Republican American – The UConn-Waterbury School of Business and Main Street Waterbury will hold a workshop for the business community on Sept. 15. The session, titled Exploring Pivot Points: Creating Space for Opportunity, will be from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the school’s multipurpose room at 99 East Main Street.
Report Shows Slow Recovery from Recession
New Undergraduate Center at UConn School of Business Centralizes Student Services
The School of Business has established a new Undergraduate Center, combining important student services into one central location. The Center, which was formed over the summer, is located in Suite 248, and will now house the Office of Undergraduate Advising, the Undergraduate Career Development Office, the Office of Diversity Initiatives and the Business Writing Center.
“I’m very excited because this will provide efficient, one-stop shopping for our undergraduates,” said Larry Gramling, associate dean for undergraduate programs. “It will be extremely convenient for students, and provide even greater opportunity for the professional staff to collaborate.”
The new center is designed to offer support that is completely dedicated to the undergraduate students’ professional needs. The Center takes advantage of space formerly occupied by the Full-time MBA program, which has since relocated to Constitution Plaza in downtown Hartford.
Brandy Nelson, who had formerly served as an academic advisor, is now the director of the Office of Undergraduate Advising (formerly known as the Undergraduate Programs Office) and the program can be reached at (860) 486-2315. Kelly Kennedy, well-known for teaching career development courses, will continue in that role as well as creating a new academic advising program that will engage students through all four years.
Kathy Hendrickson is serving as the assistant director of the Undergraduate Career Development Office (formerly known as the Business Career Center). That program can be contacted at (860) 486-5136.
Seanice DeShields is director of The Office of Diversity Initiatives, and that office can be reached at (860) 486-4135.
Jeffrey Roberts is director of the Business Writing Center, which can be contacted at (860) 486-9011.
Another familiar presence in the new center is Debbie Smith, who will now serve as front-desk receptionist in addition to her duties with the Career Development Office.
UConn Business Magazine – Summer 2014
The latest issue of UConn Business is now available. In this issue, we focus on modern business education. Our feature article highlights the Storrs headquarters of the Connecticut Small Business Development Center. We also share with you “Insights on the Frontier of Marketing,” reflecting emerging communication trends; “Hall of Fame 2014,” introducing you to our five newest Hall of Fame members; “Giving Back with Pride,” one family’s generous gift to the School; and the Executive MBA summer business trip to South Africa.
View Magazine Online | Download PDF
From Contest to Success: Following iQ Startups
Blue Edge Labs – The UCONN program is run by Dr. Richard Dino, a professor from the School of Business with an endless amount of enthusiasm and encouragement. Keith Fox, an alumnus of UCONN, provides iQ support from the national program level. In addition to Rich and Keith, there are twenty or more individuals both inside and outside the University who provide mentoring and other program support.
B-School Expands Professional Development Programs, Adds Finance for Non-financial Managers for Fall
The UConn School of Business will offer an executive education program this fall titled, “Finance for Non-financial Managers.”
The two-day, professional development program is from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. October 23 and 24 at the UConn Graduate Business Learning Center, 100 Constitution Plaza, Hartford.
The program is designed to enable mid- to senior-level business managers to better understand and interpret their company’s financial status, thereby offering depth of insight to make sound company financial decisions.
“Finance for Non-financial Managers” provides the essential elements of finance and accounting, whereby participants will learn about different financial principles, including value creation and value drivers, revenue and expense recognition concepts, ratio analysis, financial statement analysis, time value of money and capital budgeting and project evaluation.
In addition, the workshop will enable the participant to understand and interpret the major financial statements of the firm and to assess how the firm is creating value for its stockholders. Interactive exercises, based on nine public companies, across several industries, will be used to apply these concepts.
The program instructor is Robert Hoskin, associate professor emeritus of the Accounting Department at UConn. Hoskin is a leading expert and consultant in insurance and banking accounting, and an award-winning teacher. He was on the faculty at the UConn School of Business for 27 years and during that time directed executive programs. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Cornell University.
Register now! For more information please call (860) 728-2400 or email execed@business.uconn.edu.
The School is also offering Hands-on Lean Business Process Improvement program November 6-7. Registration for this program will open shortly.
David Bergman Receives Prestigious Association for Constraint Programming Doctoral Thesis Award
David Bergman, an assistant professor of Operations and Information Management in the School of Business, has been selected as the winner of this year’s Association for Constraint Programming Doctoral Thesis Award.
