? 5 ANSYS software simulation used for optimizing a Ferrari ‘s aerodynamic performance

zol cendes, continued er to stay on with the to-be-merged organization has continued to grow and burgh and both Ansoft and ANSYS have companies or to leave? prosper within the ANSYS umbrella. similar names—Ansoft is an abbreviation Cendes: Yes. Ansoft had become a large Kaizen: Now that the merger is behind of Analysis Software while ANSYS of part of my life and I regretted leaving it. you, what is next for Zol Cendes? Analysis System. On the other hand, the merger of Ansoft Cendes: I have been pursuing my dream Kaizen: At that point, Ansoft was the and ANSYS made a lot of business sense of reinventing the finite element method. world’s leading company in is field. By and I realized my role there couldn’t While the finite element method is now what criteria does one measure that? Rev- continue. over 60 years old, certain aspects of the enues? Market share? Kaizen: Was a non-compete agreement method are still mysterious. I have dis- Cendes: Our revenue was over $100 part of the merger deal? covered a new approach to the finite ele- million at the time. A number of smaller Cendes: Yes. However, the merger agreement method that solves some of these companies had entered the market but ment didn’t include any “golden hand- mysteries. It is like discovering a new their combined revenue was less than ours. cuffs,” so I could leave Ansoft/ANSYS landscape—the world is new in every di- Similarly in market share—almost every immediately if I wanted to. rection I look. I am exploring these new Fortune 500 company in the electrical directions—sometimes I find something engineering space was using our software; beautiful, sometimes I reach a dead end— much fewer were using our competitors’ “It is like discovering but it is always an exciting journey. I am software. a new landscape— in the process of writing a book describing the new theory. Kaizen: How did the merger process the world is new in start—who approached whom? Kaizen: Looking back on having been every direction.” an entrepreneur for twenty-four years— Cendes: ANSYS approached us. ANSYS what has been the best thing to you had started earlier than Ansoft, they were about being an entrepreneur? in the mechanical engineering design Kaizen: And yet you stayed on for anoth- space, and were significantly larger. ANSYS er two years to effect a smooth transition? Cendes: It is fun. There is nothing more wanted to round out their engineering Cendes: I wanted to see the merger suc- enjoyable than having a dream and a di- design offerings by adding electrical en- ceed. It would have hurt me very badly if rection to go, waking up every morning gineering products to their existing me- everything I had built up over the years and building a solution to a fundamen- chanical engineering products. had been destroyed. I also felt close to my tal human need. Few people realize the need for electromagnetic field simulation. Kaizen: How much was Ansoft valued at employees and wanted to do everything I Nevertheless, every day you use products for the merger, if I may ask? could to ensure their continued success. and technologies that would not exist Cendes: When the deal closed on Au- Navigating the waters between the former Ansoft culture and the new ANSYS without electromagnetic field simulation. gust 1, 2008, the combined cash and stock Every entrepreneur faces the challenge valuation was around $900 million. culture was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. The ANSYS and opportunity of improving the human Kaizen: What are the major factors going management initially didn’t understand condition in some way. into determining the valuation? our products, markets, and procedures. It Kaizen: What has been the most chal- Cendes: Since Ansoft was a public com- was a long process, but eventually ANSYS lenging thing for you about being an pany, determining the valuation was rela- management learned the needs in the entrepreneur? tively easy—ANSYS simply put a 15% electromagnetic market and most people Cendes: I’ve always focused on the op- premium on our existing stock price. and procedures continued on as before. portunities rather than the challenges so Kaizen: Was it difficult to decide wheth- Although it was very difficult for me, I’m it’s hard to say. I suppose the times that glad I stayed on because the old Ansoft we were running out of money to meet 6 the monthly payroll were the most stress- ful part of my career. Kaizen: Entrepreneurs have to have initiative, guts, resourcefulness, perseverance, the ability to recover from setbacks, and so on. If you had to choose, which of those would you say is the most important? Cendes: While all of these characteristics are important, more important than all of them is vision. An entrepreneur must have some idea of where he is going and what the purpose of the enterprise is. Cendes at his home in Naples, Florida