From the Dean's Desk

Guest column: Ken Kelley

Ken Kelley

Ken Kelley

Monday, 18 April 2022
Restructuring Mendoza’s Graduate Course Labeling and Numbering System
Mendoza’s portfolio of graduate degrees continues to grow, as evidenced by the recently announced MS in Digital Marketing and MS in Business Analytics focused on Sports Analytics. As more programs have been added or expanded, the graduate course labeling and numbering system broke down. Therefore, we set out to revise the system in a way that better serves students, faculty, and staff by clarifying and simplifying the management, reporting, and tracking of Mendoza graduate course offerings.
We had four goals in mind when creating this new system:
(1) Map courses to the primary program they serve and do so in a visible way using course prefixes;
(2) Identify the academic department responsible for the course;
(3) Eliminate as many (unnecessary) cross lists as possible; and
(4) Do not break anything!
The new system will help us better understand and plan the level of faculty and space resources that are devoted to operating each of our programs. This is something that is not generally possible with the way our current system is designed and thus, it requires manual processing and our own internal reports that do not align with the University’s systems.
By mapping each course to the primary program it serves and the academic department responsible for the course, it immediately allows various stakeholders to see who is responsible for the course, what program it serves, if a student is eligible to take the course and so on. In the spirit of our matrix structure for graduate programs, consider each program as a vertical and the departmental course coverage as a horizontal. Departments need to allocate limited faculty resources across programs in a way that aligns with faculty expertise and program needs. There also needs to be classrooms available for the course to be offered, of course. With the new system, we can easily look across the verticals by department or across the horizontals by program.
We started this process by reviewing the entire catalog of graduate courses and reimagining the way courses could map to academic departments and programs. This led to restructuring Mendoza’s course data elements (i.e., attributes) to align with the Registrar’s system and processes, which utilizes a hierarchy of (only) four levels: college, division, department, and subject code (or what we often call the prefix). (If we designed their system, by the way, we would also include location, modality, and program.)
Mendoza’s historical usage of “Course Department” and “Course Prefix” has not been consistent because the College often “thinks” in terms of programs, and we had legacy organizational structures that were used as the department attribute, yet they were not actually academic departments. Rather, these organizational structures held their portfolio of courses from across our academic departments. Thus, “departmental reporting” was not accurate with regard to our academic departments because of the way in which the attributes were codified in the system.
For example, consider the legacy organizational unit of “Executive Education.” All academic departments provide courses to that legacy organizational unit and thus it was codified in the Registrar’s system as “department.” This meant that, for example, University reporting did not allow for courses by academic department overall or within any of the programs in Executive Education. Further, because multiple programs were nested within this organizational unit (e.g., EMBA-Chicago, EMBA-South Bend, MSF-Chicago, MSBA-Chicago) all of these were codified as a single department; the organizational units conflated information about our actual departments, namely the five academic departments.
However, we have now modified many of the course numbers to use the Registrar's system while also making it easy to identify the program a course serves. For example, in the old system, a 70000 ACCT course that ended in “1” would map to the MSA program, yet those that end in “0” would map to the MBA. Now, MSA courses will have their own course prefix and so will MBA courses, for example. All programs will now have their own unique prefix. However, departmental prefixes will be used for the undergraduate program and Ph.D. courses. Further, the academic department responsible for the course will be codified in the attribute “department” rather than our legacy organization structures currently used.
Starting in Summer 2022 and going forward, all courses in the Mendoza College of Business will belong to one of the following ”departments”:
  • Accountancy
  • Finance
  • IT, Analytics, and Operations
  • Management & Organization
  • Marketing
  • Business Ethics and Society
Which will function like a department, or the following three options to codify courses that do not fit into the above:
  • Career Development
  • Business Administration Undergraduate 
  • Non-Departmental Graduate Business
Note that the first five course departments above are our academic departments. The sixth is the new Business Ethics and Society Program, which will function similarly to an academic department. The latter three are for career courses or program-specific activities codified as courses (e.g., Interterm). Cross-departmental programs (e.g., MBA, MSM, EMNA, MNA, etc.) will have a bit of intelligence built into the course numbering system where the third digit will identify the department (ACCT = 1, FIN = 2, ITAO = 3, MGTO = 4, and MARK = 5).
Revamping our graduate course catalog was no easy feat. To successfully complete this project, more than 200 new course creation forms were submitted and processed by many members of our faculty and staff teams. The changes to course prefixes also require several updates to student-facing documentation as well as updated systems coding in tools like GPS.
For playing a crucial role in the implementation of this project, I want to thank the assistant department chairs Wendy Angst, Jen Waddell, Joe Cherian, Jamie O’Brien and Jason Reed; new M&O assistant department chair Jen Cronin; Morgan McCoy, Carmen Quinn, Christopher Hillak and Jennifer Ransbottom from the Facilities & Program Operations Team; Ashley Heberling and Bailey Smith from the Administrative Support Team; and Rochelle Jones from the Office of the Registrar.
I realize that this was not the most exciting Exchange column! However, this change affects many parts of our organization. Rest assured, though, that these changes help us in a multitude of ways.
Sincerely,
Ken Kelley
Senior Associate Dean for Faculty
Research and Edward F. Sorin Society Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations

