NEWS

GIRLS WHO INVEST SUMMER PROGRAM EXPANDS TO NOTRE DAME

There’s a gender imbalance in the asset management world — one that the University of Notre Dame is working to address. Currently, women and minorities manage just 1.1 percent of the U.S. asset management industry’s $71 trillion in assets, according to a 2017 study by Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School and Bella Research Group.

The Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing at Mendoza College of Business partnered with Girls Who Invest, a New York-based nonprofit with the goal of moving the needle on female representation in the asset management world through education initiatives — including its highly competitive summer residential program. NDIGI worked with GWI to expand that program to Notre Dame, and in June 2018, the University became the second site in the country to host the GWI Summer Intensive. Fifty undergraduate women participated at Notre Dame. The University of Pennsylvania also hosted 50 students.

The summer intensive is offered at no cost to students, who don’t need a finance background. The first half of the four-week on-campus experience focuses on what lead Notre Dame faculty instructor and finance professor Carl Ackermann calls the “rudiments and foundations” of finance and investment. Then, students take a deep dive into the finer points of company valuation methods and complete a capstone project before heading out on six-week paid internships with top asset management firms.

Clare Eilers (FIN ’20) was one of five Notre Dame students who participated in the program at Mendoza. Four others were part of the program at Penn. “As a woman preparing for a career in asset management,” she said, “the Girls Who Invest program taught me important skills and concepts that one otherwise would not have learned until their first year on the job.”

In addition to classroom time, students hear from a number of industry leaders.

Scott Malpass (MBA ’86, ’84), Notre Dame’s vice president and chief investment officer, was among the asset management experts who spent time with students — which Amanda Wall (FIN ’20) found helpful. “I especially appreciated the sheer variety of practitioners across all asset classes that came and discussed their career paths,” she said.

ON BOARDINGS

Kelli Kilpatrick was named senior director of Graduate Business Programs in August. She has more than 30 years of higher education experience and most recently worked with graduate business programs at Texas Christian University’s Neeley School of Business. Prior to that, she directed the full-time MBA program at Texas A&M University. She also directed graduate admissions at Duke University.

Erin Bellissimo was named managing director of the Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing, effective Sept. 1. Bellissimo has extensive experience across multiple entrepreneurial endeavors in finance and was founding director of the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing, the value investing program at Columbia Business School. Most recently, she served as a consultant to a hedge fund and family office, helping to define strategy and improve operations. She previously was a partner at hedge fund Aravt Global and is a board member of Girls Who Invest.

Donna Porter took over as Innovation Academy director at the Stayer Center for Executive Education in July. She spent most of her career at Whirlpool in the field of learning and talent development and strategic change management. She successfully completed Innovation Mentor training through Whirlpool. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Purdue University and a Master of Organizational Development from Bowling Green State University and is a certified coach through the Coaches Training Institute and the International Coaching Federation.

Douglas Franson was named director of finance and facilities for Mendoza, starting Nov. 1. He has served for more than 25 years in central administration and in academic departments at Notre Dame and previously worked as the business analyst for Auxiliary Operations and as the assistant director for Notre Dame’s Segura Arts Studio, where he facilitated a $3 million building renovation, among numerous other projects. He also has managed budgets and operations for the Institute for Latino Studies and the Graduate School’s Office of Research.

Kara Palmer was promoted to the new position of director of administration in September 2018 and serves as a voice and advocate for staff. She joined Mendoza in September 2017 as associate director of administration, where she focused on staff needs, especially in the areas of professional development and recruitment. In her new role, Palmer acts as the staff advisor to the dean, oversees overall staffing strategies, talent and development planning, recruiting, onboarding and engagement initiatives. She also leads the administrative and faculty support teams across the College.

RETIREMENT

Rick Mendenhall, the William and Cassie Daley Professor of Finance and chair of the Finance Department, will retire from the University of Notre Dame as of December 31, 2018.

Mendenhall joined Mendoza as an associate professor in 1992. He was promoted to full professor in 2003 and has served as department chair for the last 10 years. His research focused on the impact on stock prices of events such as earnings announcements, company 10-Q and 10-K filings, securities analysts’ forecasts and S&P 500 Index composition changes. He taught investments and general finance. Among his accomplishments, he was instrumental in establishing the Master of Science in Finance program.

“Rick punched the clock for more than 30 years at Notre Dame, and brought something positive to the College every day he came to work,” said Bill McDonald, the Thomas A. and James J. Bruder Professor of Administrative Leadership and Mendenhall’s longtime colleague.

“Whether as a faculty member, department chair or in universitywide roles, few people have been more dedicated to the University, its faculty and its students than Rick Mendenhall,” said Shane Corwin, finance professor and faculty director the Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing. “Rick is one of the most conscientious teachers I have seen and, as a department chair, is always willing to do whatever he can to support the faculty in their teaching and research.”

A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he served as an officer in the Navy for five years, where he graduated from the Naval Nuclear Power School and served aboard a nuclear submarine. He later earned an MBA and a Ph.D. in finance from Indiana University.

