UConn Today – The School of Business is hosting its second annual Global Business Leadership in Sustainability Summit, addressing issues and ideas shaping sustainability in business, both locally and globally.
The event, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday, March 24, will provide students the opportunity to speak with young alumni, business professionals, and other friends of UConn who share enthusiasm for “business for good.’’
UConn Today – Professor George Plesko, the head of the accounting department, a beloved mentor, and a researcher whose work changed IRS policies, has been honored as the top tax educator in the nation.
The 2022 Ray M. Sommerfeld Outstanding Tax Educator Award, a prestigious award from the American Taxation Association, is given to a faculty member with a distinguished career and outstanding contributions to teaching, curriculum development, service, participation in professional activities, and academic research.
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
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.
©2022 Hartford Courant. Visit courant.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Source: https://www.courant.com/business/hc-biz-working-remotely-census-20221012-ygtmhsehvbbqzo2s7ufnki7nre-story.html
UConn Today – Do you keep secrets from your loved ones, family, or friends? It turns out that many people do. Whether ordering something online and hiding the package when it arrives, hiring a cleaning service and not telling your roommate, or eating a pizza instead of dieting, we often have secret purchases that we just prefer not to divulge.
The School of Business is welcoming nine new faculty members this semester, continuing a trend of successful recruiting. Many of the new hires already have strong research accomplishments and awards for teaching excellence.Continue Reading
UConn management professor John Mathieu has received the Academy of Management’s RMD Distinguished Career Award, recognizing his high-quality research and methodology expertise.
Additionally, one of his former students, UConn alumna Margaret Luciano ’15 Ph.D., now an associate professor of management at Pennsylvania State University, won a similar academy award as an early-career researcher.
“These awards are a testament to the highly respected research we do at UConn,” Mathieu said. “Scientific research has to be done well or it is of no value at all. We set a very high standard.”
Mathieu is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at UConn, the highest honor that the university bestows on faculty. He has repeatedly been recognized with lifetime achievement awards for his work in the field of leadership and organizational management. His groundbreaking research on team dynamics, for example, has been used by NASA to prepare astronauts to reduce conflict during long trips, such as a future journey to Mars.
As a UConn doctoral candidate, Luciano’s dissertation addressed the dynamics of cross-unit coordination of patient “handoffs” in a busy hospital setting. She won multiple awards while she was a student, was inducted into the School of Business Hall of Fame in 2015. Subsequently, she has also collaborated and mentored other UConn Ph.D. students in the organizational behavior field.
In addition to the Academy of Management award, Luciano also recently received an INGRoup (Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research) early career award, which is presented to a researcher whose work makes a distinguished contribution to the study of team behavior, dynamics, and outcomes.
“Margaret’s success in winning these early career awards is a reflection of how hard she works and the quality of her research,” Mathieu said. “Our doctoral students have won all sorts of awards involving big, ambitious, creative research studies. Margaret’s recognitions, along with those of other management Ph.D. graduates, is also evidence of the quality of training and preparation that our students receive here at UConn, not only from me, but from the entire program. It does take a village.”
At 11 years old, Mary “Lexy” Vecchio had a traumatic, life-changing ski accident.
She was skiing alone, without a helmet, and hadn’t told her family which trail she would be on. She had a terrible crash, and broke her hip. She was alone in the snow, stranded, frightened, and seriously injured. Her screams for help went unheard for a long time.Continue Reading
When OPIM professor Jon Moore wanted to teach undergraduates the significance of emerging technology, he created a hands-on classroom at UConn’s Spring Valley Farm that used data analytics and tech to grow herbs and keep fish healthy.
Moore, who has been described by his former students as visionary, inspirational, and committed to their success, has been awarded the 2022 Teaching Innovation Award by UConn’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.Continue Reading