Guest column: Kristen Collett-Schmitt & Jessica McManus Warnell

Kristen Collett-Schmitt & Jessica McManus Warnell

Kristen Collett-Schmitt & Jessica McManus Warnell

Monday, 11 April 2022
A Reflection on the Inaugural DE&I Grow the Good in Business Case Competition
On April 1, the College officially concluded the first-ever Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Grow the Good in Business Case Competition. After two months and three rounds of competition, the top three teams of Specialized Master’s students presented their business solutions to narrowing the wealth gap in Indiana.
While all three teams developed proposals that would lead to meaningful advancements in diversity, equity and inclusion, the top prize of $7,000 went to Team O’Hara, composed of Master of Science in Management students Katelyn Derifield, Maya Dodson, Maria Schorr and Kelly Straub. Team O’Hara focused on fostering collaborative relationships between anchor institutions and minority-owned businesses, and creating workplace engagement programs to connect community members, including high school students, with education and career opportunities.
This case competition was certainly a passion project for both of us, but one that was also successful by many metrics. The 30 teams of Specialized Master’s students who voluntarily opted into this case competition walked away from the experience with a strong sense of what it means to “Grow the Good in Business.” The competition also provided the students with a rigorous academic experience that afforded them the opportunity to use and improve their leadership, problem solving, teamwork and presentation skills outside of the classroom, and later talk about their business proposals during job interviews.
Additionally, because students were encouraged to form teams across Specialized Master’s programs, the DE&I case competition strengthened their sense of collaboration. Not only did we have teams from all five residential programs register, but we also had all five programs represented in the top 10. One of the teams that made it to the final round was composed of students from both the MNA and MSBA programs, and their pitch coach was a faculty member from the MSA program. In traditional coursework, such cross-program collaboration would not be possible!
In many ways, this case competition was absolutely necessary in order to truly prepare students to be future business leaders in our modern society. Because we created workshops for competition participants and aligned the competition with spring Interterm programming, we were able to deliver formal education on various topics related to DE&I to nearly 150 residential Specialized Master’s students. This is notable, given the short duration of our programs and lack of such formal learning opportunities in our graduate curriculum. Examples of the workshops included Social Justice, Poverty and the Wealth Gap; Inclusive Language & Voicing Values; Diversity Through the Lens of Catholic Social Teaching; Managing Diverse Teams; and a DE&I Corporate Sponsor Panel with 1st Source Bank.
The success of this case competition would not have been possible without the support of so many of you. You answered the call to use your work of educating future business leaders to guarantee that diverse voices, experiences and backgrounds are valued, respected and nurtured. In addition to the Mendoza faculty and staff listed below who served as case writers, judges and competition organizers, we want to offer our special gratitude to Joan McClendon for remaining committed to the competition despite a new position in UEE, Minhee Myung for creating our beautiful website, Jessica Stookey and Martin Johnson for creating unique networking and practice opportunities for students, Wendy Walker for supplying the food and fun, Karma Grundy for her administrative support, Mendoza IT for guaranteeing that our opening and closing events ran smoothly, and Mendoza Communications for assisting with signage and promotions. We were also blessed by the support of MBA students, alumni, campus leaders outside of Mendoza, and corporate sponsors who volunteered to serve in various capacities throughout the competition, including by mentoring our students.
Brett Beasley
Carol Elliott
Pat Gibbons
Chad Harms
Christopher Hillak
Joe Holt
Charlice Hurst
Rob Kelly
Angela Logan
Lindsey McIntyre
Amanda McKendree
Connie Mick
Kris Muir
Kara Palmer
Hermalena Powell
Kelly Rubey
Gina Shropshire
Jim Seida
María Stutsman y Márquez
Joe Sweeney
Tahra Taylor
We recognize the opportunities and challenges in diversity, equity and inclusion are complex and ongoing, and there’s much work to be done. We hope that this year’s case competition is just one example of the many ways in which Mendoza continues this meaningful and critical work.
Kristen Collett-Schmitt
Associate Dean for Specialized Master’s Programs
Jessica McManus Warnell
Associate Teaching Professor of Management & Organization

