Throughout their time at the College of Business, Management Information Systems (MIS) students take in a well-rounded curriculum full of fundamental principles, applications and more. This coursework prepares them for a career in technology and business. One course, Information System Development Projects, taught by Betsy Ratchford, is intended to bundle those lessons and apply them in real-world scenarios.
A group of entrepreneurship students from the University of Northern Iowa John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center (JPEC) were selected to attend the Okoboji Entrepreneurial Institute (OEI) this summer, gaining valuable skills and taking home some hardware.
Madison Kraemer (Marketing and Organizational Leadership, ’23) spent the last year serving on the national board of directors for Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), a student organization dedicated to future business leaders in middle school, high school and college. Her goal quickly became to become president and help advocate for the organization.
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…
