Student Group Visits Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and PwC

April 8, 2015

The Honors in Business Association (HiBA) hosted a trip to visit the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and PwC. Approximately 30 students attended and were split into two groups, with one group visiting PwC and the other group visiting the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Students visiting PwC were hosted by Ann Ulett, northeast sourcing manager. Students learned about the day-to-day responsibilities of an accountant from a panel that included a recent UConn graduate followed by a team building activity. PwC also spoke about the future of the company in the city of Boston.

At the Federal Reserve Bank, students were hosted by Don Anderson ’99, vice president of network services. Anderson along with other officers of the Federal Reserve Bank gave an overview of the Bank’s corporate structure. Students also attended a presentation on the topics of economic growth and the Bank’s balance sheet by the associate vice President of accounting. The visit at the Federal Reserve Bank ended with a cash tour given by the vice president of cash services.

Students visit Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Brooke Wasserman ’15, an accounting major who visited the Federal Reserve Bank mentioned, “I found the overview of the balance sheet to be very interesting. The Federal Reserve Bank considers cash to be a liability on their balance sheet.” In Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), cash is considered an asset and not a liability.

Quian Callender ’16, president of the Honors in Business Association, states, “Site visits are extremely beneficial to students because they provide experiences that can’t be learned in a traditional classroom setting.”

About Honors in Business Association
Honors in Business Association (HiBA) is a student organization formed between the Honors Program and School of Business. HiBA strives to create a sense of community for students in both Honors and the School of Business and those with an interest in business. HiBA’s programming provides the opportunity for students to demonstrate and develop skills necessary to succeed in today’s business world all while building a strong alumni network. Contact information: uconnhiba@gmail.com or Quian Callender at quian.callender@uconn.edu.

Students’ Device Helps People Take Meds as Prescribed

UConn Today – Steven Graf ’15 (BUS) couldn’t stop thinking about what he had seen in Ghana after a May 2013 trip there with Global Brigades, a student organization that focuses on helping developing countries. The group, which included doctors, set up a health care clinic in a rural community. Many of the patients hadn’t previously had access to health care, according to Graf.

“Everyone in the surrounding area came, free of charge. We’d do the triage, they’d get a prescription, then they’d go to the pharmacy [at our clinic] to pick it up,” he says. “At the end of the week, we went back to talk to everyone. Fifty percent of the people that we were helping were doing worse or the same.”

2015 Hall of Fame Inductees

April 7, 2015

Dean John Elliott and the UConn School of Business are proud to announce the 2015 Hall of Fame inductees:

 

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI INDUCTEES

Brigadier General James S. Creedon ’53, USAF (RET)
President, Creedon Consulting, LLC
Posthumous

David B. Greenfield ’84
UConn Foundation Board of Directors
Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
The Hanover Insurance Company

Norman W. LaCroix ’72 MBA
Partner & Co-founder
Decision Analytics Group

Wendy Reeves Watkins ’74
UConn Foundation Board of Directors

 

Celebration of Veterans Initiatives
As part of our Hall of Fame celebration this year, we will also be celebrating the School’s long-standing commitment to our United States veterans.

Please join us for the 2015 Hall of Fame Celebration at the Connecticut Convention Center on Friday, May 8th. For more information, please click here or contact Amanda Spada at Amanda.Spada@business.uconn.edu or by calling 860-486-5498.

These are ‘Best of Times, Worst of Times’ for Risk Managers

April 2, 2015

Thomas Sullivan '00 MBA
Thomas Sullivan ’00 MBA

When a major retailer had a security breach, and consumer information was compromised, it created a ripple effect at Stamford-based First County Bank.

First County Bank customers inundated their local branches seeking new debit cards, and many wanted replacements right away. The bank is able to produce about 1,000 new cards a day in-house, but has to contract out for bigger projects, said John Bonora, senior vice president and chief risk officer at the bank, and a 2011 graduate of UConn’s MSFRM program.Continue Reading

Dr. Rowena Ortiz-Walters Selected as Dean of School of Business and Economics

The State University of New York at Plattsburgh issued the following news release:

The chair of management in the School of Business and Engineering at Quinnipiac University is the new dean of SUNY Plattsburgh’s School of Business and Economics.

Dr. Rowena Ortiz-Walters, a professor of management at the Hamden, Conn., university, accepted the position March 30 with the intent of being on campus this summer.

“Dr. Ortiz-Walters is a perfect choice to lead our School of Business and Economics,” said Dr. James Liszka, provost and vice president of academic affairs. “Her qualities as administrator and scholar, and her outreach to communities, are sure to benefit SBE and our Plattsburgh businesses and organizations.”

