Hartford Business Journal – When Aria Penna enrolled at UConn as a finance major she was eager to begin her coursework, but also knew she wanted to get more out of college life than just books and lectures. So she signed up for a relatively new program called Hillside Ventures, a student-led venture fund that invests in early-stage startups. She’s one of six women in the 31-student program.
Management
UConn School of Business Reduces MBA Course Requirements, Enabling Students to Complete the Degree More Quickly
UConn Today – The UConn School of Business announced today that it has revised its MBA program, making it faster, more flexible, and more convenient for graduate students to earn their degrees.
Beginning in Fall 2023, the program will decrease the number of credits required to earn an MBA from 57 to 42. It will also change its concentrations and realign its core courses. The changes allow students to complete the MBA program faster—in just over a year if pursued aggressively—and at a lower cost.
Strategies for Success in Business (Taylor’s Version)
UConn Today – Superstar Taylor Swift may have exceptional musical talent and a legion of devoted fans, but, a UConn scholar argues, it is her nearly flawless business strategy that has fueled her path to superstardom.
“Talent only gets you so far,’’ says Sami Ghaddar, a School of Business professor who specializes in business strategy. “I would say that Taylor Swift is a very savvy businessperson.
“In an industry where rivalry is intense, it requires well thought-out and prudent decisions to reap the rewards that she has. Taylor Swift is a person; but Taylor Swift is also a business.’’
UConn School of Business Names Boucher Management & Entrepreneurship Department
UConn Today – Former Connecticut State Sen. Antonietta “Toni” Boucher ’02 MBA and her husband, Henry “Bud” Boucher, had a lot to celebrate in 2020. They had just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and Bud, a management consultant and entrepreneur, had reached his greatest career success. The couple had always wanted to do philanthropic work, and now they would have the financial means to do so.
‘My Advice to Future Entrepreneurs is: TRY!’
Remote working soars in Connecticut, exceeding the national average. It’s ‘a trend that is going to be with us,’ an expert says.
The number of Connecticut residents primarily working from home nearly quadrupled in 2021 compared with two years earlier, new U.S. Census figures show, some of the most compelling evidence yet about how the pandemic has reshaped the state’s employment landscape.
In 2019, 5.6% of employees in Connecticut, or 1 in 18, worked from home, but that climbed to 19.5%, or 1 in 5 in 2021, as employers adapted to COVID-19 distancing precautions to keep running their organizations, according to an analysis of Census data released by the Connecticut Data Collaborative.
In Hartford County, the percentages were even higher, at 20.5% in 2021 compared with 4.8% in 2019.
The percentage of employees working remotely in Connecticut in 2021, exceeded by nearly two percentage points the 17.9% registered nationally, according to CTData, a public-private partnership that advocates the use of data to drive policy and improve programs and services.
“While we know rates increased during the initial year of the pandemic, what is striking is that well into the pandemic rates of working from home have persisted, at levels three times as high as the pandemic,” Michelle Riordan-Nold, CTData’s executive director, said.
“To me, it’s indicative of a trend that is going to be with us,” Riordan-Nold said.
Connecticut also was in the top tier of states with at-home workforces in 2021, coming in behind Washington (24.2%), Maryland (24%), Colorado (23.7%) and Massachusetts (23.7%), according to CTData.
CTData’s analysis was based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey, which are one-year estimates released by the Census Bureau. The sample size for the ACS survey was 19,518 in 2021, compared with 20,291 in 2019. The survey was not conducted in 2020 because of the pandemic.
The Census survey for 2021 also marked the highest number and percentage of people working from home recorded — both nationally and in Connecticut — since the community survey began in 2005.
Greg Reilly, a professor of management and a department head at the UConn School of Business in Storrs, said it was clear remote working, to some degree, will remain part of the employment culture even after the pandemic wanes. But he cautioned the survey was taken while a broad-cross section employers had not called back most workers back to the office and so the percentages could come back down a bit.
Nevertheless, Reilly said the pandemic demonstrated some jobs are particularly well-suited for remote working. Certain jobs in all pay categories — ranging from information technology to customer service may evolve such that people who choose those jobs will take into major consideration the flexibility of working from home, Reilly said.
There are costs to a workplace with a remote component, and the lost interaction, especially that is by chance, Reilly said.
“It may be less the ‘hard to connect,’” Reilly said. “The more important, powerful negative is the serendipity that is gone when you are not in the office. You do start conversations that you don’t intend and those conversations can lead to a variety of positive, problem-solving outcomes.”
Reilly also noted that trust is built by a string of often chance, in-person conversations.
CTData also found other striking shifts in working patterns in Connecticut.
As would be expected, the percentage of workers commuting to work — by car, truck or van — dropped to 74% in 2021, compared with 84% two years earlier. The percentage taking public transportation was cut in half, to 2.5% from 4.5%.
Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.
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Source: https://www.courant.com/business/hc-biz-working-remotely-census-20221012-ygtmhsehvbbqzo2s7ufnki7nre-story.html
Monique Domingo ’22, School of Business
UConn Today – While studying for her doctorate at the UConn School of Business, Monique Domingo sought to pay forward the support she herself had received throughout her academic journey by serving as a mentor to other students. She’ll be taking that Husky spirit and love of learning with her to Louisiana State University after graduation, where she hopes to guide and inspire the next generation of learners as an assistant professor of management.
Innovation Quest Organizers Expect ‘Extraordinary Turnout’ for This Year’s Competition
UConn Today – The leaders of UConn’s highly successful Innovation Quest (iQ) competition said there are millions of varied ideas that could create prosperous startups.
But one irrevocable dynamic separates those who succeed from those who fail.
“The key to being successful is that you have to continually innovate,’’ says Rich Dino, director of the iQ program, who is also a serial entrepreneur and an associate professor emeritus. “Our entrepreneurs learn to ‘hear the footsteps behind them’ and accelerate the move forward by continued innovation.’’
UConn Redesigns MBA Programs to Offer More Flexible Course Options
Alumna: Happiness Isn’t as Elusive as it May Seem
UConn TodayUConn alumna Michelle Wax ’12 (BUS) drove her Jeep across the country in search of people who were truly happy.
She found hundreds of them, from teenagers to senior citizens. None of them were millionaires. All of them led normal lives with challenges, from the mundane to the extreme, yet their outlooks were inspirational.
In a documentary film, American Happiness, which debuts next week, Wax chronicles her journey and what she discovered from those who live joyful, energetic, and meaningful lives.Continue Reading