People and Places: October 19, 2021

Transitions

Chittibabu (Chitti) Govindarajulu has joined Indiana University Kokomo as the dean of the School of Business, starting his new role as of August 2. He will lead undergraduate and graduate programs, including business administration, accounting, finance, hospitality and tourism management, public administration, and sports and recreation management. He also was appointed professor of management and anticipates teaching during the spring and summer semesters. Govindarajulu most recently was associate dean for program support and MBA administrator for the College of Business at Metropolitan State University of Denver in Colorado.

Honors and Awards

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2021 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel to three professors. David Card of the University of California Berkeley was recognized for his empirical contributions to labor economics, while Joshua D. Angrist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Guido W. Imbens of Stanford University were honored for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships. According to the Nobel Prize press release, the three Nobel laureates have developed insights about the labor market, shown how conclusions about cause and effect can be derived from natural experiments, and revolutionized empirical research. Half of the prize of 10 million Swedish kronor (about 1,114,000 USD) will go to Card and the other half will go jointly to Angrist and Imbens.

Ten business professors have received 2021 Ideas Worth Teaching awards from the Aspen Institute’s Business & Society program. They include Courtney McCluney of Cornell University for the course Advancing Racial Equity at Work; Nicholas Pearce of Northwestern University for Beyond Diversity: The Fundamentals of Inclusive Leadership; Kevin Werbach of the University of Pennsylvania for Big Data, Big Responsibilities: The Laws and Ethics of Business Analytics; Swasti Gupta-Mukherjee of Loyola University Chicago for Finance for a Sustainable World; Emily Cox Pahnke of the University of Washington for Grand Challenges for Entrepreneurs; Lindsay Brant and Kate Rowbotham of Queen’s University for Relationships and Reconciliation in Business and Beyond; Kingsley Fong and William Wu of the University of New South Wales for Sustainable and Responsible Investing; and James Hoopes of Babson College for The History and Ethics of Capitalism. Ideas Worth Teaching is designed to draw attention to courses that highlight new ideas about the role of business in creating a sustainable, inclusive society.

New Programs

MIP Politecnico di Milano in Italy has created a new Master in Sport Design and Management, which focuses on issues of culture, technology, sustainability, inclusivity, and infrastructure in sports. The 12-month program is being launched in collaboration with a number of Italian sports institutions, including CONI, FIGC, Istituto per il Credito Sportivo, and Lega Serie A. The program is directed by Emilio Faroldi. Taught both in Italian and in English, it will be delivered through a mixture of face-to-face and online learning formats.

Grants and Donations

The business school at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, has received 25 million USD from alumnus Michael Neidorff and the Neidorff Family Trust. In appreciation of the gift, the school will be named the Michael Neidorff School of Business. The donation will be used to provide multiple scholarships and an endowed faculty position, as well as enhancements to teaching, collaborative efforts, and working spaces. Neidorff, who is chairman and chief executive officer of the healthcare company Centene Corporation, also serves on Trinity’s board of trustees. During his time as chair of the board, he oversaw plans for renovating existing buildings and constructing new facilities on campus. The Neidorff School of Business will be housed in one of the renovated centers, which is scheduled for completion in 2023.

The Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, has received a 6 million USD gift from Kim and William Shaddock to establish Shaddock Hall, part of a renovation project at the school. The new facility will include a dedicated business library reading room, expansive classrooms, the dean’s boardroom, a conference room with seating for 20, and offices for support services. Bill Shaddock, an alumnus, is owner of the Bill Shaddock Family of Companies, which specializes in real estate. Kim Shaddock is a special education teacher and founding member of the Shaddock Family Foundation.

Collaborations

MIT Sloan Executive Education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge is partnering with Bayer AG to help the pharmaceutical company develop digital intrapreneurs across its global operations. Bayer’s corporate innovation team recently created R&D Tech Immersion, an educational experience designed to accelerate data-driven ideas from concept to implementation. While the technological content is delivered by in-house experts, MIT Sloan Executive Education provides the entrepreneurship and leadership components. Twenty-five training days, conducted over a period of months, are followed by a weeklong on-site program at the MIT School of Management that covers innovation in artificial intelligence and the life sciences.

The University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business in Indiana has partnered with the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, an intercollegiate fraternity for African American men. As part of the collaboration, Mendoza will offer a designated fellowship program; waive application fees to its graduate programs, including the Notre Dame MBA; waive fees for the Graduate Records Examination (GRE) and the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT); and provide test preparation programming, early access to Mendoza Graduate Business Career Development coaching, and alumni mentoring. The college also plans to hold a two-day inclusive leadership immersion that will focus on career development and professional degree opportunities at Mendoza. Students will hear from a diverse panel of students, alumni, and staff about the Notre Dame experience and participate in a "Demystifying the Business Case" session.

Creighton University’s Heider College of Business in Omaha, Nebraska, has partnered with data services firm AstrumU to help students forecast the labor market value of a graduate business degree. The data-driven career advising tool will help students understand the return on investment from the school’s online and on-campus MBA programs even before they enroll. Astrum’s Enrollment Marketing Toolkit matches course-level outcomes, academic performance, and extracurricular experiences with salary and job placement outcomes of industry professionals in specific fields. The Heider College of Business is one of the first graduate schools of business to pilot the new program, which will be offered by an initial cohort of 25 universities. (Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Management in California is also testing the technology.)

The Smith School of Business at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and the Lagos Business School at the Pan-Atlantic University in Nigeria have announced a new student exchange partnership, which will focus on training more leaders to develop sustainable solutions to local challenges. Nigerian students who come to Smith on exchange are eligible for funding through the Douglas and Catherine McIntosh Scholarship, which is awarded based on academic excellence and goes to students who might otherwise not be able to participate in such programs.

Centers and Facilities

The McCombs School of Business will establish a Business of Sports Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. The institute’s activities will support the burgeoning global sports analytics market, expected to generate 4.6 billion USD by 2025. The institute will create a curriculum in the business of sports, including a new undergraduate minor available in fall 2022. The minor will allow students to pursue tracks focused on data analytics, entrepreneurship, and the science of high performance, with plans in place to add future tracks in sports marketing and public and private financial models. The institute also will organize industry events, such as the Texas Business of Sports Summit, which was held in September. In addition, the institute will conduct applied research in partnership with the university’s athletics programs as well as professional sports teams, with studies related to men’s and women’s basketball already underway. The multinational consulting firm Accenture is providing 1.4 million USD to found the institute; project managers, data scientists, and other engineers from the company also will contribute to the institute’s programs.

Other News

The Institute for Sustainable Finance at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, has published a new report assessing Canada’s progress on scaling sustainable finance and bolstering Canadian competitiveness. The report is informed by interviews with 34 Canadian experts in sustainable finance, including those in banking, insurance, and investment. The report draws seven key conclusions: Accelerated action is needed; the country’s financial ecosystem needs to embrace change; Canada-specific solutions are required; sustainable finance must focus on issues beyond climate change; Canada’s net-zero transition requires a more unified narrative; the country needs a greater focus on adaptation and resilience; and clean innovation needs more support, which will require cooperation between the public sector, the private sector, and the financial system.