School of Business

Hats off

The KU School of Business officially said farewell to 110 graduates in December.  Below is the profile of the fall class of 2005:

• 39 females, 71 males
• 80 in-state, 20 out-of-state and 10 international
• 13 Accounting, 25 Accounting and Business Administration, five Accounting and Finance, one Finance and Business Administration, one Information Systems and Business Administration, three Marketing and Business Administration, 45 Business Administration, eight Finance, one Management and eight Marketing

Business teachers take tips from FBI

Greg Freix, g’99, and Paul Mason love nefarious acts.  More directly, they love preventing them.  Both are lecturers at the KU School of Business, and both teach classes dealing with issues like fraud and information security.

The two, along with Anne Madden Johnson, ’82, the school’s network administrator, recently visited the FBI’s Kansas City office to learn more about the bureau’s procedures and operations.  FBI agents regularly speak with KU business students as guest lecturers for Freix and Mason, so the field trip was particularly relevant to them.  The two also discussed internship opportunities for business students at the Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory.

“You may say, ‘We’re a business school.  How are we involved with counter terrorism and infrastructure?’  Well what happens when someone nails the financial system or messes with our health care or energy or transportation industries?” Freix questioned.  In their classes, Mason and Freix are preparing students to deal with those situations within a business context.

Aside from the FBI experience, the two hope to join InfraGard, a national information sharing program between the FBI and the private sector.  The organization allows citizens to share intelligence to prevent hostile acts against the United States.  Mason said InfraGard connects them with a network of potential guest lecturers, but it also grants them access to pertinent class material.

“I don’t know that I could get more real-time, potent information for my fraud class than I get from networks like this,” Mason said.  “It’s very applicable.”

MBA students solve Payless problem

The winning team: Lynn McMinnville, Keith Wojtaszek, Jennifer Weaver and Doug Goehl.

Four teams of KU MBA students recently took a stab at a real-world problem vexing a local company.  The question was simple.  Should Payless ShoeSource expand its retail operations to include stores in China?  The simplicity of the question, however, was masked by the complexity of the task: The teams had only 24 hours to find the perfect solution.
           
The MBA students were part of the first internal case competition for the School of Business.  Second year MBA student Dale Bunn organized the competition.  The participants received the question at 8 a.m. on a Wednesday and had to deliver their answer in a professional presentation the following morning. A panel of experts, including two executives from Payless, judged the solution, and the winning team received scholarships and a chance to compete in a regional case competition at the University of Oklahoma.

Ron Cooperman, vice president of business planning for Payless, serves on the school’s finance board.  He developed the question and met with the students before the competition to give them additional insights.  Cooperman also judged the event.

“In a mere 24 hours,” Cooperman said, “the teams learned about the company and industry, developed a strategy for migrating our business model to another country, prepared dynamite presentations and demonstrated much poise in answering the questions posed. It was truly impressive.”

A new semester, a new look

The KU School of Business is kicking off the semester with a new logo, a new tag line and a new advertising campaign.  A group of faculty and staff members has been working with Nicholson Kovac (NK), an advertising agency in Kansas City, to develop this new feel.

With NK’s assistance, the School has adopted a tagline, “We’re not business as usual,” which will be used in conjunction with the School’s new logo.  The tagline will relay a consistent and explicit message to the School’s target audiences.

The group also signed off on a new advertising campaign for the School.  Ads will be placed in leading business magazines and newspapers.  The ads will promote awareness for the School, which, in turn, will boost recruitment and enrollment.

The final phase of the re-development process will be revamping the School’s current Web site.  With the help of NK, the Web site will become more functional and clean-cut.  After the overhaul, it will be a high-quality marketing tool that meets the needs of the School’s diverse audiences.

The KU Business School has changed dramatically in the last year, so it was important that the School’s marketing reflect that change.  With more and more improvements, the KU School of Business is prepared to give our graduates an unparalleled education.  The tag line says it all.