Guest column: Kara Palmer and Rob Kelly

Kara Palmer and Rob Kelly

Kara Palmer and Rob Kelly

Monday, 4 April 2022
We want to start this column about creating a diverse and welcoming environment at Mendoza by thanking the many of you who have devoted a lot of time and hard work to the effort. In the past year, we’ve been able to offer many workshops, listening sessions and surveys, partnerships with outside organizations and across campus, and even a new case competition devoted solely to DE&I. Together, these combined efforts speak to the importance we all place on recognizing the strength of a diverse College community.
In this column, we want to highlight a particular DE&I initiative at the University that Mendoza has been an integral part of – the Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). ERGs are formal groups sponsored by Human Resources created to support networking and social outlets for specific groups of employees, their family members and allies. They also assist the University with recruitment, retention and educational activities. Their intention is to serve as a kind of gathering point for people who share common interests or concerns, and to strengthen a sense of belonging and community.
There are currently eight ERGs on campus: Adelante Hispanos, Black Faculty and Staff Association, Association of Faculty and Staff of Chinese Heritage (FSCH), Notre Dame Staff of International Descent (NDSID), Notre Dame Veterans Association, Spectrum LGBTQ+ & Ally, THRIVE! Inspiring ND Women, and Young Leaders. This month, the University will launch a ninth ERG for individuals with disabilities.
Of these nine ERGs, Mendoza staff members are leading the efforts across three ERGs and several other staff members are actively involved:
  • Christopher Hillak is a member of the steering committee for Spectrum LGBTQ+ & Ally, which aims to create an open and safe space for LGBTQ+ staff to meet, share fellowship and join in the work to create an inclusive culture of acceptance, dignity and respect for all LGBTQ+ persons at Notre Dame.
  • Kara Palmer is the president of Thrive! Inspiring ND Women, which is the largest ERG on campus and focuses on increasing opportunities for women to be recruited, retained and advanced as leaders at the University of Notre Dame. Lindsey McIntyre serves as the chair on the Mentoring committee for Thrive! and the following staff also serve as committee members working to advance the mission of the ERG to include Jessica Noffsinger, Lisa Michaels, Cathi Kennedy and Janel Zakrzewski-Kuntz.
  • Rob Kelly is the executive sponsor of a new ERG devoted to supporting individuals with disabilities. (Read more about Rob’s involvement in this NDWorks story.) Rob welcomes anyone who wants to know more or get involved in the IWD ERG to reach out to him directly.
  • Phil Drendall is on the membership committee for Young Leaders of Notre Dame.
We encourage all Mendoza faculty and staff to learn more and get involved with the ERGs, either to support you in your specific needs or to provide support to others who may be facing challenges that you have already experienced and have some insights to offer. The groups also can be important sources for networking, professional development and career advancement, and overall enrich your personal and professional journey as part of this great University.
As Dean Cremers has said, “As a community that recognizes every person’s intrinsic human dignity, it is incumbent on us to contribute to the flourishing of each individual and to contribute to our community, recognizing our reciprocal responsibilities and supporting one another. A spirit of diversity, equity and inclusion reflects this fundamental belief and underlies all that we do.”
We are a stronger community when we recognize and celebrate diversity, and draw together to support each other in our differing aspirations and needs.
Gratefully,
Kara Palmer
Senior Director of Administration and Program Management
Rob Kelly
Senior Director of Operations