Ortiz-Walters was selected from a field of outstanding candidates, said President John Ettling. The national search was chaired by Dean of Library and Information Technology Service Holly Heller-Ross.

Ortiz-Walters received a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut, an MBA from Technology Management University of New Haven and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from theUniversity of Connecticut. Her works appear in such scholarly publications as “The Journal of Organizational Behavior,” “Journal of Vocational Behavior,” and the “Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship.”

Her interests include examining mentoring relationships as a career developmental tool for women and racial minorities, issues of diversity in the workplace, and the entrepreneurial ventures of racial minorities and women. Ortiz-Walters is a founding member of Quinnipiac University’s B-WISE — Business Women in Search of Excellence — initiative and a member of Connecting Women, a School of Business Advisory Board committee. In addition, she has served as an advisory board member for a study of gender diversity for the Harvard Medical School and is co-founder of the Center for Women and Business at Quinnipiac.

“We are delighted that Dr. Rowena Ortiz-Walters has accepted the position as dean of the School of Business and Economics,” Ettling said. “I would like to thank the committee and the search firm that produced some excellent candidates. We are fortunate and look forward to her arrival on July 1.”

As dean of the SBE, Ortiz-Walters will oversee 38 full-time faculty members and an undergraduate enrollment of more than 1,000. The school offers bachelor’s degrees in 11 programs and minors in 10 programs. SUNY Plattsburgh received accreditation in 2002 from the AACSB International — the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business — the premier accrediting agency for schools of business. Ortiz-Walters will oversee the accreditation processes, ensuring that the SBE exceeds AACSB standards.

No stranger to AACSB, Ortiz-Walters was a senior leadership team member at Quinnipiac during its most recent maintenance visit by the AACSB reviewers. As such, she was responsible for meeting with the Continuous Improvement Review Team to discuss AACSB standards issues.

Ortiz-Walters said she, too, is “delighted to be joining the SUNY Plattsburgh academic and business community.”

“Many aspects of the school are attractive to me, including a strong faculty with terminal degrees, a strong international and first-generation student presence and an investment in new facilities,” she said. “This is an exciting time in the history of the school, and I look forward to supporting its success as the next dean.”

Contact: Gerianne Wright, Assistant Director of Communications, 518/564-2090, news@plattsburgh.edu

New Members Inducted into Business Honor Society on Sunday

More than 100 UConn business students were inducted into the Beta Gamma Sigma scholastic honor society during a dinner and ceremony on Sunday evening.

Beta Gamma Sigma recognizes students with the highest academic achievement at the undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels. Students from Storrs, Stamford, Hartford and Waterbury attended the ceremony in the Dave Ivry Seminar Classroom at School of Business. Keynote speaker was Dean John A. Elliott.Continue Reading

Work-Life Balance

Flexible Work Time Could be Salvation for Families–and an Advantage for Employers–So Why Do Companies, Employees Resist?

The typical two-income American family is stretched to the breaking point with responsibilities, and, for many, flexible work time would be helpful in finding a work-life balance, said Robert Bird, professor of Business Law.

“There are millions of people in our country under intense pressure,” said Bird, who is also the Northeast Utilities Chair in Business Ethics. “They are two-parent, working families taking care of children and/or elderly parents. Inflexible work schedules are making the stress even worse.”Continue Reading

The Final Applications Are In

The final applications are in. The iQ judges will be sifting through over 50 applications to find the top 16 innovations. Those winners will then be asked to give presentations on their ideas, and eight of them will be invited to iQ’s summer incubator. The top three get prizes of $15,000, $10,000, and $5,000.

In the past few workshops, iQ focused on understanding innovation and commercial potential of products. Innovation can be defined as an invention plus its distribution. The invention itself needs to bring something to the market that is different than what is already out there. As Professor Rich Dino would say, how is it cheaper, better, or faster? Continue Reading

Does SOX 404 Have Teeth?

April 1, 2015

A regulation that is supposed to provide a warning bell and greater transparency for investors is hampered by a lack of enforcement, according to new research conducted by accounting professor David Weber.

Professor David Weber

The School of Business has awarded one of its 2015 Best Paper Awards to Weber for his research titled, “Does SOX 404 Have Teeth? Consequences of the Failure to Report Existing Internal Control Weaknesses,” co-authored with UConn doctoral student Biyu Wu and Sarah Rice of Texas A&M. It will appear in the American Accounting Association’s premier journal, The Accounting Review.

Continue Reading

Pratt Mining Big Data

March 31, 2015

Hartford Business Journal – The concept of using large data sets to package information to customers started in the early 2000s with Google, which initially used systems to analyze data on websites to enhance its search engine performance, said Ramesh Shankar, associate professor of information systems at the UConn School of Business.