NEWS

UNDERGRAD MAJOR FOR A DATA-DRIVEN WORLD

When Mendoza’s first business analytics (BAN) majors graduate in spring 2019, they’ll be greeted by a job market hungry for “business translators.”

The McKinsey Global Institute describes this role as someone who “serves as the link between analytical talent and practical applications to business questions.” Additionally, McKinsey’s 2016 “Age of Analytics” estimates the U.S. demand for these positions at two-to four million over the next decade.

With these promising career prospects within reach, 84 juniors became the Mendoza College’s first business analytics cohort in August. This large number of enrollees immediately made business analytics the third-largest major at the Mendoza College of Business, following finance and accounting, respectively.

The major prepares students to apply scientific, data-driven analysis and research in all aspects of business operations. Additionally, students are gaining deep understanding about the synergy between data governance, data analytics and the optimization of operational systems and processes.

The Department of IT, Analytics, and Operations administers the major and developed the curriculum, which includes required courses such as New Media Presentation, Data Analysis with Python, Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning. Recruiting firms already have expressed strong interest in the new major and its students.

The undergraduate major complements other recent business analytics opportunities at Mendoza. The College’s new MBA/MSBA (Master of Science in Business Analytics) dual degree also began in South Bend in August. The 68-credit hour residential program allows participants to earn two master’s degrees in two years.

The Chicago-based MSBA program began in January 2015. Students attend classes on alternating weekends, at Notre Dame’s Michigan Avenue classroom, as well as three extended sessions at the Stayer Center for Executive Education on campus.

GREATER CHINA GRANT

Pengjie Gao, assistant finance professor, was awarded a 2017–2018 Greater China Collaboration Grant for his research examining investor biases.

The grant was one of six awarded to University researchers by Notre Dame International as part of its effort to build, sustain and encourage academic and research collaboration with leading universities in the Greater China region, including mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

64 GREAT IDEAS

Mendoza Graduate Alumni Relations launched its Ask More Ideas Challenge with a daunting question: “How can we work to reduce our own carbon footprint in the workplace and help our companies reduce their carbon footprint?”

The idea behind the challenge was to provide an opportunity for alumni to bring their varied backgrounds and considerable expertise to bear on a substantive issue with social impact. Through an online ideas-sharing platform, the alums entered 64 ideas that ranged from the small and practical (eliminate straws, trash-free Tuesdays) to the substantive (establish “living” roofs, reconfigure work weeks).

Graduate Alumni Relations plans to introduce a new challenge each year. The results are shared with alumni as well as the nonprofit Catholic Climate Covenant, which hopes to implement some of the ideas.

O’ROURKE RECOGNIZED FOR SERVICE

James S. O’Rourke IV (MGT ’68), Arthur F. and Mary J. O’Neil Director of the Fanning Center for Business Communication, was named as the 2017 recipient of the Arthur W. Page Society’s Distinguished Service Award. The award recognizes his many career accomplishments and extensive record of service to the business communication profession.

O’Rourke, a teaching professor of Management & Organization, joined Mendoza in 1990.

GO, (FACULTY) TEAM!

Katherine Spiess, associate dean of Graduate Programs, was honored as a part of the 2017 Notre Dame All-Faculty Team during the halftime of the ND-Georgia football game Sept. 9. The seven faculty members were selected from across Notre Dame’s colleges and schools for their excellence in research, teaching and service to the University.

UNDERGRADS RAISE FUNDS FOR DISASTER AID

With tragedies marking the beginning of the academic year — hurricanes, earthquakes and a shooting — undergraduate students in Principles of Management were inspired to help. Guided by Chris Stevens (ND ’74), assistant teaching professor of Management & Organization, the students raised more than $14,000 for Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services.

ONBOARDINGS

Michael Brach (ND ’88) was named director of degree programs at the Stayer Center for Executive Education in May 2017. Brach most recently served as vice president for advancement at Holy Cross College and previously served as senior director of development, administration and donor services at Notre Dame. He earned a B.A. in government and international studies from Notre Dame and an MBA from Indiana University South Bend.

