Graduate School Newsblog

Tag: Master of Business Administration

BOC Commits to Financial Aid and Approves Online MBA

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The Board of Control has announced a significant increase in financial aid for students struggling to afford a college education.

In special remarks delivered at the Board’s regular meeting today, Finance and Audit Committee Chairman Steve Hicks said that Michigan Tech will increase financial aid by approximately 10 percent for next school year. Financial aid totals $38 million, 20 percent of the University’s budget. The board has asked President Glenn Mroz and his administrative team to include this increase in the fiscal year 2010–11 budget.

“The board members recognize the dramatic impact of the recent economic downturn on the ability of students and their families to pay for higher education,” Hicks said. “We empathize with them and decided to make an early commitment for next school year to ensure that students who seek a truly exceptional educational experience at Michigan Tech have that opportunity.”

Nationally, rising tuition costs and the economic recession have combined to force students to lower their educational sights and seek out lower-priced options. This is especially true in Michigan, where this year the state’s retraction of the Michigan Promise Grant left many students lacking sufficient support. Michigan Tech’s response was to pick up that commitment from the state and fund the Promise grants from its own coffers for the first semester.

Hicks emphasized the University’s resolve to help students. “We are making our own promise to prospective and current students who face rising financial pressure. Providing access to a Michigan Tech education at an affordable price is a top priority, and we are putting our dollars behind the promise. The State of Michigan needs our kind of graduates, proficient in science, engineering, and technology, to propel it to a stronger economic future.”

President Mroz affirmed that message. “People are our priority. We want every student who values what Michigan Tech offers to come here. Today the Board has sent a message that we will go out of our way to make it financially possible.”

The Board of also approved a program price of $38,000 for a new, two-year online Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. It will make Michigan Tech’s MBA curriculum and faculty available to distance learners worldwide, starting with the fall 2010 semester.

Like the campus MBA program, the new online program will focus on innovation and technology management.

“Faculty, in our MBA programs on campus and online, understand scientists, engineers and others who work in similar areas,” said Ruth Archer, director of graduate business programs at the School of Business and Economics (SBE). “We want to help them gain a competitive edge and advance their careers.”

MBA online students will attend two extended weekends on campus and one weeklong international residency where they will learn about the development of technology-related businesses in another culture. The international residency will give students a global perspective on innovation and technology management.

“During the on-campus residencies,” said SBE Dean Darrell Radson, “students will develop a strategic perspective and reinforce collaboration and communication skills while interacting with their cohort and faculty members.” In a cohort program, students move through all classes and phases of the program together as a group, from beginning to graduation.

In other business, the Board

  • Voted to award the Melvin Calvin Medal of Distinction to Raymond L. Smith, sixth president of Michigan Tech. Smith, for whom the ME-EM building is named, is recognized as one of the most authoritative authors and lecturers on minerals and metals. The Melvin Calvin Medal is the highest honor that the University bestows on individuals who have exhibited truly distinguished professional and personal accomplishment and have been associated with Michigan Tech.
  • Approved residence hall and apartment room-and-board rates for the 2010-11 academic year, including increases ranging from 4.10 to 4.33 percent for the residence halls and 4.62 to 7.95 percent for Daniell Heights apartments. A single room in the new residential apartment building will cost $8,400 for the year, with a 50-meal per semester food plan.
  • Learned that the Graduate School is piloting a National Service Graduate Fellowship Program to better meet the needs of students who have provided significant service to the US. Active military personnel, honorably discharged veterans, military retirees, and Peace Corps and Americorps volunteers who have successfully completed their service are eligible for the fellowship.

Published in Tech Today

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Getting Rid of the Bad Stuff

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MBA student Cynthia Hodur learned firsthand about getting rid of trans fats, those ubiquitous bad food particles. On a student team in Dana Johnson’s operations and quality management class, she researched and applied her knowledge to a local hospital project and got great results.

“Instead of reading about it, we actually did it in a real-world way that will help the community,” she says of her experience on behalf of Portage Health. The hospital was the first in the Upper Peninsula to go trans-fat free, with help from the Tech students.

Hodur appreciated the opportunity to tackle such a timely problem with her team’s two-pronged approach, especially since she works as a facilities and event coordinator at the Memorial Union.

“First, our research group focused on policy,” she says. “We looked at what had been done globally, with the United Nations, and then we researched further from there: federally, state, and at the organizational level.”

