Noteworthy collegewide news ... take one

Pie’d for a Cause:

Mendoza professors Mike Meyer, Wendy Angst and Kristen Collett-Schmitt took pies to the face to raise funds for Camp Kesem, an organization that supports children through and beyond their parents’ cancer. All told, they raised $2,842 on behalf of the College in just a week, beating out friendly competition from the colleges of Arts & Letters and Science for a grand total of $5,361.

Making the case

Sam is a textile entrepreneur in Detroit who is weighing the effects on her business and workers if production is outsourced 
to Uganda.

Tim is a tech businessman who faces paying off a Congolese warlord threatening a business associate.

Jason hopes to get his banking career back on track by launching a hot IPO in China — and is dabbling in questionable behavior to get inside information.

These scenarios were developed by eight Mendoza sophomores as case studies in international business ethics. Each original story and accompanying teaching notes were designed to spur classroom discussion about ethical complexities that inevitably arise with global business dealings.

The students volunteered for the project after taking Introduction to Business Ethics, taught by Jessica McManus Warnell, management associate teaching professor and project adviser. Joan Dubinsky, a guest lecturer and former chief ethics officer for the United Nations, and Georges Enderle, John T. Ryan Professor of International Business Ethics, also worked with the students.

In anticipation of publishing the studies for use by other schools, the students, who worked in groups of two or three, presented their cases on March 2 in the Giovanini Commons, where they received feedback from a multidisciplinary group of Mendoza faculty members.

Students involved were Spencer Jones, Claudia Kulmacz, Zachary Myszka, Jennifer Prosser, Marie-Anne Roche, Priscilla Rumbeiha, Mary Guohui Shi and Ailsa Xing. Several groups planned to present their work in April at the Undergraduate Scholars Conference @ND, sponsored by the Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement.

Congrats, Ruth!

Ruth Riley (EMBA ’16, ND ’01) was named the new general manager of the San Antonio Stars on April 20 as part of the team’s succession plan. Head Coach and previous general manager Dan Hughes plans to mentor Riley and work alongside her to hire a new head coach before he steps down at the end of the 2016 season.

“We are fortunate to add Ruth Riley,” Hughes said. “She is very bright, knows the women’s game well and has a drive and passion to succeed. The future of the Stars is in good hands and I look forward to assisting her as she learns her new role.”

Current rankings  

USA-Today: #1 - University of Notre Dame, “2016 Top 10 Colleges for Degrees in Management Information Systems”

• Ranking of universities offering the management IT programs that provide excellent outcomes to students, including high graduation rates and high starting salaries

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK: #2 - Mendoza College of Business, “Best Undergraduate Business Schools 2016”

• Ranking of 114 undergraduate business programs nationwide based on recruiter feedback, student surveys, starting salaries and internships

POETS & QUANTS: #15 - Notre Dame Executive MBA, “2016 Ranking of the Best American EMBA Programs”

• Composite ranking of the top 50 U.S. EMBA programs that incorporates three major rankings of EMBA programs, including 2016 U.S. News & World Report and the past two lists by both The Financial Times and The Economist

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT: #25 - Notre Dame MBA, “2017 Best Business Schools”

• Ranking of 129 U.S. MBA programs based on employment rates, student selectivity and academic reputation

Regional champs

A team of Notre Dame MBA students — Jennifer Kaupa, Sean Kibbe, Aditya Malladi, Ian Nichols and Joe Patterson — won the regional Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC), held Feb. 12 at Boston University, beating out schools including Cornell, Georgetown, John Hopkins and Virginia.

The VCIC, organized by the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, draws 78 elite b-schools from 13 countries for an intensive event in which students play the role of venture capitalists with $100 million to invest. Eight regional teams competed in the global competition finals, held at University of North Carolina in April. The winning team was from Brigham Young University.

16TH Annual McCloskey Business Plan Competition

The Gigot Center for Entrepreneurship awarded more than $300,000 in cash and in-kind prizes during its final event on April 15. Top winners included:

McCloskey Grand Prize: Certus Therapeutics, maker of a nanoparticle drug delivery platform with the potential to target cancer cells, lessen the toxic effect of cancer medications and increase a patient’s quality of life. Team: Rebecca Shute (ESTEEM ’16), Brittany Butler (MS Law ’16), Kevin Schneider (MSA ’16), Michael Schneider (MSA ’16) and Charissa Quinlan (Ph.D. Integrated Biomedical Sciences ’18).