Brian Cook has been named director of marketing for the Mendoza College. Cook joined Mendoza in 2005, most recently serving as associate director for creative services for marketing communications. Prior to joining Mendoza, Cook held web development positions for communications firms and operated his own web design business. He earned a B.S. in visual communication from Ferris State University with a focus on marketing and advertising.

Amanda McKendree was named the Arthur F. and Mary J. O’Neil Director of the Eugene D. Fanning Center for Business Communication, beginning in January 2018. McKendree joined Mendoza in 2014 as an associate teaching professor of management, teaching courses in management communication, speaking and writing. She earned her B.A. in global policy studies from Chatham University, M.P.A. in nonprofit/public management from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, and Ph.D. in rhetoric at Duquesne University.

HONORING ROBERT WILMOUTH

The Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing has established the Robert K. Wilmouth Lecture Series in honor of a longtime Notre Dame trustee and past chair of the University’s Investment Committee who passed away Sept. 14. The series, made possible through a generous gift from members of the Notre Dame family, will focus on drawing top experts from the investment industry to share their perspective on leadership, investment excellence and other vital issues within the field.

THEY’RE THE TOPS

Poets & Quants for Undergrads named two Mendoza faculty members to its list, “2017 Top 40 Undergraduate Professors.”

Elizabeth Moore, associate professor of marketing, was chosen for her teaching excellence, which has earned her numerous awards, as well as for her research reputation, especially in regard to her extensive work that examines how marketing to children impacts childhood obesity.

Kristen Collett-Schmitt, associate teaching professor of finance, was lauded for her teaching awards, including her development of Mendoza’s first-ever online course for undergrads. She serves as faculty advisor for MoneyThink, an effort to promote financial literacy in high school students, and founded the nonprofit Wishes for Preemies after the birth of her daughter. (A must read: Collett-Schmitt’s story about nerves getting the better of her on her very first day of teaching.)

The full story is available at poetsandquantsforundergrads.com

RETIREMENTS

Ed Conlon’s 25-year career at Mendoza included serving in a number of leadership roles in addition to his faculty position as the Edward Frederick Sorin Society Chair in Management. During his 10-year tenure as associate dean of Graduate Business Programs, he was instrumental in redesigning the MBA curriculum. He also was the inaugural faculty director for the Notre Dame Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership. Much of his teaching and research focused on ethical leadership, as well as innovation and design thinking. He co-authored Getting It Right, a book describing effective values-based business problem solving methods, among his many notable works.

Doug Hemphill served the University for 30 years, with nearly 18 of those years devoted to Mendoza, where he was an academic adviser until his retirement in December 2016. He previously chaired the Department of Military Science (Army ROTC) before retiring after a 25-year career as a U.S. Army officer. He also coordinated the University’s Sesquicentennial Celebration and managed the employment and affirmative action functions for ND’s Department of Human Resources. As an Mendoza adviser, Hemphill was a key member of the Undergraduate Studies team, responsible for administering, advising and guiding nearly 2,000 undergraduates concerning all aspects of course and major selection, degree completion and, at times, good old fatherly advice.

Patrick Murphy (MARK ’70) has been a mainstay of the ethics-related curriculum, research and activities at Mendoza throughout his highly distinguished 33-year career at Notre Dame. As a marketing professor, he specialized in business ethics issues, with work focusing on ethical and socially responsible marketing. He served as the C.R. Smith Co-Director of the Institute for Ethical Business Worldwide. His professional honors include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Marketing Association’s Marketing and Society Special Interest Group. Murphy coordinated the annual Berges Lecture Series in Business Ethics, as well as the Hesburgh Award and Frank Cahill Lecture.