Once you have a vision, it still takes initiative, guts and all of the traits you men- that the specifics you learn are not im- On a fundamental level, people have tion—but without a vision, no amount of portant. What is important are the funda- free will and think in terms of concepts; these traits will lead to success. mental principles you learn that govern computers are deterministic and don’t Kaizen: What advice would you give the world. think at all. At this point, we don’t even to potential entrepreneurs about how to Kaizen: On the other hand, we live in a know how the atoms in our brains form cultivate those traits in themselves? high-tech world of science and engineer- concepts, let alone how to make a com- Cendes: Potential entrepreneurs need to ing, but not many people are scientifically puter think. think long term. What are the needs in literate. Is that problematic? Kaizen: What is the best advice you’ve the world and how do you satisfy them? Cendes: Ignorance is never useful. It can been given from a mentor? You do this by looking at the world as even be destructive if a person lives and Cendes: The mentor in life was my it is and thinking about how it ought to acts in a fantasy world removed from sci- PhD advisor Professor Peter Silvester. be. Once you have a vision for the future, entific reality. An interesting example is He was the only genius I ever knew. you need to focus on your goals rather the current “singularity movement”—the He taught me that reality is knowable than the difficulties. It is easy to have notion that computers will overtake peo- through thought and that we can achieve initiative, guts, perseverance, etc., if your ple in intelligence in a few decades and goals by focusing on the fundamentals. mind is focused on your dream. we will be able to live forever by down- Kaizen: In closing, what advice would Kaizen: Many entrepreneurs have techni- loading our brains into computers. you give to young people just starting cal backgrounds, but they don’t typically out in their careers? learn much about business in university. Is Cendes: Follow your dream. Life has that a problem? “focus on your amazing possibilities—don’t waste them. Cendes: No. Many successful entrepre- goal of changing My advice is to focus on your goal of neurs—Bill Gates and Steve Jobs come the world and not changing the world and not on any to mind—never took a business course money that you might make. If you are in their lives. The most important aspects on any money that successful, you will be rewarded for your of business—having a vision, selling your you might make.” efforts. It is mistake to pursue wealth product or service, raising money, man- without achievement. aging a team of bright people—are not This notion is scientifically illiterate— Remember that the world rewards value taught in business school. Entrepreneurs electronic computers are as different from with value, so you must produce some- can hire people to do the technical as- biological brains as cars and trucks are from thing valuable before you can become pects of business such as accounting and horses and oxen. rich. finance. Computers are built with a central process- Kaizen: Is there anything your engineering unit (CPU), random access memory This interview was conducted for Kaizen ing education could have better prepared (RAM) and data buses. They process data by Stephen Hicks. Our full interview with you for? linearly with access only though a data Zol Cendes will be posted at Cendes: That’s an interesting ques- bus, they never lose a bit of data or make http://www.ethicsandentrepreneurship.org. tion. Basically, no. While much of what I a mistake, and operations such as two plus learned as an undergraduate is irrelevant two equals four are hardwired. In contrast, today—in electronics I was taught about neurons in brains have thousands of con- vacuum tubes—the fundamental thing in nections, people often forget things and 改善 learned in engineering school was how make mistakes, and people need to think to to think. Technology changes so rapidly perform math and other operations.

7 The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship 5050 East State Street Rockford, IL 61108

in the next kaizen

Feature

Guillermo Yeatts Entrepreneurship in Latin America

Also:

High School Entrepreneur Day

Guest Speakers

Upcoming Conferences

More information about CEE and Rockford university Kaizen is published by the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship at Rockford University. Founded in 1847, Rockford University is a four-year, independent, coeducational institution offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in traditional liberal arts and professional fields. The University offers over 80 majors, minors and programs, a return-to-college program in management studies, and masters programs in business and education. For more information, please visit us at www.Rockford.edu.