McCloskey Runner Up: POLCO, a civic engagement and policy participation platform that allows citizens to participate in their city’s town hall meetings in a simple online and validated way. Team: Nick Mastronardi (BA ’03), Jack Malley (BA ’16), Alex Pedersen, Samaria O’Brien (BA ’16) and Gavin Phelps (JD ’16)

Klau Family Prize for Greatest Social Impact: Safetap, a suicide prevention mobile application that includes school-specific resources for high school and college students, a therapist search, as well as crisis resources. Team: Kenneth Colon (BA ’17)

A total of 124 teams entered the McCloskey Competition last fall, with 20 teams advancing to the semifinal round on April 14 and eight ventures presenting during the live final competition. Nearly 200 judges and mentors, including members of the Irish Entrepreneurs Network and the IrishAngels Investing Group, worked with the teams to provide valuable feedback and mentoring. Visit gigot.nd.edu to view a list of all the winners.

Looking Ahead

Can you “future-proof” your career? How will the vast changes in health care affect businesses? What’s a “gig economy” and what will it mean to you? These are a few of the topics tackled in the 2016 Ten Years Hence speaker series, which focused on the theme, “The Future of Work.” Speakers included:

•  Karie Willyerd, workplace futurist for Success Factors, an SAP subsidiary and cofounder of Jambok, a video-based social learning software platform

•  Viv Goldstein, director of innovation acceleration for GE and co-founder of FastWorks

•  Elizabeth Heller Allen, senior vice president of external affairs for the MetroHealth System

•  Dustee Tucker Jenkins, senior vice president of communications at Target

•  Richard Marshall, global managing director of the corporate affairs center of expertise at Korn Ferry

•  George Logothetis, chairman and CEO of the Libra Group

•  Bill Chamberlin, principal analyst for IBM corporate market research

Ten Years Hence, now in its 12th year, is Mendoza’s signature lecture series, which features experts presenting their perspectives of the significant trends and developments in the next decade.

Conference explores Laudato Si’ and sustainable development

As part of the celebration of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment Laudato Si’, the Mendoza College of Business hosted a two-day conference to explore the significance of the encyclical, as well as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), key targeted environmental and developmental goals unanimously approved by world leaders in September.

The conference, A Global Compact for Sustainable Development: Advancing Care for Our Common Home, took place April 3-4 on the Notre Dame campus. Some of the world’s leading experts in the area of sustainability and global development presented topics considered of critical importance to advancing the SDGs. The aim was to educate students about the role of business, to attract more companies to participate in the endeavor and to assist understanding of how Laudato Si’ shares a common mission with the effort.

Ethics Week

The 19th annual Notre Dame Ethics Week packed the room for each of its four events, held Feb. 8-11. Ethics Week featured three speakers: Susan Ochs, senior fellow and founder, Better Banking Project; John D’Arcy, associate professor, Alfred Lerner College of Business & Economics, University of Delaware; and Larry Katzen, former partner at Arthur Andersen. The organizers also showed the highly acclaimed movie, Margin Call, which depicted the collapse of a Wall Street investment bank during the 2008 economic crisis. The movie was followed by a panel Q&A session, featuring Mendoza faculty members Walt Clements and Jessica McManus Warnell, as well as Kevin Frost, a Mendoza senior majoring in management consulting.

Watch List

ND MBA named to Poets & Quants’ “10 Business Schools to Watch in 2016”

• 11 | number of spots ND MBA jumped to rank 25th in P&Q 2015 business school ranking
• 93% | overall job placement, up from 87.7%
• $108,219 | average starting salary, up from $102,404
• $1,500-$21,099 | range of increases in bonuses
• The Alumni Network  “which opens a lot of doors for talented and ambitious Golden Domers.”

“When I resigned from Amoco, my boss said, ‘Gianna, why didn’t you just ask me for what you wanted [instead of leaving]? If your new job doesn’t work out, call me.’ I learned an important lesson. I should have asked for what I needed and wanted. … So I’m telling you to ask for what you need, what you want, what you dream about.”

— Gianna Bern, MSF academic director who spoke during the second annual Executive Women’s Forum. The Stayer Center for Executive Education hosted the February 16 event at the Chicago Campus.