In July, I announced a plan to integrate our Marketing Department and the admissions functions of all of our graduate programs into the Marketing and Graduate Enrollment Department. The new department builds on the great strengths and previous successes of our admissions and marketing teams within their individual departments by realigning roles to better leverage the deep experience across the teams toward our admissions goals.

Led by Tim Bohling, this arrangement will enable the College to meet new challenges arising in the rapidly changing and increasingly competitive business school landscape by optimizing best practices, learning and cooperation across everyone involved in marketing and graduate enrollment, with the goal of deepening communications with prospective students across their entire enrollment journey and elevating our brand reputation.

To help guide the integration process, Tim formed an Integration Leadership Team (ILT) with key team members from across the College. The team met regularly over the summer to identify areas of synergy and to operationalize those areas. Following is an update about the overall progress of the integration as well as promotions for several individuals:

The Marketing and Graduate Enrollment Department has been organized into two teams:

• The program-aligned team, which focuses on recruitment and admissions for all of our graduate programs — MBA, Executive MBA (South Bend and Chicago), MSA, MSM, MSF, MSBA (South Bend and Chicago) and MNA (residential and executive). Mike Brach has agreed to serve as the interim director of this team. During this time, Robin Kistler, director of Executive Education non-degree programs, will assume some of Mike’s responsibilities in Executive Education degree programs. I’m grateful to both Mike and Robin for their willingness to serve in these broader capacities.
• The Center of Excellence, which is a program-agnostic team focusing on support functions such as technology, analytics, content, performance marketing and operations. We currently are conducting a search to fill the director position for this team.

In addition to Mike and Robin, I would like to recognize several individuals who were recently promoted:

Angela Sienko has been promoted to associate director of portfolio marketing. Her responsibilities include crafting and executing a data-driven digital-first integrated marketing strategy to support executive education.

Helen High has been promoted to associate director of pipeline and operations management. In this newly created position, Helen leads the team that manages the pipeline of graduate program prospects and provides application processing for all graduate programs.

Joe Sweeney was named to a new position of associate director of experiential learning, working in the recently formed Experiential Learning and Leadership Development led by Alice Obermiller. Joe will continue his excellent work with Business on the Frontlines, as well as other graduate experiential learning experiences.

Cassie Smith has been promoted into the associate director of MBA Admissions, responsible for assisting with all aspects of recruitment and enrollment of MBA students.

Two additional position changes in the near future include Christopher Ditmar moving from Nonprofit Professional Development to the new Marketing and Graduate Enrollment team to focus on MNA admissions — both executive and residential. Also, Shane McCoy will be changing his role to focus on MSF admissions.

Please join me in congratulations those named above, and in thanking the many people involved in the department integration. I appreciate the openness to change, sense of collaboration and continuing dedication to serving the College. My thanks especially to ILT members Kelli Kilpatrick, Mike Brach, Joe Sweeney, Annette Tysver, Nick Farmer, Marcus Dittmer, Cynthia Proffitt, Kara Palmer, Angela Sienko, Cassie Smith, Angela Logan and Helen High.

Tim will be providing additional updates during our upcoming Staff Town Hall on October 7. If you have questions about the new organization, please submit them by October 2 via this form.

In Notre Dame,

Martijn

I’m pleased to recognize several faculty members whose research recently has been accepted for publication:

Accountancy

Andy Imdieke, Assistant Professor

"On the relation between insider trading and going concern opinions," co-authored with Nicholas Hallman,
Kyonghee Kim, and Raynolde Perreira; Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory (accepted).

“We examine whether managers anticipate going concern opinions and time their trades to avoid sales in
the year of an issuance of a going concern opinion. We find that insider sales increase substantially two to
four years prior to the issuance of a going concern opinion and then decline sharply in the year of the
going concern opinion. Additional analysis suggests that insiders’ anticipatory trading is enabled, at least
in part, by early communication between auditors and their most important clients regarding the likelihood
of a going concern opinion. These early communications appear to reduce the likelihood of dismissal
when auditors do eventually issue going concern opinions.”

ITAO

Kaitlin Wowak, Assistant Professor

“The influence of female directors on product recall decisions," co-authored with George Ball, Corinne Post and David Ketchen; Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (accepted).

“In the medical products industry, firms with more female directors behave very different when it comes to recall decisions for products such as prescription drug or life-sustaining medical devices. Severe product problems that injure or kill consumers are recalled much faster when there are females on the board. Additionally, lower severity product defects that can be hidden from regulators and not recalled are less often hidden when there are female directors.”

Management & Organization

Craig Crossland, Rev. Basil Moreau, C.S.C., Associate Professor of Business, and chair of the Management & Organization Department and Adam Wowak, Associate Professor

"How do initial board perceptions of CEO quality correspond with subsequent CEO career performance?" co-authored with Timothy Quigley); Organization Science (accepted).

“How well are boards of directors doing their jobs? Despite its deceptive simplicity, this question has proven surprisingly difficult to answer. In this study, we examine how CEOs' initial pay packages — i.e., boards' initial assessments of their CEO's worth — predict their performance over the rest of their tenure. Our results suggest that boards are generally doing well on this front, although better in some situations than in others.”

Congrats Andy, Kaitlin, Craig and Adam!

I also want to congratulate Sandra Vera-Muñoz and the Accountancy Department for a successful Accounting Fall Research Conference, which kicked off with dinner on Sept. 12 (Thursday) and concluded with the tailgate and the New Mexico football game on Saturday, Sept. 14. Thank you to planning committee members Stephannie Larocque (chair), Erik Beardsley, John Donovan, Andy Imdieke, Zach Kowaleski and Jessie Watkins, and also great kudos to Lorie Marsh and Amanda Rink for their help with organizing the events. To echo Sandra’s earlier announcement about the conference, this event and others like it offer our colleagues and fellow researchers with a wonderful opportunity to visit our campus, gain feedback on their research and enjoy being part of our extended community.

In Notre Dame, Martijn