From the Dean's Desk

Women's History Month

Dean Martijn Cremers

Dean Martijn Cremers

Monday, 6 March 2023

In 2022, Notre Dame celebrated the 50th anniversary of Father Ted Hesburgh’s historic decision to admit women as undergraduates to the formerly all-male university. In the fall of 1972, the University admitted the first women: 125 first-year and more than 200 transfer students. Today, women collectively comprise about 40% of the Mendoza undergraduate program and 35% of the graduate programs.

In honor of Women’s History Month, I’m pleased to highlight the leadership and contributions of several of our faculty and staff members:
Kristen Collett-Schmitt, associate dean for innovation and diversity, has been instrumental in advancing inclusivity across the College. Two recently launched notable programs include:

ND Elevate: Women in Leadership, a pilot program conducted in partnership with ND Learning and Beacon Health Systems aimed at empowering women to take the next step in their professional journey by developing knowledge and skills relating to resilience, negotiation, presence and authenticity. The program’s online learning modules and a full-day immersion featured some of the University’s foremost women leaders and scholars, including Muffet McGraw, Ruth Riley Hunter (EMBA ’16), Carolyn Woo, Cindy Muir (Zapata), Jessica McManus Warnell, Angela Logan and Amanda McKendree.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Grow the Good in Business Case Competition. Forty-five teams of Mendoza undergraduate and graduate students have registered for the second annual competition, which focuses on the problem of financial inclusion in underserved markets. The closing event, where winners will be announced, takes place at 10 a.m. on April 21 in the Stayer Center Commons A.

Kara Palmer, senior director of administration and program management, was chosen to represent Mendoza as part of the ND Women Lead feature in honor of International Women’s Day on March 8. Kara, who leads the Mendoza Staff DEI Council, has been a pioneer in gender equity in the College and across campus, serving as the leader of Thrive! Inspiring ND Women, the largest employee resource group that is focused on increasing opportunities for women to be recruited, retained and advanced as leaders at the University.

María Stutsman y Márquez, director of Graduate Recruiting & Admissions, has supported the Diversity in Leadership (DIL) initiative founded by Dr. Leon Jackson (EMBA '19). The six-month program is designed to help close gaps in educational attainment, wealth, skills and career opportunities for marginalized groups, and to provide a path to executive leadership and entrepreneurship. María also led the Solidarity Summit admissions recruitment events which provide coaching throughout the admissions process and a sponsored visit to campus to increase the interest and admission success of diverse groups. As a result of these initiatives and others, Insight into Diversity magazine presented the College with a 2023 Inspiring Programs in Business Award given as a tribute to the people and programs that encourage and inspire a new generation of people to consider careers in business. María also was recently named as the vice president of Adelante ND, an Employee Resource Group committed to diversity and inclusion and educating others about our Hispanic/Latinx heritage.

Wendy Angst, teaching professor of Management & Organization, has continued her important work facilitating experiential learning for undergraduate students to have a measurable impact on the world's most pressing problems. Providing opportunities for students to engage in projects over multiple semesters from idea, to immersion, to implementation, Wendy's first “proof of concept” is with St. Bakhita Vocational Training Center in Northern Uganda. Wendy and her students support 78 female "Innovation Scholars" to learn a vocation and receive training in computers and entrepreneurship. Through collaborative innovation, they aim to provide young women with access to education, enable sustainable operations for the school and improve the region’s economic prosperity.

Business on the Frontlines, founded by Viva Bartkus, has worked on many projects over the years related to the education and advancement of women as a way of addressing poverty and violence. An ongoing partnership with Child’s Cup Full, overseen by Kelly Rubey, focuses on creating lasting economic growth for Palestinian women by providing talented refugee and low-income artisans training and job opportunities.

Patty Brady, interim director for NDIGI, oversaw the Women’s Investing Summit ’23, a signature event for the College and the larger investment industry. As an attendee, I can tell you that the Downes Club was packed with students, faculty, staff, alumni and other guests. Now in its fifth year, WIS continues to shine a light into investment management career paths for our students and bring together some of the top experts in the field today. Tess Swain was also key in executing the event.

These are a few examples of the many women faculty and staff members across Mendoza who are significantly contributing to the success of our students, the College and the University through advancing the causes of diversity, equity and inclusion. I am deeply grateful to all.

