GIA’s School of Business courses, previously offered only on campus in Carlsbad, Calif., are now available online. This coincides with the recent announcement of GIA’s new Jewelry Business Management diploma, which is earned upon the successful completion of eight courses—four required courses and four electives. The latest series of online courses began in January.

The schedules of the online and on-campus business courses will mirror each other. Now on a quarterly system, the courses are completed within the allotted 10-week schedule. Students also can choose to take a combination of distance education and on-campus courses to earn the Jewelry Business Management diploma, which is the GIA School of Business’s only diploma curriculum. As in the on-campus format, online students will have significant interaction with instructors and other distance education classmates.

The required courses are Principles of Management, Funda-mentals of Marketing, Accounting Basics, and Ethics and Law. There are currently 13 electives, including Merchandising Management, Retail Management, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Economics, Visual Merchandising, and Human Re-sources Management.

The GIA School of Business, founded in July 2002, is the first and only business school created exclusively for teaching individuals how to succeed in the management side of the jewelry industry. It uses post-secondary textbooks and an interactive environment to teach practical business fundamentals as they apply to the jewelry industry. The faculty’s expertise covers the spectrum of key disciplines, and each instructor has substantial experience teaching business at the college level. For more information about the GIA School of Business, call (800) 421-7250, ext. 4001, or visit www.gia.edu.