From the Dean's Desk

Farewell to our retirees

Martijn Cremers

Martijn Cremers

Monday, 10 June 2019
In the coming weeks, six of our staff colleagues will retire from Mendoza. Combined, they represent more than 168 years of service to the University. Following are farewell comments from three of them – Sharon Clancy Orban, Paul Slaggert and Phil Corporon. Next week, we’ll feature three more – Marlene Wasikowski, Judy Truitt and Karen Casey.
Sharon Clancy Orban
Current Title/Department: Academic Advisor, Office of Undergraduate Studies
Starting Title/Department: Secretary, Department of Marketing
Started at Mendoza/ND: 1969
“For many years now, I have missed Yusaku Furuhashi, Vince Raymond and Sam Gaglio, my former bosses. Now I will add to that list Dale Nees and the Undergraduate Advising team in Mendoza 101. There are others too numerous to list. Had I not worked for and with the best, I surely could not have stayed 50 years! As goes an old Irish proverb: ‘However long the road, there comes a turning.’ As I take that turn in my road, I wish you all God's blessings on your roads as He has blessed me on mine.”
Paul Slaggert
Current Title/Department: Director, Stayer Center for Executive Education
Starting Title/Department: Director, Non-Degree Programs, Executive Education
Started at Mendoza/ND: 2001
"One of my favorite things to do is to welcome people to Notre Dame. It has been my privilege to do this for the past 18 years. I will miss having the opportunity to continue to be the one representing the University when we welcome people to campus for the first time."
Phillip Corporon
Current position: Manager, Mendoza IT Operations
Previous Positions:
Nine years at the College of Engineering, Dean’s Office, and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Senior Computer/Electronic Specialist, 1986-1995
24 Years at the Mendoza College of Business, Information Technology
1995 - 2000: Systems Engineer
2000 - 2006: Web Project Manager
2006 - 2012: Director of Web Technologies
2012 - 2019: Manager, Operations Group: 2012 - present
*January 2018 - April 2018: Interim Director, Mendoza IT
“I'm forever grateful that Notre Dame has kept me busy for over 33 years, to have worked with such extraordinary people, and to have contributed to something much greater than oneself. As a member of the University community, it's an honor to have played some small part to inspire curiosity and seek knowledge, and to help make the world a better place for now and the generations to come.”
I am most grateful for their many contributions, through which they have enriched our community with their expertise, commitment to service, faithfulness, friendship, caring and humor. They will all be missed.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn 

Thanks, Faculty Support

Martijn Cremers

Martijn Cremers

Monday, 3 June 2019
Now that the spring semester has wrapped up, I want to recognize a team that makes so much of what we do possible — Faculty Support.
Maggie Neenan-Michel, Denayia Phillips, Tami Springer, Rachel Karnafel and Amy Spangler along with six student assistants provide services ranging from copying, editing, monitoring copyrights, handling mail, scanning exams, stuffing envelopes, proofreading and many other tasks.
Here are a few “fun facts” about their operations from July through May:
  • Provided support to 160 faculty and 15 departments/centers
  • Processed 6,730 work requests
  • Made more than 3 million copies
  • Printed, compiled and mailed approximately 25,662 letters for Graduate Business Programs Admissions
  • Processed about 13,500 Scantron sheets
  • Received and distributed approximately 4,650 UPS, USPS and FedEx packages
  • Prepared and sent out about 230 UPS packages
In addition to all of that, the department earned a LEAP 2 Green Office certification from the Notre Dame Office of Sustainability in recognition of their efforts to conserve waste and recycle.
I especially want to highlight a service that some faculty may not be aware of. Tami and Rachel both provide copyediting services. They review research paper manuscripts and perform cross-reference checks to make sure citations and the bibliography are accurate. They also proofread and provide guidance in grammar and punctuation. Perhaps most importantly, they can reformat a paper to meet the specifications of a particular journal. They also can help with exams, from creating one from scratch to updating existing ones.
To request copyediting services, please direct requests via email to Tami or Rachel. Special requests are fielded by Maggie prior to assignment to ensure the project is within the scope of the department’s skills. Faculty members should include specific instructions about the services needed with the request. For help with journal formatting, they also should attach the publication’s specifications. Faculty members are also encouraged to meet with Maggie, Tami or Rachel to discuss the details or clarify instructions if the project is complex.  
The numbers above don’t suffice to describe the level of professionalism, collaboration, positive attitude and excellence that the Faculty Support team members bring to their jobs and to many other efforts at Mendoza, including coordinating daily Mass schedules and overseeing the annual Lenten Food Drive.
We are very fortunate to have such a great faculty support team at Mendoza. Please take a moment to join me in thanking the team for all they do.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn 