Guest column: Shankar Ganesan

Shankar Ganesan

Shankar Ganesan

Monday, 28 March 2022
The Marketing Department is delighted to announce a new Master of Science in Digital Marketing (MSDM). This one-year residential program will offer a comprehensive, rigorous, graduate-level education to students with both non-business and business backgrounds to enter into the burgeoning field of Digital Marketing. In the coming months, we plan to announce and market this program to ensure a talented and diverse cohort of students joining us in fall 2023.
I want to recognize some of the many people who were instrumental in getting us to this point. Thanks to Dean Martijn Cremers and Ken Kelley for their enthusiastic support and sponsorship of the cutting-edge program proposal we developed. Both Joe Cherian and Kristen Collett-Schmitt helped navigate the proposal through numerous committees. And finally, special thanks to members of the Marketing Department for their valuable advice and helpful input.
The MSDM program will train students to lead in a field of business where the demand for digital marketing professionals is increasing rapidly. More firms now expect employees to be familiar with the extraction, processing, analysis and protection of data from various digital sources to assist them with digital marketing, social media engagement, data privacy and multi-channel resource allocation.
The MSDM is an analytically-oriented graduate program focusing on broader strategic issues of digital transformation as well as digital and social media marketing and strategy, online marketing decision models, digital branding, pricing, distribution, advertising, promotion decisions, customer management, machine learning and artificial intelligence applications in the digital domain. In addition, by addressing issues such as privacy and ethics, mitigating algorithmic biases, and curtailing the spread of misinformation, we will produce graduates whose actions will bear fruit for society’s common good. A vital element in this program will be an experiential learning opportunity through a new course, Applied Digital Marketing, where students will spearhead the design, deployment and optimization phases of live digital marketing campaigns.
The MSDM will also deliver on the college-level Objectives and Key Results for the Academy (OKRA) of engendering a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture. The program will continue the marketing department’s already strong track record of gender diversity, as over 65% of students across all marketing programs are female. In addition, a key priority will be creating cohorts of MSDM students with a rich diversity of backgrounds and perspectives where all students, including marginalized and underrepresented populations, are integral and meaningful members.
In many ways, the new MSDM is a natural extension of the digital marketing offerings the department has introduced in recent years. The department currently offers a Digital Marketing track for the UG Marketing majors, a Digital Marketing minor program for non-Mendoza undergraduates, and a STEM-designated Digital Marketing and Marketing Analytics major within the MBA program.
We are creating a website for this program and look forward to providing details as soon as it is ready.
Shankar Ganesan
John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C. Chairperson & Professor
Department of Marketing

Research Roundup

Martijn Cremers

Martijn Cremers

Monday, 21 March 2022
The following are highlights of recently published papers:
Sriram Somanchi, Assistant Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
"To Predict or Not to Predict: The Case of the Emergency Department" (Production and Operations Management)
We develop a novel two-stage prediction framework that improves the efficiency of hospital operations in terms of handoff from an Emergency Department (ED) to an inpatient facility. Working with a healthcare startup, we show that our method identifies subgroups of patients for whom we can send early signals to an inpatient facility about an admitting patient with limited information while still maintaining high accuracy. Our work has significant potential value to healthcare entities and contributes to a growing stream of work on how to best realize the value of healthcare analytics efforts.
John Costello, Assistant Professor of Marketing
“Why Are Donors More Generous with Time than Money? The Role of Perceived Control Over Donations on Charitable Giving“ (Journal of Consumer Research)
Although nonprofits like charities tend to prefer money, experimental and field data demonstrate that donors prefer to donate time, even when doing so does less good for the cause. In this research, we demonstrate that this preference emerges because potential donors feel more personal control over their time (vs. money) donations. We use our conceptual model to design and test several interventions that nonprofits can use to more effectively generate donations of these two resources.
Ben Matthies, Assistant Professor of Finance
“Long-run risk: Is it there?” (Journal of Finance)
This paper documents the existence of a persistent component in consumption growth. We take a novel approach using news coverage to capture investor concern about economic growth prospects. We provide evidence that consumption growth is highly predictable over long horizons – our measure explains between 23% and 38% of cumulative future consumption growth at the five-year horizon and beyond. Furthermore, we show a strong connection between this predictability and asset prices. Innovations to our measure price 51 standard portfolios in the cross-section and our one-factor model outperforms many benchmark macro- and return-based multi-factor models.
Mike Mannor, John F. O'Shaughnessy Associate Professor of Family Enterprise
“Keep Your Eye on the Ball or on the Field? Exploring the Performance Implications of Executive Strategic Attention” (Academy of Management Journal)
Should CEOs focus on a wide set of strategic issues or just a few key issues? In this paper, my co-author and I develop a new textual analysis tool that shows how CEOs improve firm performance in most cases by focusing on a smaller number of strategic issues (ie. focus, focus, focus). However, broader attention is better when firms face weak market opportunities or are very efficient in using their current resources.
Sandra Vera-Muñoz, Associate Professor of Accountancy
“Climate Risk Materiality and Firm Risk” (Review of Accounting Studies)
Using the SASB Materiality Map to proxy for market expectations of climate risk materiality, we test whether the association between disclosing climate risk in 10-Ks and firm risk (proxied by cost of equity) varies with market expectations of climate risk materiality. We find that the market rewards (penalizes) the firms for disclosing (not disclosing) climate risk in their 10-K filings. However, the penalty for nondisclosure is twice as large when the market expects climate risk to be material as compared to when the market does not expect climate risk to be material. Our results indicate that markets use expectations of climate risk materiality to infer the credibility of managers’ climate risk disclosure decisions. 
Congratulations, Sriram, John, Ben, Mike and Sandra on your publication success.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn

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