She says the American Heart Association’s trans-fat lawsuit with McDonald’s restaurants was important. In the suit, McDonald’s was supposed to change its oil, but it didn’t. She had inside knowledge there, having worked for the American Heart Association at the time.

“We were working with the schools then,” she says, “building on an existing program.”

That background information also helped her at Tech, where her second group–applying the information they’d gleaned–looked at recipes and various food products to get rid of the trans fats at Portage Health.

“We looked at everything from cookbooks to working with vendors to vending machines,” she says. “We found substitutes for cooking, like applesauce for oil, and for baking, where a substitute for shortening has been used successfully, for example.”

Along the way, she learned from her teammates.

“There was a variety of people, and we were paired by interests,” she says. “One of the women was a Six Sigma Greenbelt expert on flowcharts!” So, Hodur’s process-chart-producing expertise was accelerated.

And they weren’t all MBAs, said Johnson, an associate professor in the School of Business and Economics. They had graduate students from civil engineering, mechanical engineering and elsewhere. Focusing on the same goal, Johnson said, they would come at it from different angles.

Johnson also stressed the importance of “students working with a real, live project, instead of case studies, which become outdated very quickly.”

The project did indeed take a well-rounded approach to the problem. “The students looked at cost benefits, working with vendors Sysco and Reinhart, even Portage Point (the hospital’s long-term senior housing operation), and its food service customer relations,” she said.

They worked closely with Paul Skinner, director of Portage’s nutritional services, she said. He was important from a management perspective, and he was in charge of recipes.

“We looked at processes and procedures to make sure they are accurate,” Johnson said, noting that they even looked at the definition of “trans fat-free,” which can still include .49 grams of trans fats. Portage Health went below that measure, she said.

“The costs involved in going trans fat-free were not as significant as they thought,” she added.

She also sees potential for future work.

“We plan on helping them with their seating capacity at Portage Health,” she said. “We’ll be working with them as they expand their capacity, using a green perspective to identify environmentally friendly dinnerware.”

They also plan on looking at the recycling in the hospital to make it more cost effective and efficient, Johnson said.

“We’ll be looking at Styrofoam,” she said, “how it can work within a recycling system.”

This marks the fourth year for the class tackling problems for Portage Health, and she’s also placed three interns into the organization.

Hodur truly enjoys the graduate school experience, including the Portage Health project, and her position at the Memorial Union. She has her sights set on a future marketing position.

“My husband and I moved here because we love the area,” she said. “Working and taking classes at Michigan Tech have been a nice bonus.”

by Dennis Walikainen, senior editor
Published in Tech Today

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MBA Student Granted EcoCAR Graduate Fellowship

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The School of Business and Economics professors Dana Johnson and Junhong Min have been awarded a fellowship to continue funding Eric Joseph, a current MBA student, with the second installment of the EcoCAR Outreach/Communications Graduate Fellowship.The grant of $7,500, made possible by Argonne National Laboratory and the American Society for Engineering Education, will continue to fund the EcoCAR project here at Michigan Tech. Each EcoCAR university is expected to match the contribution in order to fund a full-time Outreach/Communications person for the EcoCAR project.

To read the full story, see the SBE news website.

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Graduate Students and Programs in the News

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Humanities PhD candidate Roxane Gay’s father, Michael Gay, was interviewed on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” on Monday, Jan. 25. A Haitian-American contractor, Gay is in Haiti helping clear debris and plan for reconstruction after the island nation’s devastating earthquake. The NPR broadcast is available online.

Last week Ruth Archer, director of graduate business programs, was featured in the article, “How Online Universities Really Stack Up,” on Janine Swenson’s blog, internetevolution.com . According to their website, “Internet Evolution aims to view the future of the Internet through a prism of pragmatism.” The blog discussed online education and included input from a professor, course developer and student. More information is available on the SBE news website.

A news story about Michigan Tech’s research regarding the Haitian disaster was featured in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday, Jan. 24.

Published in Tech Today

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Facebook Launches Fellowship Program to Promote Social Computing Research

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Facebook Fellowship Program

Every day Facebook confronts the most complex technical problems and we believe that close relationships with the academy will enable us to address many of these problems at a fundamental level and solve them. As part of our ongoing commitment to academic relations, we are pleased to announce the creation of the Facebook Fellowship program to support graduate students in the 2010-2011 school year.