Mendenhall recently was selected for the 2018 Notre Dame All-Faculty Team, which honors seven faculty members from across Notre Dame’s colleges and schools for their excellence in research, teaching and service to the University.

ON THE RISE

The number of times research by Mendoza faculty has appeared in top academic journals has steadily risen in the past six years, according to quantitative measures of research productivity based on the University of Texas-Dallas Top 100 North American Business School Ranking. The ranking considers research contributions in what UT Dallas has identified as 24 top academic journals for business scholarship. In 2012, Mendoza faculty members had 66 publications and in 2017 they had 92 publications.

RESEARCH CITING

Research by finance professors Robert Battalio and Shane Corwin was cited in a speech by SEC Commissioner Robert J. Jackson Jr. Jackson delivered a talk on Sept. 19 at George Mason University on “Unfair Exchange: The State of America’s Stock Markets.” Referring to “Can Brokers Have it All? On the Relation Between Make-Take Fees & Limit Order Execution Quality,” Jackson highlighted a finding of the study that found brokers very often send orders to the exchange that gives the broker the biggest rebate, rather than placing the order to get the best price for their customers. Battalio previously provided testimony about these findings in a 2014 congressional hearing before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

2018 FANNING CENTER BUSINESS COMMUNICATION CHALLENGE WINNERS

The inaugural Fanning Center Business Communication Challenge featured seven finalists who delivered five-minute presentations connected to the Mendoza theme “Ask More of Business, Ask More of Yourself” in April. Participants had the opportunity to receive coaching from Fanning Center faculty.

First place
Peyton Fine (MSM ’18)

Runner-up
Matthew Millay (FIN ’18)

KELLEY AWARDED ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIP

Notre Dame appointed Mendoza’s Associate Dean for Faculty and Research Ken Kelley (’03, ’05) as the Edward Frederick Sorin Society Professor of Information Technology, Analytics, and Operations. His research is on the evaluation, improvement and development of statistical methods, primarily for psychological, behavioral and social data. As much of business analytics involves behavioral or social outcomes, Kelley’s research and teaching have played a vital role in Mendoza’s analytics advancements.

INNOVATIVE MINOR

The Management & Organization Department is partnering with the Notre Dame IDEA Center to offer a new interdisciplinary minor in innovation and entrepreneurship. The M&O department has offered a minor for Mendoza students for the last few years, but is expanding this to include non-Mendoza students for the first time. For 2018-19, the minor will add 25 non-Mendoza slots. Students can take advantage of the state-of-the-art IDEA Center in terms of experiential learning, commercialization and access to resources.

EGGS WITH THAT PODCAST

A fall episode of “With a Side of Knowledge,” the new podcast produced by Notre Dame’s provost office, featured a brunch conversation with IBM researcher Hendrik Hamann, who was a guest speaker in April for Mendoza’s Ten Years Hence lecture series. Each podcast episode is about 30 minutes long and is recorded onsite at a restaurant on or near Notre Dame’s campus — ambient noise and all. Guests range from Notre Dame faculty members to guest lecturers and performers. You can listen on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify and Stitcher and transcripts are available at provost.nd.edu/about/side-of-knowledge.

NICE RING

Notre Dame women’s basketball coach Muffet McGraw surprised management professor Chris Stevens (ND ’74) with a national championship ring. The ring, he says, was a thank you to him for his help recruiting several of the players who were part of the 2018 team that won the national title. In the three years Stevens has assisted with recruiting, he has met with more than 100 prospective student-athletes in his office.

IN THE WAKE

The University of Notre Dame has asked Ann Tenbrunsel, the David E. Gallo Professor of Business Ethics in the Department of Management & Organization, to co-chair a Research and Scholarship Task Force. The group will consider the ways in which Notre Dame scholarly and research expertise might serve the Church in the wake of the recent Pennsylvania grand jury report about six Catholic dioceses, as well as other reports of abuse in the news.

A SUITE RENOVATION

An extensive renovation of the Graduate Business Programs suite on the second floor of the Siegfried building in Mendoza College of Business wrapped up in November. The project, which started in June, reconfigured the suite in order to accommodate the growth in graduate business programs and services since the building opened in 1995 and provide a welcoming space for prospective students. Changes to the suite also provided additional MBA student study space and expanded the seminar room to seat 30 people.

MARKETING CHAIR WINS RESEARCH AWARD

Marketing Department chair Shankar Ganesan, the John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C., Professor of Business, received the 2018 Louis W. Stern Award from the American Marketing Association Foundation’s Interorganizational Special Interest Group. The award recognizes an article published in a highly respected, refereed journal that has made a significant contribution to the literature on marketing and channels of distribution. Ganesan and his co-authors received the award for their article “Buffering and Amplifying Effects of Relationship Commitment in Business-to-Business Relationships.” The paper, published in the Journal of Marketing Research in 2010, examines the effects of relationship commitment on organizational buyers’ intentions to switch suppliers when a relationship is strained by the incumbent’s own misbehavior.

DISTINGUISHED SERVICE

Amanda G. McKendree, the Arthur F. and Mary J. O’Neil Director of the Fanning Center for Business Communication director and an associate teaching professor in the Management & Organization Department, received the 2018 Carroll Arnold Distinguished Service Award at the 79th annual Pennsylvania Communication Association convention.