TULEJA WINS FULBRIGHT

Elizabeth Tuleja, an associate teaching professor of management, was named a U.S. Fulbright Scholar through the Fulbright Program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of State. An expert in intercultural communication, she was placed at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, for the 2017–2018 academic year. Tuleja joined Mendoza in 2009. She earned a B.A. from the University of New Mexico, and an M.S. Edu and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

CHICKEN DANCE

The Sept. 8 installment of Mendoza’s annual fall lecture series, Boardroom Insights, took on a game-day spirit when Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy brought along the franchise’s cow-costumed mascot to do battle with the Notre Dame leprechaun.

On the Jordan Auditorium stage, the pair competed in a dance-off to the Irish jig, “Rakes of Mallow,” ND’s traditional touchdown celebration song. Not to be outdone, Cathy brought out his trumpet and played the Notre Dame Fight Song to great applause from the packed Jordan Auditorium. He went on to talk about Chick-fil-A’s story, and especially the importance of ethical, values-centered leadership in the business world.

THE CONUNDRUM OF GLOBALIZATION

Horst Köhler began his Sept. 6 talk in Mendoza’s Jordan Auditorium with a wildly improbable statement for this day and age: “Times have changed and we have changed for the better.”

The former president of Germany presented a compelling account of the profound impact of globalization during his talk, “Citizenship in a Global Age: Personal Reflections on a Political Conundrum.” From his perspective as an economist who served as the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and former head of the International Monetary Fund, among other roles, Köhler described the very real gains made in quality of life the world over due to globalization. They included living healthier, longer and more peaceful lives than ever before.

And yet, said Köhler, public discourse is not marked by contentment, but rather “an acute sense of fragility, of disorientation and of tension.” The disparity is due largely to the contradictory effects of globalization which strongly benefits some groups of people while putting others at a disadvantage.

“Demonizing globalization altogether doesn’t solve any problem, but instead creates a multitude of others,” said Köhler, providing a detailed and thoughtful explication of recent events. “To make globalization work for all, we must not ignore its complexities and contradictions but face them. To make 
it better, we must not ridicule international cooperation, but embrace it.”

DISRUPTION IN YOUR FUTURE

Peter Diamandis kicked off the inaugural Thomas H. Quinn Lecture Series on Sept. 8 in the Jordan Auditorium with a hurricane-force stream of thoughts about the future of tech and the all but inevitable disruptions to all aspects of life. Commercial space travel. Mining minerals on asteroids. Average life spans of 140 years or more.

Diamandis, an internationally renowned serial entrepreneur who was named to Fortune Magazine’s 2014 list of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” spoke on “Exponential Tech: Innovation and Disruption on the Road Ahead.” He explained “exponential tech” by ticking off stories of companies and whole industries disrupted by tech innovations — either to their gain or devastation, including Kodak, Netflix, Blockbuster, WalMart and many more. Three “quotables” from his talk:

• “We’re seeing this emergence of incredible entrepreneurship, incredible innovation, where we’re going from, “I’ve got an idea,’ to, “I run a billion dollar company,’ literally overnight.”

• “So what happens when the autonomous electric car is five times cheaper, 10 times cheaper than what you have? You sell your car, you park your car and you never use your car again. We’re about to see a wholesale switch where people are going to get rid of their cars.”

• “Renewable energy now accounts for 20 bytes of the world’s power; coal is dead and petroleum is very close behind. We’re headed toward an all-electric economy.” 

IRISH IMPACT GETS WICKED

The annual Irish Impact conference flipped the usual discussion surrounding “wicked” problems — those seemingly impossible to solve because of scale and incomplete or contradictory requirements — to focus on innovative solutions to those problems.

“A Foresight Forum: To Explore Tomorrow’s Wicked Problems,” held Oct. 26–27, featured keynote speakers Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future, and Jerome Glenn, CEO of The Millennium Project. Panel discussions included experts from GE EcoMagination and nonprofit Accion, which seeks to make financial services available to underserved segments of society, as well as Leo Burke, director of the Global Commons Initiative, a sustainability effort focusing on shared environmental resources.

A student team of Mendoza seniors also presented its research project exploring future scenarios for the emerging “precariat class,” which is a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, a condition of existence without predictability or security, that affects material or psychological welfare.