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August 2007 Welcome to The Eller Times for Parents, sharing highlights of news, events, people, and partners of the Eller College
of Management with parents and families
Message from Pam Perry, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs
This time of year, I am always pleased when I ask students if they are looking forward to school starting and I hear, “Yes!” I take heart that the Eller College creates the kind of community in which students enjoy learning and collaborating with like-motivated friends and peers. It is going to be an outstanding year! I hope you know by now that you are both a customer of and investor in the Eller College. Our job is to ensure that the Eller experience allows our students to enter their business or public administration careers with the confidence and skills for steadily increasing responsibility and career progression. Students will also find many people within the undergraduate support team ready to serve them. We hope our students will know and feel that we care about them and have their best interests in mind as we set high standards for their Eller experience and relationships within the College. This year, we plan that your son or daughter will be academically challenged and grow personally while feeling supported by the faculty and advisors in the Undergraduate Programs team. Welcome to the Eller family!
UA Advertising Federation a Top Finisher in Regional Competition
In April, Studio 320 — the UA Advertising Federation student organization team — traveled to Colorado Springs to compete against seven schools in the 12th district finals of the American Advertising Federation National Student Advertising Competition. The team placed third overall. “This is the best the UA team has done in recent years,” says faculty advisor Ed Ackerley. “The group was fantastic.” Co-presidents Gabrielle Pavelko (BSBA Marketing ’07) and Hartley Kurtz (BA Media Arts ’07) led the team, which prepared a comprehensive advertising campaign for Coke Classic aimed at multicultural youth. “We received positive feedback from the representative from Coke,” says Pavelko. “He liked our ideas and thought we had good execution, but we took a lot of risks, and Coke takes a pretty traditional approach to its campaigns.” The Studio 320 team came up with a hand sign for Coke that mirrors the lines on the logo — “So when you make the sign, it means throw me a Coke,” Pavelko explains — as well as limited-edition colored cans that tie to personality traits. “For example, if you’re a pink, you’re fun and flirty, and if you’re a green, you’re laid back,” she says. The team wore black suits for the presentation, but accessorized with the color that matched his or her individual personality (Pavelko wore orange for spontaneity and risk-taking). They also conceptualized a Coke machine/photo booth. “I’ve participated in this competition for three years now,” says Pavelko, who graduated this month and has a summer internship with Nordstrom. “I don’t think our content and presentation could have been any stronger.” Eller Faculty Honored for Exceptional Contributions to College Teaching MissionOn April 5 at the Spring meeting of the Eller College National Board of Advisors, dean Paul Portney and the National Board of Advisors recognized three professors for undergraduate teaching excellence, and another three with course grants to create innovative learning experiences for undergraduate students. Dean's Award for Undergraduate Teaching Excellence Mike Sechrest, Management Communication Leslie Cohen and Nancy Rochman, Financial Accounting
Dean’s Undergraduate Course Grants Tamar Kugler, Management and Organizations Renee McConnell, Business Communications Bill Neumann, Management Information Systems
Save the Date
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An Eller undergraduate student talks with E&J Gallo Winery's Camille Smith, herself an Eller alum, during Career Showcase. |
We are excited to welcome our freshmen to the Eller community and want them to be successful not only academically but professionally.
Although thinking about a career or graduate school four years from now can be overwhelming, we want to pass along some tips that can help our new students as they begin their college career.
We are happy to welcome you and your student to the Eller College community. We’d like to introduce a faculty member who your students will interact with in Management Information Systems 111 (Computers and Internetworked Society.
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| MIS lecturer and director of MIS special projects William Neumann | |
Q. In your opinion, why is Management Information Systems 111 valuable to Eller students?
A. Our goal in MIS 111 is to make the students more effective businesspeople. Technology allows business to organize, analyze, and communicate information within the enterprise and with their trading partners to achieve strategic goals. As one of the first business courses students take in Eller, MIS 111 provides an important foundation of skills that will be used by every major throughout their studies at the Eller College and into their business careers.
Along with discussing these important skills, MIS 111 puts them to work. Students will use tools such as our course management system, Blackboard, and email to manage their work and communicate with their peers, and the faculty. Through their academic studies and applied activities, our goal in MIS is to help students become competent, effective, and knowledgeable business students.
Q. How long you have been working at UA?
A. I’ve been with the MIS Department at the UA since 1998. I’ve had the opportunity to teach courses in a variety of areas, including data communications and networking, enterprise systems, supply chain integration and planning, and strategic management of information systems.
Q. What concepts will be covered in MIS 111 and what types assignments will the students work on?
A. MIS 111 is structured around the three major themes relating to how information is used by a business.
Along with these tools, we’ll be using a personal response system, an innovative classroom technology that will allow students to participate in the classroom discussions. Outside the classroom, we’ll be using moderated online discussion groups to allow students to obtain assistance and contact their peers outside normal class and office hours.
A. Do you have any tips for parents to help their students be successful in this course?
Q. Perhaps the most important thing that parents can do to help their sons and daughters in this course is to discuss the value of information and information systems in their businesses. As freshman are learning in our classes, it’s a wonderful opportunity for parents to share with students their personal experiences and perspectives on technology.
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John Clayton Condon BSBA Economics '05 |
John Clayton Condon graduated from The University of Arizona with degrees in business economics and mechanical engineering, and knew he wanted to work in the energy sector abroad.
“I spent my first year at ExxonMobil in Houston, and after continually talking to my supervisor, was able to move overseas to my current position with the liquefied natural gas marketing group with ExxonMobil in Doha, Qatar,” he says. “I realized that sometimes taking something as an interim step can get you places you could not reach directly out of school.”
Now, Condon is an analyst in the business support group. “I’m mainly responsible for coordinating our planning efforts, and developing financial analyses that are used to support management decisions.”
Read about a day in the life of John Clayton Condon on BusinessWeek.com.
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Nancy Meech |
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An accounting major and a political science minor, Nancy Meech always wanted to find a way to combine her two interests.
“I planned to go into accounting, but I was also fascinated with government,” she says. After she graduated from the Eller College, she found her chance to bring those elements together.
“I got a job with the [Arizona] State Auditor General’s office,” she explains. “I was there for six years, and then in 1986, some major federal legislation was enacted that required many government entities to use independent auditors from CPA firms.”
That legislative change would tip fate in a new direction for Meech. “I never expected to open up my own accounting firm,” she says, “but things happen for a reason.”
Her boss at the time, Gary Heinfeld, came to her with a business proposal. “So we left and opened up our own accounting firm to serve government agencies,” Meech says. “It was a great opportunity in this new market. Now we’re in our 21st year and are recognized as accounting and audit experts for government entities.”
Although she didn’t originally plan on running her own company, Meech has risen to the task. “The biggest challenge is setting up an atmosphere where people want to come to work every day,” she says. “We want to make our firm one of the best places to work in America.” Heinfeld, Meech & Co. was recently notified that it is a finalist on the Best Places to Work Institute’s Best Companies to Work for in America list. “This confirms that we’re on the right track.”
Meech attributes part of the firm’s success to the development of core values. “We spent a lot of time developing them,” she says, “and when you have core values to guide you, decision making becomes very easy.”
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UA Homecoming : November 3-4
