Hartford Courant – Elaine Chuli, 21, an accounting major, is nearing the end of her college career. A four-year starter, she has been a constant in a complicated and important time in UConn women’s hockey history. Her sprawling saves have made an imprint that will leave the program in a better place than where she found it.
Undergraduate Programs
Internship Success Story: Stacia Smart
Stacia Smart is a marketing senior who interned with Frito-Lay, a large corporation that markets and sells corn chips, potato chips and other snack foods. Over the course of the summer, Stacia worked as a Consumer Insights Marketing intern for the Oven Baked Lays brand. She was responsible for developing a comprehensive situation analysis of the Oven Baked business while collecting historical work, marketplace audits, organizing data and key stakeholders, looking at trends and identifying opportunities. After all this, she initiated a re-branding project and research for the brand.Continue Reading
Internship Success Story: Kendra Thomas
Kendra Thomas is a senior marketing major who interned with Apple, the multinational technology company, this past summer as part of the social strategy team in California. She interacted with all types of social media and participated in social listening to detect buzz generated about Apple. She miraculously got this internship by simply applying on their website. She received a phone and Skype interview before the company flew her out to begin her internship. She thought they’d never get to her application but they did!Continue Reading
Internship Success Story: Jacob Bond
Jacob Bond is a senior marketing major who completed an internship with Indeed.com, a job search engine that connects employers with job seekers. Employers can post their job listings on Indeed.com and job seekers can filter through all jobs to see which ones they want to apply to! It’s frequently called “Google for jobs.”Continue Reading
Award-winning Professor Dick Kochanek’s Accounting Class Came with a Bonus: Great Advice for Living Life
“If the person next to you in class leans over and whispers, ‘I love you,’ you have to say: ‘Not until after class. I have to focus on Kochanek’s lecture now!'”
That’s one of the many witty remarks that Professor Richard “Dick” Kochanek has used to engage the 250 underclassmen in his “Principles of Financial Accounting” class.
Kochanek, who retired at the end of fall semester, is one of the most beloved and highly regarded professors at UConn. He has extremely high ratings from his students and is widely credited with turning their curiosity about accounting into a life-long career.Continue Reading
UConn to Honor Donor, Researcher and Patient at Gala
Doubling Down
Students Use ‘Winter Session’ to Get Ahead; Enjoy Small, Intense Classes, Personal Attention
While many UConn students were lounging in bed, working at the mall, or visiting family, the students in Accounting Professor Leanne Adams’ ACCT 2001 Winter Session course spent early January learning the principles of financial accounting.Continue Reading
Internship Success Story: Marisa Crecco
Marisa Crecco is a marketing senior who completed an internship with GOBig Marketing, a full service marketing and advertising agency located in Winter Park, Florida. She found this internship by researching and emailing marketing related companies near her home in Florida. After contacting about 40 different places, she received an internship offer from GOBig Marketing. Continue Reading
On the Ball
Bottom row from left: Edward Leardi, John McLaughlin, Matthew DeLeon, Jeffrey Noonan (Courtesy of Jason Mraz)
New Student-Led UConn Consulting Group Investigates Ways to Make Basketball Fans Love Games Even More
When UConn Athletics noticed a decline in basketball sales, they began to look for new ways to get fans into games. They introduced new package ticket deals, created the ‘Top Dog’ Program, and brought in the UConn Consulting Group (UCG) to help them further analyze UConn and the college basketball industry.
Primarily made up of undergraduate business students, the UCG is a competitive experiential learning group that pursues real-life (work) experience through select consulting projects. Each semester, the group takes on a new project and works to add value to a client’s strategy and operations while letting students develop skills that are, at best, extremely difficult to learn in a classroom.
The UCG worked with UConn Athletics through the fall 2015 semester to identify ways to improve the game-day experience for fans. They began by performing an in-depth analysis of UConn basketball and the different elements that have dramatically shifted the college basketball industry in recent years, such as conference realignment and technological advances. They also conducted extensive research, reaching out to more than 20 comparable universities, reading more than 50 academic research papers and articles, conducting three surveys and analyzing the results of some 1,800 respondents.
Throughout this process, the UCG identified key elements of success, as well as best practices from other universities that could be incorporated at UConn. At the end of the semester, the UCG presented its final recommendation to UConn Athletics.
