A new scholarship will give one business student a full ride to UNI, including tuition, books and room & board. Marcelo Acosta, a student at East High School in Des Moines who will attend UNI in the fall, is the first recipient of the Noel Scholars program, created thanks to a generous gift by Rick (Accounting, ‘90) and Lisa Noel.
Emily Mensen, a UNI Business management alum, uses her analytics skill to help top executives interpret data to drive business decisions. Mensen said UNI Business was fundamental to her career. Her courses were well-rounded, and she learned people skills, communication and bridging generational gaps, which has come in handy when working with coworkers of all ages.
The University of Northern Iowa’s Small Business Development Center (SBDC) is here to help those growing or starting a business in the nine-county area around Waterloo and Cedar Falls. The center, which is housed in the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center on campus, provides no-cost, confidential business counseling customized to each client’s needs.
UNI College of Business students in Iowa Phi Beta Lambda, a state organization dedicated to future business leaders, had a big showing at the state leadership conference in Coralville on April 1 and 2. Seven students, competing against schools around the state, either won or placed across 10 categories ranging from Accounting Principles to Future Business Education.
The first named faculty fellowship in the Department of Marketing & Entrepreneurship was fully funded and will serve as a lasting reminder of one of the most celebrated professors and mentors at UNI’s College of Business.
I attended Texas Christian University as an undergraduate accounting major in the early to mid 1970s. I then got an MBA and PhD in business-related fields, and began my teaching career in 2000. Now, nearly 50 years later, I am thinking about what we do in our business schools across the USA. Clearly, nothing much has changed in the last half century that would impact business education—sorry, just being a bit sarcastic there! On the contrary, the past 50 years have seen unprecedented change in nearly every aspect of our lives.
Many years ago, when I was teaching at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, I attended a talk given by Benjamin Barber, an American political theorist. I remember the talk well, because he posed what seemed to me a profound question—did American colleges and universities educate their students to be citizens or consumers? You might imagine that a political theorist would think we should strive to educate and develop good citizens first, perhaps even at the expense of educating them to be good consumers. And you would be correct, at least in Barber’s case—that was his…
As my wife and I contemplate our 68th birthdays, we are increasingly thinking about what we plan to do for our remaining years, and the world we will leave our sons and daughter; even more to the point, what kind of world our 21-month-old grandson will grow up to see. Because I teach strategy and business ethics courses, I naturally relate national and world issues to a business context. As I look at the biggest problems facing us now, two related points stand out to me: 1) Business, writ large, is a (perhaps the) large contributor to those issues, and 2) It is most…
Pernell Cezar, Jr. (Marketing and Financial Management, ’10) doesn’t allow himself too much time for pinch-me moments. The co-founder and CEO of BLK & Bold Specialty Coffee, Cezar prefers to look ahead — “keep my eye on the ball,” Cezar says. “I can get easily overwhelmed if I pause and acknowledge those moments.”
Being a creative but logical manager is an asset in today’s business world. That’s why Sarah Rosol, Instructor of Management, has centered her managerial problem-solving course around a “whole-brain approach,” mixing the analytical skills on the right side of the brain with the creative left side.
