Laurie Watje has worked closely with UNI students and their businesses for 12 years. As the associate director of the UNI John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center, Watje has seen the whole gamut of business plans and ideas.
In recent years, she’s noticed a trend with Generation Z students — people born roughly after 1995 — and their passions. They don’t just want to create a business; they want to create a mission.
Every Monday night for five weeks in the fall, a team of UNIBusiness students gathered with Brett Olsen, associate professor of finance, for up to two hours. The time was spent preparing and crafting a presentation for the upcoming Private Business Valuation Challenge, an international competition that offers a unique opportunity for students to assess the value of public and private companies.
These days, Caleb Christine has a lot of time to think. Mostly because he spends a lot of time in his car.
He has time to look back and peer ahead, to reflect on his time as a soldier, a police officer, a truck driver and a college drop-out. It’s his time to take stock of the many decisions that led him, at 38 years old with a wife and three kids, to enroll at the University of Northern Iowa and pursue a new career as an industrial technology teacher.
After running away from an abusive home environment in high school and ending up in a youth homeless shelter, this student found solace in music at UNI.
A wise professor in graduate school once told me that the most relevant research questions come when you least expect them, and usually when you are talking with people about their everyday activities and concerns. He was known for always carrying a pen and notepad regardless of the social setting. While I carry a smartphone instead, his advice has served me well. For me, a casual conversation with a colleague has led to a new line of research involving beer. Tough gig, right?!
Ronnie Chen, assistant professor of finance at UNIBusiness, has noticed corporate social responsibility becoming a hot topic in the finance research world over the last decade. More companies are paying attention to social responsibility as more consumers become more socially conscious, and researchers have taken notice.