In Notre Dame,

Martijn

Research Roundup/Mid-term Break

Dean Martijn Cremers

Dean Martijn Cremers

Monday, 27 February 2023
We have already entered the season of Lent, and mid-term break is just around the corner. During this upcoming break, our students will be working on experiential learning projects across the globe. A few examples include:
  • Business on the Frontlines is sending 25 MBA students and 13 faculty advisors to Uganda, South Africa, Colombia and Kyrgyzstan.
  • Graduate Business Programs Interterm has a total of 212 students involved in 37 projects: 82 MBA students in 14 international projects, 112 MBA students in 18 domestic projects, and 15 MNA students in five domestic projects in Orange County, California.
  • Wendy Angst and 20 students from the Applied Impact Consulting or Innovation and Design Thinking classes will be traveling to Uganda to work on six projects with St. Bakhita Vocational Training Center
I greatly appreciate the efforts of faculty and staff to provide our students with truly unique, hands-on learning experiences. Our Frontlines team — Viva Bartkus, Kelly Rubey, Joe Sweeney, Drew Marcantonio, Samantha Fisher and Paige Risser — continue their groundbreaking work. The Experiential Learning team of Megan Piersma, Ben Wilson and Jim Cunningham is doing some exciting things with reimagining interterm and other programs (more to come on that). Wendy and many others who have come together to support the work with St. Bakhita are making a difference in an entire region in Uganda.
Further, I am glad to share a selection of recently published or accepted papers by our faculty:

Vamsi Kanuri, Viola D. Hank Associate Professor of Marketing
B2B Online Sales Pushes: Whether, When, and Why They Enhance Sales Performance (Production and Operations Management)
B2B sellers are increasingly deploying a direct online channel to supplement their traditional in-person salesperson channel. However, online channel rollouts exhibit a cold-start problem, wherein the customers are either unaware of the online channel or do not fully trust the channel to deliver the same level of experiences that salespeople deliver and, hence, do not adopt it. To overcome this problem, B2B sellers are launching online sales pushes that are targeted at salespeople to encourage them to nudge customers to migrate to the online channel. However, whether, when, and why salespeople embrace online sales pushes, when in fact they are likely to steer customers away from the salespeople, and how online sales pushes affect the seller's sales performance across the online and offline channels remains largely unknown. This study offers the first insight into these questions.
Ken Kelley, Edward F. Sorin Society Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
Sriram Somanchi, Assistant Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
Ahmed Abbasi, Joe and Jane Giovanini Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
Examining User Heterogeneity in Digital Experiments (ACM Transactions on Information Systems)
As digital experiments have become increasingly pervasive in organizations, their growth has prompted new challenges for large-scale experimentation platforms. One challenge is that experiments often focus on the average treatment effect (ATE) without explicitly considering differences across sub-groups, i.e., heterogeneous treatment effects (HTE). The researchers propose a framework for detecting and analyzing these heterogeneities based on user characteristics. Analysis of 27 real-world experiments spanning 1.76 billion sessions from a large digital experimentation platform demonstrates the effectiveness of our framework relative to existing techniques.
Cindy Muir (Zapata), Professor of Management & Organization
Dorian Boncoeur, Assistant Professor of Management & Organization
Matches Measure: A Visual Scale of Job Burnout (Journal of Applied Psychology)
The research presents a better way to assess the serious problem of employee job burnout, which can lead to reduced productivity, increased absences and leaves, job turnover and even hospitalization. Existing methods of identifying job burnout are lengthy and sometimes proprietary. The Matches Measure offers a faster and easier way through a visual tool that helps managers and organizations better understand how prevalent job burnout is amongst their employees. Given that it is a single item, the Matches Measure is also better suited to help organizations capture whether and how job burnout fluctuates over time.
Dean Shepherd, Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship (Management & Organization)
Bounding and Binding: Trajectories of Community-Organization Emergence Following a Major Disruption (Organization Science)
The paper conducts a qualitative study in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake to explore differences in the interactions between emerging organizations and communities. Despite all organizations facing the same external shock, they differed in how they interpreted the nature of crisis, established boundaries to build communities and created connections to bind themselves to their communities. We find three trajectories of community-organization emergence and demonstrate how organizations reestablish communities while simultaneously emerging within those communities.
Rafael Zambrana, Assistant Professor of Finance
Capital Commitment and Performance: The Role of Mutual Fund Charges (Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis)
How does the scarcity of committed capital affect the equilibrium distribution of alphas in the asset management industry? The research proposes a model of active portfolio management where committed capital is in short supply. In the model, a portfolio's excess return is not fully appropriated by the asset manager but shared with long-term investors. Empirically, the researchers show that capital commitment allows asset managers to take advantage of slow-moving arbitrage opportunities. Consistent with the model, committed capital generates higher value-added, which, net of fees, accrues to long-term investors.
Thank you and congrats to Vamsi, Ken, Sriram, Ahmed, Cindy, Dorian, Dean and Rafael for their excellent research.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn

Guest Column: Jim Otteson

Jim Otteson

Jim Otteson

Monday, 20 February 2023
Dear Colleagues,
The many changes through which Mendoza has gone in recent years have included the creation of the Business Honors Program (BHP) and the Business Ethics and Society Program (BESP). I’d like to give you a brief update on both.
The BHP is now completing its second year, and we’ll soon be reviewing applications from current first-year students to join its third cohort. We have 60 students in each of our two current cohorts, so 120 total at the moment. Once we add our next cohort of 60, we will be at 180, which we anticipate to be approximately our steady state. Our students come from all Mendoza majors, and represent a nearly exact male/female split.
The BHP has a distinctive purpose. Honors programs at other institutions typically look only at academic achievement—the top 5% or 10%, say, of student GPAs determine who’s admitted. Our BHP, too, looks at GPAs and other indicators of academic achievement, but we also look at character. Our aim is not merely to reward people who get good grades, but also to encourage character formation that reflects Notre Dame’s distinctive two-fold academic and moral mission.
In other words, we want students who have, and can develop, a personal commitment to “Grow the Good in Business,” to seeking and finding a moral purpose that they integrate into their professional lives. We want our graduates to be ambassadors of not just the skills, knowledge and ability but the integrity and service that distinguish Mendoza and Notre Dame.
The BHP’s core components are honors courses in each major and academic department; Friday colloquia throughout the academic year, featuring prominent businesspeople who discuss the challenges and successes of their journeys; one-on-one mentoring for all BHP students; and optional enhancement events, including everything from service opportunities to bowling, escape rooms and an annual formal ball. This year, the BHP has also assumed responsibility for Mendoza’s undergraduate tutoring program, for which dozens of our BHP students have volunteered.
How are we doing so far? It’s still early, and we have far to go and much to learn, but we have had some initial signs of success:
  1. The number of applications. During our first year (2021), when no one really knew what the program would be, we received 176 total applications for our 60 spots. Our second year (2022), we received 245 total applications, a 40% increase. We haven’t yet begun receiving applications for our 2023 cohort, but we had over 250 first-year students attend our information session in late January.
  2. Feedback from our students. We continue to receive positive feedback from our students regarding our programming, and we regularly solicit—and receive!—advice and suggestions for improvement.
  3. Attendance at our events. Two examples: Our first formal ball last year had 128 in attendance; our formal ball earlier this February had 242. Our first football game tailgate in 2021 had approximately 220 attendees; our last tailgate this past fall had almost 800! 
  4. Eventually: alumni involvement. We have no graduates yet—the first cohort will graduate in 2024—but we will track and monitor our alumni carefully once we have them.
  5. Financial support. The BHP was initially funded by a generous gift from the Babiarz family, and last fall we were the beneficiaries of an endowment pledge from alumnus Sean Klimczak that was among the largest single gifts Mendoza has ever received.
The BHP is still growing and developing, and we’d love your help! Here are some ways you might consider becoming involved:
  1. If you’re not receiving our weekly BHP Bulletin, please sign up by contacting Tess Geishauser.
  2. We would be happy to have you nominate or recommend students. We’d also welcome volunteers to review student applications.
  3. We welcome your ideas for service projects, courses, activities or any other ways to engage students and enhance their experience.
  4. Feedback: we welcome your thoughts about what we are doing well, what we need to work on and what we should change. What opportunities are we missing?
If you would like to help, make suggestions, or become involved in any way, please reach out to me or anyone else associated with the Program.
The other program we have begun is connected with the Business Ethics and Society Program, which the College Council officially created in the Spring of 2022.
Our first official act was to hire Mary Hirschfeld, who joined the BESP (with a joint appointment in Theology) in July 2022, and who boasts a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard and a Ph.D. in theology from Notre Dame. In partnership with David O’Connor, professor of philosophy here at Notre Dame, we have also developed a new undergraduate minor called Business and the Common Good, which will explore virtue in business by drawing on perspectives including philosophy, theology, economics and Catholic social thought. The “gateway” course for this new minor debuted this spring, and the minor itself will be officially launched in fall 2023. Ann Tenbrunsel and Fr. Ollie Williams, along with Mary Hirschfeld, Dave O’Connor, John Sikorski and me, round out the BESP faculty.
We are in the process now of creating a dedicated website that will detail information regarding the BESP and its minor, so please stay tuned!
On behalf of the BHP and the BESP, we thank you for your support and partnership. We thank in particular Dean Martijn Cremers and the entire Dean’s Office. We thank the members of the BHP team, Crystal Boser, Tess Geishauser and Craig Iffland, and we thank Andy Wendelborn and his Undergraduate Studies advising team for their invaluable advice and support. We also thank our colleagues in the BESP for their wisdom and counsel. And we thank all of our colleagues, too numerous to mention, who have taught honors courses, given us advice and feedback, addressed our students and contributed in countless ways. We look forward to working with you closely as these programs grow.
In Notre Dame,
Jim Otteson