The annual award is given to a researcher who has completed his/her thesis in the area of constraint programming. Bergman will present his thesis at this year’s 20th International Conference on Principles and Practices of Constraint Programming in Lyon, France, in September.
Bergman’s thesis is titled, “New Techniques for Discrete Optimization,” and it explores new methodological approaches to discrete optimization problems, an area of operations research which finds an increasing number of applications in fields such as finance, healthcare, and logistics, to name just a few. His thesis provides both theoretical insights and important algorithmic discoveries which together improve upon existing state-of-the-art technology.
He completed his Ph.D. in 2013 at Carnegie Mellon University in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization, a joint program administered by the Tepper School of Business, the Department of Mathematical Sciences, and the Computer Science Department. Bergman’s thesis advisors were John N. Hooker and Willem-Jan van Hoeve.
An abstract of “New Techniques for Discrete Optimization” is available here.
Grad Students on Verge of Exponential Change, Says Senior Executive, UConn Alumna Melinda Brown
What’s the key to staying competitive in a quickly changing job market?
Build a strong skill set, distinguish yourself from your peers, and be a productive, likeable, and forward-thinking employee, said Melinda Brown, ’77, ’85 MBA.
Brown, the senior vice president and corporate controller of Coach Inc., a $5 billion company, directed her remarks to UConn’s graduate business students during an alumni-student networking event Aug. 21 at the Society Room in Hartford.
Brown earned her Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the School of Business in 1977 and her MBA from UConn in 1985. She is on the Board of Directors for the UConn Foundation, and in 2012 was inducted into the School of Business Hall of Fame. After 29 years as a top executive with PepsiCo, she joined Coach two years ago.
Since she earned her MBA, Brown said, the world has accelerated at a rapid rate. While functional excellence is still important, today it is vital to spot converging trends, she said. To her parents, owning a microwave and TV was innovation. For today’s students she predicts they will someday be vacationing off the Earth.
“Today everything is feasible, everything is one moment away,” she said. “The next innovation is right around the corner.”
She urged the students to take advantage of every opportunity as they pursue their degrees.
“You can’t afford to come here to punch your ‘MBA ticket’ and become functionally literate and grab your diploma. This is a journey to learn both facts and ways of thinking and operating and well, frankly, about how to confront what you can’t even yet articulate. Those are the areas to explore, to dig into.
“The things that scare you the most are often the most rewarding. Develop your frameworks and paradigms, focus on creativity, EQ, collaboration and leadership—stretch yourself in ways you may have not previously contemplated. This is a safe place to practice being the next version and the next version and the next version of you.”
More than ever, organizations are seeking “design thinkers,” who can identify problems at their root cause. These are the people who will make the world a different place.
“I have one cell phone, two iPads and two computers. But if you asked me when I purchased my first Gateway computer in 1995, I would have told you that I thought it would be doubtful that any home needed more than one computer, let alone one person having multiple personal devices. The designers of all my mobile devices uncovered what I really needed, not what I told them I thought I needed. Henry Ford got it right—he said, “If I asked my customer what he wanted, he would have said, ‘A faster horse.'”
As her remarks drew to a close, she told the 150 graduate students that their future was certain to be exciting—and unprecedented.
“I know you’re going to get a wonderful education,” she told the students, “and I hope you’re ready for exponential times.”
Pictured: Mario Flores of New Britain, Alia Mahmood of North Haven, and Nicole Segretta of Bristol, all graduate business students at the University of Connecticut School of Business, speak with John A. Elliott, dean of the School of Business, and Melinda Brown, senior vice president and corporate controller at Coach Inc., during a student-alumni networking event on August 21 at the Society Room in Hartford.
Second Annual UConn School of Business Conference to “Celebrate Women Entrepreneurs” in Connecticut
Stamford, Conn. – Connecticut’s second annual statewide conference celebrating and supporting women entrepreneurs* will be held Friday, September 19, 2014, at 8:30 a.m., at UConn’s Stamford campus. Similar to last year, this event is sure to sell out and keynote speakers include: Continue Reading
Job Recovery Has Been Steady, But Slow, Under Malloy
New Haven Register – Malloy’s Republican opponent, Tom Foley, has suggested elimination of the business entity tax, a cut to sales tax and the creation of enterprise zones in the city’s hardest hit by the recession could resuscitate Connecticut’s economy and labor market. But Fred Carstensen, University of Connecticut finance and economics professor and the director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, isn’t sold on Foley’s ideas.
This archived article is no longer available.