We are interested in a wide range of academic topics, including the following topical areas:

  • Internet Economics: auction theory and algorithmic game theory relevant to online advertising auctions.
  • Cloud Computing: storage, databases, and optimization for computing in a massively distributed environment.
  • Social Computing: models, algorithms and systems around social networks, social media, social search and collaborative environments.
  • Data Mining and Machine Learning: learning algorithms, feature generation, and evaluation methods to produce effective online and offline models of behavioral signals.
  • Systems: hardware, operating system, runtime, and language support for fast, scalable, efficient data centers.
  • Information Retrieval: search algorithms, information extraction, question answering, cross-lingual retrieval and multimedia retrieval

Eligibility Criteria

  • Full-time Ph.D. students in topical areas represented by these fellowships who are currently involved in on-going research.
  • Students must be studying Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, System Architecture, or a related area.
  • Students must be enrolled during the academic year that the Fellowship is awarded.
  • Students must be nominated by a faculty member.

For more information about application/faculty nomination process visit: http://www.facebook.com/careers/fellowship.php

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Muslim Graduate Students Invited to Apply for Islamic Society of North America Fellowship Program in Nonprofit Management

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Philanthropy News Digest

The HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Society of North America Fellowship Program is designed to prepare Muslim graduate students to become effective and knowledgeable leaders of nonprofit organizations in North America.

Fellows will be given the opportunity to study nonprofit management, fundraising, capacity development, and other relevant subjects. These courses will be offered at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy or other similar institutions of higher education and centers of philanthropic studies.

Visit site for more information: http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/rfp_item.jhtml?id=272700027

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Tech MBA Honored Again by the Aspen Institute

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Published in Tech Today

The MBA program of the School of Business and Economics has been honored by the Aspen Institute’s 2009-10 edition of, “Beyond Grey Pinstripes,” a biennial survey and alternative ranking of business schools.

The SBE is rated 58 on a list of the top 100 business schools and has “demonstrated significant leadership in integrating social, environmental and ethical issues into its MBA program,” according to the Aspen Institute.

“Our faculty earned this recognition through their commitment to teaching and research in social, environmental and ethical stewardship as it relates to business,” said Darrell Radson, dean of the School. “Our MBA program focuses on conducting sustainable business in a technologically rich, constantly changing world and our faculty and students rise to that challenge.” The Michigan Tech MBA was previously honored by the Aspen Institute in 2007.

“The Tech MBA students are very concerned about a sustainable future,” said Ruth Archer, director of graduate programs. “They appreciate receiving a first-class MBA in managing technology and innovation at the same time that they learn how to integrate social value with corporate profitability. This recognition will enable us to attract more like-minded students.”

The Aspen Institute surveyed 149 business schools from 24 nations over 18 months in an effort to map the landscape of teaching and research on issues pertaining to business and society. Relevant data collected in the survey, as well as the entire “Global 100” list of business schools, is available at, www.BeyondGreyPinstripes.org . For more information on the Tech MBA, visit www.mtu.edu/business/mba/overview .

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Michigan Tech EcoCAR Team Hits the Road

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From Tech Today

For over a year, Michigan Technological University’s EcoCAR Enterprise team members have been brainstorming and building a next-generation hybrid vehicle on their computers. Now they are ready to roll.

The team has taken delivery on a 2009 Saturn Vue Hybrid, a cross-over vehicle. General Motors, a major sponsor of EcoCar, donated new Vues to Michigan Tech and the 16 other US and Canadian universities participating in the competition.

To read more about EcoCAR and the Tech team’s strategy, see this story on the Michigan Tech News site.

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MBA Student Chad Daavettila Honored

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Tech Today

MBA student Chad Daavetilla was inducted into the Michigan Tech chapter of Beta Gamma Sigma business honor society.  Students ranking in the top 20 percent of master’s degree programs at schools accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International are eligible for membership.

While almost 300,000 students receive bachelor’s or master’s degrees in business each year, only about 20,000 are inducted into lifetime membership in Beta Gamma Sigma. BGS membership provides many benefits, including career development advice, leadership conferences, networking with successful business people and scholarships.

The co-advisors for the Michigan Tech chapter of BGS are Associate Professor Chelley Vician and Assistant Professor Mari Buche (SBE). For more information about BGS, visit http://betagammasigma.org/index.htm .

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