MARKETING PROFESSOR A FINALIST FOR RESEARCH AWARD

A paper co-authored by Vamsi Kanuri, an assistant professor of marketing, was a finalist for the Journal of Marketing Research’s Paul E. Green Award, which recognizes an article published in the journal in the prior year that demonstrates the most potential to contribute significantly to the practice of marketing research. His paper, “A Meta-Analysis of Marketing Communication Carryover Effects,” was published in December 2017.

NEW GRAD DEGREES

Recruiting students is underway for two one-year residential graduate business programs aimed at recent graduates with little or no work experience. The programs are slated to begin in fall 2019.

The 36-credit-hour residential Master of Nonprofit Administration (MNA) program is designed for students who want to enter the nonprofit sector directly out of college or a post-college nonprofit placement, such as the Peace Corps or Teach for America.

The new residential Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) intended for “pre-professional” students with limited job experience offers a 31-credit-hour program focused on applying analytical techniques to massive data sets to solve business problems.

Mendoza will continue offering its Executive MNA program and non-residential MSBA-Chicago program for working professionals.

FINANCE ALUMNI JOIN BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Dorene Dominguez (BBA ’85) and James Parsons (BBA ’96) were elected to Notre Dame’s Board of Trustees in May.

Dominguez is chair of the Vanir Group of Companies, a California-based leader in real estate development, construction and construction management, financial services and renewable energy. She is also a part-owner of the Sacramento Kings and the first and only Latina owner in the NBA. Dominguez serves on the advisory council for Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies.

Parsons is a portfolio manager for Junto Capital Management in New York City, a hedge fund he founded in 2014 that focuses on technology, financial and business services sectors. He previously served as a portfolio manager for Viking Global Investors. He and his wife, Dr. Carrie Quinn (’96), supported the establishment of the Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing at Mendoza.

FINANCE GRAD WINS OZY GENIUS AWARD

Nikhil Garg, a 2018 finance and applied and computational mathematics and statistics double major, is among 10 college students who received a 2018 OZY Genius Award. He is co-founder of Centralix, an exchange aggregator that allows retail traders in the digital asset space to buy and sell cryptocurrencies from one central platform at best execution prices, without having an account on each individual exchange. Winners of the OZY Genius Award receive grants of up to $10,000 to pursue their goals.

BALKH UNIVERSITY GRADUATES FIRST COHORT

The first cohort graduated in September from the new Master of Finance and Accounting program at Balkh University in Afghanistan. Notre Dame partnered with Balkh to develop the program with the goal to provide a path for Afghans — especially women — to have successful careers in education and industry. Members of the Notre Dame faculty, along with some from Saint Mary’s College and Indiana University South Bend, led faculty development workshops for their Afghani counterparts. The workshops, held in Mumbai and Beijing over 18 months, were coordinated by Stayer Center for Executive Education.

AI AND BUSINESS ETHICS

“Artificial Intelligence and Business Ethics: Friends or Foes?” explored the ethical issues arising from the use of AI in business and larger culture. Conference organizer Timothy Carone, an associate teaching professor in Mendoza’s IT, Analytics, and Operations Department, said the aim of the two-day September conference was to provide attendees with a better understanding of AI, the scope of the problems they should expect to see in businesses, and ideas of what to do to manage the risk of replacing human decision making with AI technology. The conference was co-sponsored by the Chase Manhattan Lecture Series, an endowment to support ethical responsibilities of business.

ELECTRIC STOCKS

Finance professor Zhi Da, co-author of “Industrial Electricity Usage and Stock Returns,” was honored in May 2018 with the William F. Sharpe Award from the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. His research suggests that the growth rate of industrial electricity usage predicts future stock returns for up to one year. The award recognizes researchers who, through their articles in the JFQA, have most contributed to the understanding of important areas of financial economics. Recipients receive a $5,000 prize.

CYBER CRIME FIGHTERS

Lexie Van Den Heuvel (BBA ’20) was one of six Notre Dame undergraduates sworn in as a Cyber Crimes investigators for the St. Joseph County Prosecutor’s Office in September as part of an internship program. She is the fourth Mendoza student to intern with the program since it began three years ago. Notre Dame’s program is the only one in the country where the students are sworn-in investigators, which allows them to assist in writing and executing search warrants, analyzing evidence and testifying in court. The St. Joseph County Cyber Crimes Unit recently relocated to Hammes Mowbray Hall on campus. Mike Chapple, the academic director of the MS Business Analytics Chicago program and associate teaching professor of IT, Analytics and Operations, serves as faculty adviser.

FACULTY PROMOTIONS

Because of their demonstrated mastery for their disciplines, creative and effective teaching, and distinguished service to the College and University, the following professors were promoted.

Full professor

Corey Angst, IT, Analytics, and Operations

Daewon Sun, IT, Analytics, and Operations

Associate professor with tenure

Benjamin Golez, Finance

Asis Martinez-Jerez, Accountancy

Adam Wowak, Management & Organization

Associate professional specialist

Jim Leady, Finance