A team made up of Freeman MBA students Vivek Sharma, Jason Costa, Arnab Dasgupta and Anthony Elia won first place and a grand prize of $5,000 at the 15th annual Rolanette and Berdon Lawrence Finance Case Competition. This year’s competition took place at the Freeman School on April 1, 2011.
A team of Freeman School MBAs won first place and a prize of $5,000 at the National Association of Women MBAs Strategy Case Competition. The final round of the contest took place on March 23 in Newark, N.J., at the corporate headquarters of PSEG, sponsor of this year’s competition.
The Freeman School honored Albert R. Lepage, chairman of Lepage Bakeries Inc., as Tulane Distinguished Entrepreneur of the Year and Phyllis E. Cassidy, executive director and founder of Good Work Network, as Tulane Social Entrepreneur of the Year at its annual Tulane Council of Entrepreneurs Awards Gala.
From human rights violations in China to arrogance and decadence in the U.S., international news media broadcast negative stereotypes of cultures around the world on a daily basis, but according to a group of Freeman School executive MBA students, those images have little to do with reality.
When Barnes & Noble announced a nationwide marketing plan contest to help promote Nook Study, its new digital textbook reading software, a team of Tulane marketing students stepped up to the challenge, developing a set of tactics that earned them one of three finalist slots and a trip to New York to present their recommendations at Barnes & Noble headquarters.
In February, the Freeman School hosted its annual Freeman Days Networking Reception at the National World War II Museum’s Stage Door Canteen. The school’s biggest annual career event, Freeman Days brings together students, alumni and corporate recruiters for an evening of professional networking followed by a day of company presentations and information sessions on campus.
To get some help with her business, Tami Hills turned to the Freeman School and a program of the Tulane Entrepreneurs Association that matches entrepreneurs in need of assistance with MBA students eager to help. MatchNOLA was established to meet the needs of the city’s entrepreneurial community while providing hands-on experience for students interested in starting their own businesses.
Like a lot of recent graduates, Matt Wesson (BSM ’11) talked up his experience using social media when he was interviewing for jobs, but Wesson had something most other candidates lacked: Business school training. Wesson was a student in MCOM Social Media, the Freeman School’s first course dedicated to the use of social media in a business context. According to Wesson, the class helped give him an edge with recruiters when he was interviewing for a job with an Atlanta software company.
In its latest survey of America’s best business schools, U.S. News & World Report has ranked the Freeman School 40th on its list of the best graduate schools of business. The ranking, which was published March 15 on usnews. com, represents a jump of 13 spots over the Freeman School’s previous ranking — the second-biggest increase of any school on the list — and is Freeman’s highest ranking in U.S. News & World Report since 2002.
It might not be obvious from the standing-room-only crowds, but investment professionals still regard the Burkenroad Reports Investment Conference as one of the industry’s best-kept secrets. “It’s not as visited yet by a lot of institutional investors or analysts, so you have the opportunity to get a lot of face time with the company executives,” says Richard Tullis (MBA ’97), senior analyst, energy exploration and production, with Capital One Southcoast.
Jay Grinney, president and CEO of HealthSouth Corp., and Michael C. Slocum, executive vice president of commercial banking with Capital One Bank, are among the featured speakers at the 32nd annual Tulane Business Forum. This year’s program, “The Turning Point: Economic Growth Through Innovation & Collaboration,” will take place on Friday, Sept. 30, at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside.
Having a well-defined code of ethics may not prevent every crisis, but according to one of the speakers at this year’s Burkenroad Symposium on Business and Society, it helps prevent those crises that do occur from becoming worse. “Ethical leadership is one of the ways of keeping problems problems before they become catastrophes,” said Gael O’Brien, principal of the consulting firm Strategic Opportunities Group.
Geoff Parker, professor of economic sciences, contributed “Putting It Together: How to Succeed in Distributed Product Development,” co-authored with Jason Amaral and Edward G. Anderson Jr., to the winter 2011 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
The A.B. Freeman School of Business gratefully acknowledges in the following pages those individuals and corporations, foundations, and nonprofit organizations that made gifts to the school in fiscal year 2011 (July 1, 2010–June 30, 2011).