Poets & Quants interview

Martijn Cremers

Martijn Cremers

Monday, 29 April 2019
I recently was interviewed by Poets & Quants about my vision and priorities for the College. To explain my vision of business, informed by the Catholic mission of the University of Notre Dame and Mendoza, I described the three “Cs,” which you’ve probably heard me talk about before, namely that the purpose, priority and practice of business is to:
  • Contribute to human flourishing,
  • Cooperate in solidarity and
  • Compete with excellence, both externally in the marketplace and also internally toward the best version of oneself.
As is the case with most of Catholic social teaching applied to business, this is largely catholic with a small "c," or based on the universal human values of the inherent and infinite dignity of every person, our responsibility to focus on those with the greatest needs, and the conception of what the Church calls "integral human development," i.e., where material, social and spiritual/moral development is integrated.
The P&Q article covers a number of topics. I hope you’ll find it useful in giving you some sense of how these three Cs will guide our strategic vision for the next five years. My goal is to elevate, cooperate and integrate: To elevate by offering more challenging courses; to cooperate by partnering with other departments, colleges, centers and institutes on campus (which includes providing more opportunities for non-business majors to take some business courses); and to integrate the educational experience of our students across disciplines, such as courses that teach the history of business or more courses across all business disciplines that integrate computer science / analytics, for example.
There are three areas of focus in this vision:
  • Business analytics as a component integrated across all of the majors and programs, not offered just as a discrete course.
  • Experiential learning, which includes expanding the opportunities for our students to participate directly in internships, consulting projects and service.
  • The positive impact of business, which is what makes Mendoza distinctive. The central point of the Mendoza educational experience is that we help our students become business leaders who recognize that business can be a great force for good.
We’ve already seen a number of new programs and changes arising from this vision, such as the introduction of four new minors, the expansion of Business on the Frontlines enrollment, and the transitioning from essentially a three-year undergraduate curriculum to a four-year curriculum.
I’m thankful for the contributions of so many to our strategic vision.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn

Research kudos

Martijn Cremers

Martijn Cremers

Monday, 22 April 2019
Welcome back from the joyous Easter holiday, where we celebrate the resurrection of Our Lord and His victory over sin and death. I hope you had a peaceful and relaxing weekend with your family and friends.
As we are in the home stretch for this academic year with commencement quickly upon us, I am glad to mention some recent faculty publications in well-regarded journals:
Timothy Loughran, C.R. Smith Professor of Finance; Bill McDonald, Thomas A. and James J. Bruder Professor of Administrative Leadership (along with Priyank Gandhi, assistant finance professor at Rutgers Business School who previously was at Mendoza) "Using Annual Report Sentiment as a Proxy for Financial Distress in U.S. Banks," (Journal of Behavioral Finance).
Current predictors of bank distress miss extreme events and lean heavily on one variable, capital adequacy. Professors Gandhi, Loughran and McDonald propose using sentiment measures derived from the text of banks’ annual reports as a proxy for bank distress. They find that negative sentiment is significantly associated with distress outcomes and suggest that regulators augment current early warning systems with a text-based measure.
Adam Wowak, Management & Organization associate professor "CEO political activism: A stakeholder alignment model," (accepted for publication at Academy of Management Review).
 
Conventional wisdom holds that CEOs should avoid wading into society’s debates. Yet more and more CEOs are ignoring this dictum, taking public stances on socially contentious issues. In this paper, Professor Wowak and his co-author introduce a theory of CEO sociopolitical activism that highlights its causes and consequences, particularly as they pertain to firm stakeholders.
F. Asís Martínez-Jerez, Accountancy associate professor “Contracting with Opportunistic Partners: Theory and Application to Technology Development and Innovation,” (Management Science).
Innovative strategic partnerships embrace ambiguity. Relying on detailed contracts creates the temptation to exploit loopholes. Instead, contracts that are ambiguous and renegotiable help ensure that both parties benefit from the strategic partnership, even when circumstances change, focusing on uncertainties and threats external to the partnership.
I congratulate the authors!
In Notre Dame,
Martijn

New minors

Martijn Cremers

Martijn Cremers

Monday, 15 April 2019
Mendoza will be launching three new minors for the 2019-2020 academic year, two of which are initially open only to non-business majors. These minors provide greater access to our undergraduate courses to non-business majors – consistent with our desire to serve all Notre Dame undergraduate students – and also reflect increasing collaboration across our campus. All of the minors have met with an enthusiastic response and strong enrollment.
The three new 15-credit-hour minors, open to students graduating in the class of 2021 and subsequent years, include:
  1. Accountancy: For non-business majors who desire a significant exposure to the language of business, the minor develops the accounting analytical skills to enhance careers in a wide variety of industries. Enrollment so far is 30 rising juniors and 15 rising sophomores.
  2. Digital Marketing: Offered to non-business majors, the minor presents fundamental marketing concepts as well as courses specific to digital marketing. Enrollment so far is above 80 students.
  3. Real Estate: Administered through Mendoza’s Finance Department in collaboration with Notre Dame’s Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate, the minor is open to all Notre Dame undergraduate students (i.e., business and non-business majors), and includes courses from outside Mendoza as well. Forty-seven sophomores and 36 first-years are enrolled so far.
Finally, last August we opened the Innovation and Entrepreneurship minor to all Notre Dame undergraduate students, as a collaborative effort between Mendoza and the IDEA Center. Its current enrollment is more than 100 students.
Creating these minors has involved a significant amount of work on the part of many people, from the academic department chairs and assistant chairs to everyone in the Office of Undergraduate Studies, and of course our partners at the IDEA Center and the Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate. I’m thankful to all for their contributions.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn

Latest from the Dean