New Graduate Courses

Dean Martijn Cremers

Dean Martijn Cremers

Monday, 13 February 2023
At the start of this semester, I highlighted the new undergraduate courses that showcase our commitment to curricular innovation.
In this column, we are highlighting new courses in our graduate programs, including those that integrate ethics, the moral purpose of business and the role of business in society. 
This spring, we have 808 graduate students enrolled in 180 classes across 11 graduate programs. We have introduced more than 20 new graduate courses during the 2022-2023 academic year that reinforce our mission as a business school to develop servant leaders while introducing new areas of learning, especially in AI and ESG.
You can view the full list of new graduate courses here. Following are a few selections of new courses:
Digital Transformation: Taught by Corey Angst (Jack and Joan McGraw Family Collegiate Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations), the MSBA & MBA course explores the need for organizations to be agile and innovative as emerging technologies disrupt entire industries in today’s global economy and generate new value propositions.
Monetizing Machine Learning and Deep Learning: Ahmed Abbasi (Joe and Jane Giovanini Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations) leads this MSBA-R course examining how artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced machine learning are fundamentally changing business and the broader societal implications. 
Data & Technology for Senior Leaders: In this EMBA class, Nick Berente (Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations) surveys current trends in data and technology — such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of Things and a host of other innovations — to provide working knowledge for executives, as well as to reflect on the major ethical issues associated with these trends.
Transformational Leadership: Building on research showing that self-awareness is a key competency for leaders, Kris Muir’s (Associate Teaching Professor of Management & Organization) MSM course prepares aspiring business leaders to contribute productively to an organization by focusing on the understanding and development of individual leadership competencies.
Accountability in a Sustainable World: Peter Easton (Notre Dame Alumni Professor of Accountancy) teaches this MBA & MSA course designed to develop future sustainability leaders through active engagement with key participants, critical synthesis of research on the measurement of climate change effects and movement toward quantifiable achievable goals.
Climate Resilience in Business: With a focus on resilience and environmental justice, this new MBA course taught by Jessica McManus Warnell (Teaching Professor of Management & Organization) explores the intersection of business and environmental sustainability as companies and communities around the world respond to a changing climate.
Trading and Markets: John Shim’s (Assistant Professor of Finance) MBA course examines the role of financial markets, the economic forces that determine prices and trading opportunities, and how markets and market participants have evolved with technology.
Strategic Marketing: The strategic marketing EMBA course taught by Shankar Ganesan (Professor of Marketing) provides students with a systematic process for making strategic marketing decisions including the analysis, design, implementation and control of marketing strategies.
Curricular innovation is an ongoing imperative as we educate students within a context of rapid global change and emerging technologies. I’m thankful to our faculty as a whole for their commitment to teaching in ways that honor our mission as a Catholic business school. I especially thank Ken Kelley, Craig Crossland, the department chairs and assistant chairs, the graduate program academic directors, and Christine Gramhofer and the Student Services team for their contributions to the new course offerings.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn

Guest Column: Kristen Collett-Schmitt

Kristen Collett-Schmitt

Kristen Collett-Schmitt

Monday, 6 February 2023
“Diversity is a richness” and “God, in His loving design, excludes no one.” - Pope Francis
Our daily work in Mendoza is guided by our mission to contribute to the development of ethical business leaders as well as by our vision to create student experiences that are informed by our Catholic character. In this spirit, our Catholic character also invites us to reframe our discussion surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in Mendoza.
There is evidence that students feel a deeper sense of inclusion at institutions where they perceive a stronger institutional commitment to creating a diverse and welcoming campus. This perception could be achieved in many ways, including through visibility of accessible support systems and opportunities that encourage appreciation of diverse perspectives, talents and lived experiences — all of which requires College-level commitment of resources. Fortunately, the Mendoza College of Business already has so many of these support systems and opportunities in place, and we actively signal both internally and externally how diversity and belonging relate to our core mission.
In my last Mendoza Exchange message in the fall, I was just a few months into my new role as the College’s inaugural associate dean for innovation and inclusion. At that time, I committed to offering stronger support of student affinity groups and to programming that highlights diverse experiences and connects Mendoza faculty, staff and students. My goals also focused on coordinating with other Colleges on campus and communicating with the University on our DE&I efforts.
As a College, we’ve made good progress on achieving many of these commitments and goals from the fall semester. For example, we’ve organized events including a faculty/staff discussion on the book “Relationship-Rich Education'' by Peter Felten and Leo Lambert; and a Mendoza-led session of “Show Some Skin,” the student-led initiative that invites members of the Notre Dame community to share narratives about identity and difference. I’ve also been intentional in reaching out to students so they are aware of both my support as a DE&I resource and as a signal of Mendoza’s institutional commitment to student belonging. 
As the spring semester is underway, I am even more encouraged and energized by the potential for meaningful change and advancement in the College given the number of exciting and student-led opportunities that have already taken place or are already planned.
We recently concluded Notre Dame’s eighth annual Walk the Walk Week. Several members of our Mendoza community marked the week together by attending the 2023 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast and Day of Celebration in downtown South Bend and the Staff DE&I Council’s film screening of Hesburgh. On January 26, Mendoza was a proud sponsor of the inaugural “Celebrating Black Excellence Dinner” hosted by Student Government. Not only did several members of our community experience a moving keynote address from Derrick Johnson, CEO of the NAACP, but we also recognized the outstanding accomplishments of Black students, staff and faculty at Notre Dame, many of whom we are blessed to work with and teach every day here in Mendoza. A complete list of Mendoza nominees and winners can be found here.
Registration is now open for the 2023 DE&I Grow the Good in Business Case Competition. Building on the success of last year’s inaugural competition, we will open this formative DE&I experience to all undergraduate and graduate students in Mendoza this year. The case challenges students to create solutions to improve access to and quality of financial services in underserved markets using the business acumen they've learned in Mendoza. You can find more information about the competition here and below. Please invite the students you engage with to register for the competition and attend our exciting kickoff event on Friday (February 10).
February and March mark Black History Month and Women’s History Month, respectively. Throughout both months, we will recognize the contributions and achievements of Black faculty, staff and students and women from our own Mendoza community on digital signage throughout Mendoza and Stayer. Additionally, in February, Mendoza will be a proud supporter of Black History Week 2023: “Building for Tomorrow,” which is sponsored by the Black Graduate in Management Club (BGM). The week will include opportunities for showcasing Pan African heritage, as well as professional development and networking.
Black History Week 2023 will be extremely powerful in how it will showcase the excellence of Black students across the entire campus of Notre Dame, as BGM’s collaborators include the African Students Association, Black Student Association, National Society of Black Engineers, Black Graduate Student Association, Black Law Students Association, Black Business Association of Notre Dame, Black Faculty and Staff Association, and the Multicultural Student Programs and Studies.
What else is ahead? Stay tuned for more information on other Mendoza-sponsored, student-led DE&I initiatives on campus, such as Lunar New Year in February, the MBAA’s Diversity and Heritage Ball in March and Holi later this spring.
The fact that the large majority of spring DE&I initiatives are led by Mendoza students reflects their recognition of our strong support systems and institutional commitment to a diverse and welcoming campus community for all. I am grateful for the support of so many faculty and staff who have walked beside me through my outreach efforts to students and also committed resources to student initiatives. I acknowledge your own daily efforts to strengthen our inclusive College community. I also want to thank Kara Palmer and the Mendoza Staff DE&I Council for a close collaboration.
I hope to see you at many of our events this spring, and know that I welcome a conversation or your feedback at any time, whether it be in person or through our suggestion boxes. 
In Notre Dame,
Kristen Collett-Schmitt
Associate Dean for Innovation and Inclusion
Associate Teaching Professor of Finance

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