People and Places: December 7, 2021

Transitions

In November, the University of Dayton in Ohio named Trevor Collier dean of the School of Business Administration. Collier, an economics professor at the university since 2007, has been interim dean since January. He also has served as chair of the department of economics and finance, helped lead the development of the university’s Master of Finance program, and created the UD2NYC experiential and professional development program that enables economics and finance students to network with professionals in New York City.

Ohad Kadan has been named the new dean of the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University in Tempe. Kadan is currently the vice dean of education and globalization and the H. Frederick Hagemann Jr. Professor of Finance at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Kadan oversees Olin’s undergraduate, graduate, and global programs, as well as its Center for Digital Education. Kadan’s appointment at Arizona State will become effective July 1, 2022. He will take over the role from the interim dean of the W.P. Carey School of Business, Amy Ostrom, a professor of marketing and the PetSmart Chair in Services Leadership.

Honors and Awards

The MBA Roundtable, a global association of business schools dedicated to advancing graduate management education, recently announced the winners of its 2021 Innovator Award. The Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware in Newark was recognized for its program “Motivational Tiered Assessment: Rethinking How We Assess Our GME Students.” Under this program, students can achieve higher grades only when they exhibit higher levels of intrinsic motivation, because students choose the amount and difficulty of work they complete. The Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, was honored for its fully integrated MBA Innovative Experiential Learning Curriculum. Through this sequential portfolio of experiential courses and electives, students collaborate with corporate teams, practice design thinking, solve problems, and conduct quantitative analysis. The Innovator Award was created in 2011 to promote educational initiatives that advance innovation in graduate management education. The award is sponsored by BusinessCAS, a centralized application service for students applying to graduate programs.

The Faculty of Business at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University has won the 2021 WRDS-SSRN Innovation Award for the Asia Pacific region. The school received the award for the wide-ranging work being conducted by its research centers, including scholarship focused on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, maritime studies, shipping and logistics, branding and marketing, leadership and innovation, sustainability, fintech, and entrepreneurial finance. Edwin Cheng, dean of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Business School, received the award during the virtual AACSB Asia Pacific Annual Conference in November. Each year, Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS), part of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) present the award to business schools in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific to highlight their faculty’s innovation and impact-focused research.

New Programs

New York University Stern School of Business will launch an online/modular option as part of its Langone Part-Time MBA Program. With this hybrid option, students will take the MBA core curriculum online but be able to complete their electives in one of three ways: by attending one-week intensive in-person modules at Stern’s campus in New York City, by taking courses online, or by taking in-person courses at Stern on weeknights or on Saturdays. The one-week modules, which will run Monday through Saturday, will be worth 4.5 credits toward the degree; the school will offer one to two such immersions in December, January, March, June, and July. Students who choose this option also will have to complete additional work before and after the module week.

Beginning in September 2022, undergraduates at Esade, which has campuses in Barcelona and Madrid, will be able to enroll in a new double degree program. To qualify for the Bachelor of Business Administration and the Bachelor in Artificial Intelligence for Business, students must have solid knowledge in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and math). In the first year, students will reinforce that knowledge with courses in coding, machine learning, information theory, and statistics. In following years, they will participate in international exchange programs and cross-disciplinary projects, culminating in the last year with internships at companies that have undergone digital transformation. A hallmark of the program will be intensive boot camps, where students will develop their own software, apps, and digital tools.

The Carlos Alvarez College of Business at the University of Texas at San Antonio will offer a Bachelor of Science in Applied Cyber Analytics degree in the fall of 2022. The new degree will train students in data analytics, cybersecurity, and the unique business intelligence needs of the cyber domain. Applied cyberanalytics students will utilize tools such as machine learning and artificial intelligence to see patterns in cyberdetection. They also will learn to use the tools needed to aggregate and interpret data in cybersecurity decision making. Supporting coursework will be drawn from the fields of mathematics, statistics, business analytics, information systems, data mining, machine learning, policy, law, and ethics.

Collaborations

Five universities in Iowa have partnered to form the BIPOC Coalition, which seeks to foster a sense of community, cultivate leadership, and provide mutual support for students who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. The coalition is designed to be a safe space for BIPOC students to reflect on their college journeys. The participating schools are Drake University and Grand View University in Des Moines, Central College in Pella, Simpson College in Indianola, and William Penn University in Oskaloosa. The coalition held its first meeting in September alongside the Latino Heritage Festival in Des Moines, where BIPOC students from the five schools facilitated activities.

The British Council has developed the Innovation for African Universities program to support partnerships between universities in Africa and the United Kingdom. The goal is to help young Africans gain the training and support they need to develop their entrepreneurial ideas. Currently, the program comprises 24 project partnerships with universities in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and the U.K. The program will be managed by the University of Nairobi, Bayes Business School at City University of London, and ChangeSchool in London. Funding of up to 60,000 GBP (about 80,500 USD) will be available to support each partnership.

Grants and Donations

The University of Michigan Ross School of Business in Ann Arbor has received three gifts totaling 8.5 million USD. These include 2.5 million USD from advisory board member Bill Stein, which will be used to create The Stein Scholarship Cohort Fund to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds; 2 million USD from advisory board member Jane Okun Bomba and her husband, Gary, which will provide need-based scholarships to students involved in social impact or sustainability; and 4 million USD from anonymous donors, which will be added to the school’s established scholarship fund. These initial gifts launch a larger initiative to raise 200 million USD to support scholarships, educational programs, and experiential learning opportunities.

Facilities and Centers

The Lewis College of Business and Brad D. Smith Schools of Business at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, have broken ground on the new Brad D. Smith Center for Business and Innovation. The 77,000-square-foot facility is expected to open for students in the spring semester of 2024. Along with classroom space, the new center will feature a forum and auditorium, computer and finance labs, office space, meeting rooms, and study spaces. Officials plan further development that will connect the campus to the center of the downtown business district to create a mixed-use corridor where people can live, work, dine, and enjoy recreational pursuits. The Marshall Business and Innovation District will present opportunities for idea sharing, catalytic growth, and sustained economic benefits.

Other News

Earlier this month, global edtech company 2U announced that it had finished its acquisition of edX, a nonprofit online course platform originally created by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Together, the two companies will provide more than 3,500 online learning opportunities to more than 40 million learners, according to a statement released by 2U. Under the agreement, 2U will operate edX as a “public benefit company” that continues to offer free courses, as well as support the ongoing development of Open edX, a nonprofit opensource educational platform owned by MIT and Harvard. The companies have pledged 1 million USD to produce 10 new free courses; in addition, edX partners Harvard, MIT, University of California–Berkeley, Google, and IBM have plans to launch new offerings on the edX platform, with an emphasis on modular and stackable programs. Twenty-five 2U partners—including Howard University, London School of Economics and Political Science, Morehouse College, Syracuse University, University of California–Davis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Vanderbilt University—will join the edX Consortium to provide affordable educational options at edX.org. 2U and edX are eliminating all membership and annual fees for edX Consortium members.

The acquisition is an opportunity to offer “one of the most comprehensive learning platforms available, with a unified experience that lets learners focus on learning, faculty and course creators focus on pedagogy, and all of us focus on impact,” says Anant Agarwal, founder and CEO of edX. “We will be part of every learner’s life journey.” Agarwal will join 2U as its chief open education officer.