Michigan Tech College of Business Newsblog

Category: Faculty Spotlight

THE Project Competition: Two School of Business and Economics Teams

Published
By

When people hear the word “manager”, they think of a supervisor or someone in charge of making a schedule. Images of Bill Lumburgh from Office Space talking about memos and TPS reports come to mind.

However, in recent years, Project Management has grown into an important profession and Michigan has begun to take notice. Spectrum Health, Steelcase, Amway, the Grand Rapids Business Journal and other local businesses have partnered with the Western Michigan chapter of The Project Management Institute (WMPMI) to host an intercollegiate project management competition simply known as THE Project 2012.

Eight teams from six colleges and universities compete for $10,000 in cash prizes and paid internships at major corporations in West Michigan. Dana M. Johnson, Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management and Michigan Tech Champion, formed two team of four students each from the School of Business and Economics, Michigan Tech for the competition.

”This is a great opportunity for our students to apply what they learned in the project management course to a real-life situation. At the competition, students will not only be able to network with other teams, but gain valuable exposure to companies who are seeking to hire graduates through a reverse career fair.”

The student teams, along with their school, business, and PMP mentors, must create a project management plan for a business seeking B Corporation certification. B Corps permits and protects businesses in making social and environmental decisions. Instead of being accountable only to shareholders, B Corps businesses must also consider their impact on employees, their community, and the environment.

“B Corps certification allows a business to have a triple bottom line focus of profit, people and the environment,” Kelly Talsma, PMP, Vice President of Education at WMPMI, said.

The Project Management Institute recently released a study stating there were 90,000 job openings in the United States where businesses required or preferred PMP certification. Many colleges and universities have recognized this trend and have responded with several courses and degrees with a focus in Project Management.

THE Project 2012 wants to give students real-life business experience rather than a mere academic exercise. The winning team will have an opportunity to make their presentation in front of 500 business and academic leaders as well as members of WMPMI.

For more information on project management or WMPMI, go to www.wmpmi.org. To learn more about B Corporations, visit www.bcorporation.net.

Continue Reading →

iOMe Challenge Update: Michigan Tech Receives Honorable Mention

Published
By

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G5J-p7ktbM[/youtube]

Four teams of Michigan Tech students competed in the 2011 iOMe Challenge, that builds awareness for ways that local organizations might engage the Y or Millennial generation to think about their own future, 40 years from now.  Three of the four MTU teams made it to the final round of judging and one team has received an honorable mention in the 2011 competition. Students were judged on a video submission (above) and an essay.  The team receiving the honorable mention was awarded $2,000 and was composed of:

  • Katie O’Connell, Economics major
  • Tianlu Shen, Environmental Engineering major
  • Adam Stigers, Economics major
  • Teddy Broe, Economics major
  • Walker Derby, Finance major

Lecturer in Economics, Emanuel Oliveira, was the academic advisor of the four teams competing in this year’s iOMe Challenge.  Commenting on the contest’s two components, Oliveira said, “The students put together an excellent essay that contained innovative policy recommendations, considerable statistical analysis, and it was very well written.”

Team leader of the winning team and economics major, Katie O’Connell, noted that it was amazing to find out that their group had received honorable mention in the iOMe Challenge.  Recalling her feelings prior to the competition and why she chose to compete she said, “I remember hoping to do well!  Receiving an honorable mention was great. I decided to compete in this challenge to get a closer look at how to encourage people to save money.  It truly is a challenge in an economy where interest rates are so low and there is no obvious and immediate reward. But it’s also critically important to the future of our economy, and even our society, to reverse the downward savings trend. I hope that our participation in this process will at least help to open discussion as well as spark ideas and interest in creating an America that saves more.”

Congrats to all of this years competitors and Dr. Emanuel Oliveira!

iOMe results from 2010-2011

Continue Reading →

Management Information Systems Class Partners with RMS

Published
By
Business Intelligence students to work with Revenue Management Solutions on a Project to gain real world experience in MIS.

MIS 3400 Business Intelligence is giving students what all undergraduates look for, practical experience in the classroom that can be translated into the real world.  For the first time, students taking this course will have the opportunity to partner with Revenue Management Solutions (RMS) to work on a project proposal and a mock client contract that resembles work being done currently by international consulting firms.  This opportunity has been made available by utilizing Associate Professor of Management Information Systems (MIS), Mari Buche’s, excellent networking skills.  She reached out to Ashley Johnson, a 2008 MIS and Marketing alumna and RMS employee, and the idea for the partnership was born.

Johnson noted that even in the three years since she graduated from Tech, there have been updates to the curriculum to meet industry needs.  This course is particularly advanced because it gets practical experience into the classroom to students from a variety of disciplines.  The students were given a project proposal that is supportive of the Business Intelligence curriculum, and they will compete in five or six teams of three to four students.  All of the groups will be working on the same client contract.  They will each need to present a deliverable, in the form of either a Microsoft Excel decision support tool or web portal, while functioning under a team structure with positions including: consultant, analyst, and developer. A combination of technical and business skills will be required to produce the desired outcome.

Through this partnership, RMS will provide SBE students with a dedicated server, demonstrations of BI applications, and access to project specific sales data for student manipulation. In return, RMS is looking for an innovative data warehouse design that can meet the Tampa-based company’s increased demand for decision support services based on transaction level data.  For this project MIS 3400 students will be required to develop and document implementation of a new data system that fuels business decisions for any retail or restaurant company.  By the end of the semester, each group will have achieved the following objectives:

  • Data Assessment Document
  • Data Dictionary
  • Entity-Relationship Model
  • Dimensional Model
  • Extract-Transform- Load Process Document
  • System Prototype
  • System Proposal Document

This project is still in the early stages, with the students only just being introduced to the project and made aware of the client expectations at the RMS Project Kick-Off event this week; however, Johnson and RMS are excited about the opportunity to work with Buche and Michigan Tech students who are creative and innovative.  I’m sure the feeling is mutual.

Continue Reading →