“The UCG has gone above and beyond this semester to help UConn Athletics be the best it can be,” said John Seagrave, assistant director of marketing for UConn Athletics. “They have given us a lot to think about moving forward and we really appreciate all the work they did to help us out.”
The consulting group was created by Justin Lee ’15 as a way for UConn students to make an impact on their community. An accounting major, who discovered a passion for management consulting, Lee began by reaching out to alumni in the consulting industry and, with the help of Paul Millerd ’07 and Ezra Okon ’10, was able to form the UConn Consulting Group. UCG started with seven members and two alumni advisers, but has since grown to 13 members and four advisers, with more growth on the horizon.
“UCG has grown faster than I ever imagined,” said Lee, who is still an adviser. “The quality of students, and [their] passion to succeed will drive the group to be a premier organization at UConn. I cannot wait to see the group grow.”
Although the UCG has only completed two projects to date—UConn Athletics and a previous engagement with the UConn Foundation—it has experienced overwhelming success, and more importantly perhaps, has made a significant impact on the members.
“UCG has helped me with everything. My communication and technical skills have improved dramatically and it’s all I talk about in interviews,” said Katie Cavanaugh, a junior who is currently leading a project for a financial services startup. “Plus, UCG’s network of undergraduates and alumni advisers is arguably the best on campus. It really is an exceptional group and an incredible opportunity for UConn students.”
In the coming months, UCG will begin working with two start-ups—one based in Connecticut, the other in New York City. The projects will include detailed analyses of things such as revenue growth, cost/benefit of strategic partnerships, valuation, and overall business plan evaluation.
“The UCG is expanding to two projects next semester, allowing us to further our impact even more,” said Stephen Porcello, managing director. “I am very excited about the future and the numerous ways we will continue to grow and develop, and enhance our impact within the UConn community.”
The UCG is currently looking to recruit new members. If interested, please send an email with your resume to uconnconsultinggroup@gmail.com and a representative will get back to you with further details on the recruiting process.
UConn Students Rise to the ‘Interview Challenge’
The School of Business Undergraduate Career Development Office (UCDO) successfully hosted its first “Interview Challenge” in the fall semester. With prizes funded by a Target Corporation Campus Grant, students were challenged to participate in coaching to develop their professional interview skills. Over the course of one month, students who registered for the Interview Challenge had three tasks, or challenges, to complete.
The challenges were:
- Choose a random interview question from the “interview bowl” and answer it on the spot for a UCDO career counselor;
- Record an online interview utilizing InterviewStream; and
- Complete an in-person practice interview with a UCDO career counselor.
The goal of the program was to help students develop their interview skills and become aware of the services that UCDO offers, allowing them to feel more comfortable in the career development process.
For senior international exchange student Guzela Marisova, the Interview Challenged helped ease her fear of interviewing.
“UCDO challenge put me in a situation where I had to show my best in order to get a ‘job.’ What was really good about it, is that this situation was not stressful at all. Lorraine Liswell, who interviewed me, was a very nice and friendly interviewer who made me understand that I’m not in danger (as we are used to thinking while being interviewed),” said Marisova.
As a result of the program, 71% of the mock interviews that were conducted this semester were from students engaging in the Interview Challenge. These students included freshmen up to seniors, business and non-business majors, and first-time UCDO visitors. As a sidebar, another significant result of the program was that UCDO staff had the opportunity to meet business freshman, Seeyashree Sodani, who impressed us so much that we offered her a job in the department. We are happy to announce that she has accepted and will join our student career intern staff this spring semester.
All students who completed the challenge were invited to a dinner held at Chuck & Augie’s on December 8th. This business casual event was an informal and fun way to network with their peers, Target Executives and the UCDO Team to de-stress before finals.
“Not only was the interview challenge fun and helpful, but it was easier than I thought it would be. The staff is so approachable and really cares about helping each student, plus there was food afterwards!”
noted Evan Wexler, a Management and Engineering for Manufacturing junior.
This program would not have been possible without the support of Target Corporation. Over the last couple of years, Target’s Campus Grants have sponsored a number of career development events including:
- Leadership Speaker Series—Spring and Fall 2014
- Freshman/Sophomore Case Competition—Spring 2015
- Intern Queen Presentation—Fall 2015
- Interview Challenge—Fall 2015
UCDO would like to thank Target for their continued support and commitment to student development. The success of the Interview Challenge set the ground work for the program to be continued each year.