Articles about activities within the academic departments
OPIM professor Jing Peng, a prolific researcher and champion of students in the Ph.D. program, has received a prestigious award, recognizing him as a promising young scholar who is likely to make outstanding contributions to his field.Continue Reading
As a Marketing major with a Management minor, Melanie Montalvo plans to graduate from UConn in December of 2022. Aside from her studies, Melanie is currently a Product Marketing Intern at WebMD. Melanie has been in this position since June of 2022. What attracted Melanie to her current position is the great reputation of the company. At the time, Melanie was not familiar with what Product Marketing was. After doing some of her own research, the role piqued her interests. The interview process for this role at WebMD was “fairly simple and straightforward”, in Melanie’s opinion. She had an initial phone conversation with a recruiter and then was asked to do a video interview. The interview was with the Product Marketing Manager and two other team members. The deciding factor in accepting this role was that it was a remote position. Over this past summer, Melanie also took online classes and had a side job. If she had to commute into New York City it would have been a lot more stressful for her, so she was relieved to have the remote option.
There is no typical day as a Product Marketing Intern at WebMD and Melanie is always working on different projects. She is currently overseeing all updates to any product decks which are client facing. WebMD has been modernizing their product offerings and creating new mockups. Melanie is managing this project and something similar has not been done at the company in years. A lot of this work looks like collaborating with other teams, such as project management and creative, and working with an external agency to create new templates. Melanie’s favorite professional experiences so far have been with her team. “I am constantly being supported and my work is always appreciated and acknowledged. I definitely think having such a close team creates an environment where I am comfortable asking questions and for help. It’s great that there has been trust established and my manager gives me meaningful projects to work on. I also enjoy having weekly team meetings where we discuss work but can also be lighthearted.” Melanie recalls.
Some advice Melanie would give to undergraduate students who are currently looking for internships or full-time roles would be to not be discouraged by rejections or not hearing back from positions you have applied for. “There are tens if not hundreds of applicants for each position and the reality is that you won’t hear back from most of them.” Melanie states, “I went through probably around 15-20 interviews and the more comfortable I got with interviewing, the more confident I was which led to offers. It was definitely discouraging at first, but everyone goes through it, and you eventually will land something that is meant for you. It’s okay if the only thing you get from an interview is experience and practice.”.
The UConn School of Business will be offering an online master’s degree in financial technology (FinTech), as well as an online certificate, in response to corporate demand for talent in this fast-growing field.
The latest additions, to launch in Fall 2023, will continue to position UConn as an international leader in fintech education.
“Fintech has disrupted traditional practices in the financial sector and changed the way we bank, shop, trade, invest, and pay our bills,” said John A. Elliott, dean of the School of Business. “We are eager to expand our educational offerings in this area and anticipate that our graduates will have a significant impact in this evolution.”Continue Reading
Anna Mecca graduated from UCONN in May of 2022 as a Marketing major with a concentration in Professional Sales Leadership. Shortly after graduation, Anna took a position to work for Smith+Nephew, a global medical technology company, as part of their Commercial Leadership Rotational Program in Advanced Wound Care Management. Anna knew she wanted to be in the med-tech space and was especially interested in a role that offered a leadership development program. Smith+Nephew provides a 2-2.5 year program that consists of completing rotations within both marketing and sales divisions of the company, ultimately setting candidates up for a Sales Associate position. Anna states, “These programs really teach you the in’s and outs of a company, before accelerating to a more complex job role. This program in my eyes really teaches you how to first crawl, then walk, and eventually run!”.
As an undergraduate, Anna was a member of the UCONN Women in Business organization and was also on the UCONN Women’s Swim Team. Anna was among 15 female athletes nationwide to be selected to join the Women in Sports Foundation Mentorship Program. She was nominated by the UCONN Athletic Department, applied for the program, and was ultimately accepted. This enabled her to meet people within the sports world and get invaluable career guidance from professionals within the industry. Anna was very persistent in using the resources UCONN provides to their students. With that being said, UCONN partners with Parker Dewey, a micro internship platform that connects students and recent college graduates to employers. Here, company’s upload small projects onto Parker Dewey and students are able to apply and get compensated for meaningful work. One day while on the platform, Anna happened upon Smith+Nephew; who had posted a project titled, ‘Sales Pitch Presentation’. She noticed the company was in the med-tech space and that if done well, the sales pitch would be used as a job audition for their first Commercial Leadership Development Program. She applied for the project, was selected, and created a sales pitch presentation which she gave to 4 members of the sales/marketing team at Smith+Nephew. After a successful pitch, Anna received a call asking to officially interview. The process was broken into 3, 30 minute interviews each led by a different person in the Sales Department. Once completed, Anna got a call back the following week with a job offer! Her favorite experiences with Smith+Nephew so far have been through ‘OJT’ (On the Job) Field Trainings. Anna fondly recalls attending an OJT in Omaha, NE where she was able to shadow a Field Sales Trainer for a week out in the field. She was able to see surgeries, meet patients with wounds that use our product, talk to podiatrists and surgeons, discuss any questions she had along the way, and gained a better understanding of how Smith+Nephew operates.
Anna’s advice to current students is to use your resources! She declares, “It is CRUCIAL that you take advantage of the resources UCONN provides during your undergraduate career and expand your knowledge. Whether that be taking a resume class, meeting with an advisor in the Career Development Office, or taking a class that might pique your interest. You never know what opportunities can present themselves when you use the resources that you have at your disposal. So while at UCONN, make sure you take the time out of your busy schedule to focus on career development. Set aside a couple hours a week to devote your time to finding what you want to do and seeing if there are any opportunities out there. Don’t be afraid to ask for help too! If you’re in class and an employer comes in to speak about their company, if you’re interested, even in the slightest, go up to them and introduce yourself! Make that first impression and get yourself out of your comfort zone. As long as you are actively trying to ‘build your brand’ at UCONN, you will have much success!”.
In the highly competitive international air-transportation business, ensuring on-time delivery of passengers and cargo requires elaborate strategic planning, precise scheduling, flexible and timely maintenance, and extraordinary teamwork.Continue Reading
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
UConn Today – As a new business student, David ‘Dave’ Wharmby ’89 (BUS), ’02 MBA took an introductory real estate course that changed his life.
“Professor Byrl Boyce was a very personable guy, with a dry sense of humor, who really wanted to make sure we understood the material,’’ Wharmby says. “He took some complex financial math and went over it again and again, until students really felt like they were masters of difficult material.’’
WalletHub – Is the U.S. leaving money on the table with the current corporate tax structure?
The U.S. faces a balancing act in setting its corporate tax rate high enough to support government activities and prevent abuse, but not too high to encourage firms to shift operations overseas or to discourage business growth.
UConn Today – In their infancy, corporate Human Resources departments hired and fired, and made sure employees got their paychecks on time.
But the profession has taken on much greater importance in recent years, with the HR executive becoming an essential strategic leader, recruiting, hiring and developing personnel that will shape the destiny of a company.