Monica Manotas ’00S (MBA)
Vice President and General Manager, Growth, Protection, and Separation Products at Thermo Fisher Scientific

By Joy Underhill

Monica Monotas

If there’s a lesson to be learned from Monica Manotas’s career, it’s that engineering and finance are a winning combination.

Manotas came to Simon after earning a BS in Industrial Engineering in Colombia. She chose Simon for its reputation in finance and analytics and because she felt her engineering studies left a gap in her understanding of finance.

Armed with her Simon degree, Manotas’s new expertise in finance/engineering equipped her to apply her analytical skills in a business setting, which proved invaluable when she started managing businesses. “Engineering teaches you how to think and solve problems in a structured way,” says Manotas. “This skill set can be applied to any job, not just operations, where engineers often end up.”
While studying at Simon, Manotas was hired by Fisher Scientific, now Thermo Fisher Scientific, as a summer associate. She notes that she got great visibility to top management at Fisher, which was a solid base for networking. “I still use my Simon network today, and I credit my network of alumni, professors, and staff with teaching me the importance of discipline in the job search process,” she says.

Manotas has been with Thermo Fisher Scientific since 1999 in various capacities, including stints in Spain and Switzerland. While there, she has moved up in diverse company sectors to obtain her current position near Boston, where she’s vice president and general manager for growth, protection, and separation products. “I’m responsible for the centrifuge, bio-safety cabinet, CO2 incubator, and orbital shaker lab equipment product lines, which have a global market,” she says.

“Thermo Fisher has been growing rapidly both organically and through acquisitions,” Manotas notes. “I’ve learned a lot about how people respond to change, how culture affects business interactions, and the importance of well-timed decisions,” she says. It gives her great pride to combine the Thermo Fisher identity with the knowledge and experience of acquired businesses to further the company mission of enabling its customer to make the world a healthier, cleaner, and safer place.

Manotas learned as much in the classroom, she says, as she did from outside interactions while at Simon. “I met some great people and loved the parties, especially the Blackjack Ball and LASOS events,” she notes. She was particularly influenced by Mike Barclay’s corporate finance expertise and considers his untimely death in a seaplane accident a tragic loss.

“Although I don’t get to read as much as I’d like, I’m currently enjoying Competitive Strategy and Competitive Advantage by Michael Porter,” she adds. “I’ve studied his five forces framework that analyzes industry competition and business strategy development, but have never taken the time until now to actually read his books.”

By Sally Parker

Abraham (Avi) Seidmann, Greg Dobson, and Vera Tilson

Operating rooms are some of the most expensive areas in acute care delivery at most hospitals. For successful operations, they rely on the timely delivery of the appropriate sterile surgical instruments for each procedure on hand—and that’s where the expense becomes a significant factor.

Preparing those instruments for even routine surgeries is a complex and time-consuming task. The hospital materials management department sterilizes, stores, and delivers to the operating room trays that contain multiple instruments packaged specifically for the way each surgeon performs an assigned procedure. After surgery, the instruments are washed, packaged back in various specialty trays, sterilized, and returned to storage. While surgical instruments are one of the largest expense inventories in the hospital in terms of number of items, cost of initial investment, and cost of ownership, they are managed by various ad hoc methods—meaning it’s hard to realize any savings.

Simon professors Greg Dobson, Vera Tilson, and Abraham (Avi) Seidmann recently tackled the problem with co-author and surgeon Anthony Froix, MD, ’12S (MS), ’13S (MBA) (not pictured). In “Configuring Surgical Instrument Trays to Reduce Costs,” published in IIE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering, they looked at how trays should be configured, from the size of the pan in which the tools are sterilized to the types and number of instrument sets needed for each procedure.

They discovered that the hospital sterile processing department (SPD) and surgeons could have competing goals. SPD managers want to limit the costs of owning, maintaining, and using trays and instruments; for example, they might prefer to provide one tray with instruments for multiple surgeons who perform identical or similar procedures. Surgeons, on the other hand, prefer trays packaged only with the instruments they might use in a surgery, since the presence of extra instruments causes staff confusion and complicates the mandatory post-surgical counting done to make sure that no instrument is left behind within a hidden body cavity.

The number of decision variables and constraints grows exponentially with the number of possible surgeon-procedure pairs. “It’s an extremely hard problem to solve. The size of the problem is astronomical,” Dobson says. Prior studies looking at that problem failed to develop useful methodologies that can tackle the above complexity faced by a real-life-surgery rooms’ problem. For this research, Tilson designed an efficient optimization algorithm that best configures how instruments should be delivered for surgical use. Initial analyses with hospital data show significant savings compared with current practice.

Obtaining data from busy surgeons remains the biggest hurdle for future work in this area, Dobson says. Still, co-author Seidmann is confident that “over time, our research results and methodology have the potential to change the way surgery rooms and instrument management systems are designed and implemented in almost all hospitals around the world.”

By Sally Parker

Heidi and Thomas Tribunella

From Quickbooks to Xero, small-business owners looking for mobile accounting apps face a head-spinning array of options—a situation rich with opportunity for small-practice CPAs.

Heidi Tribunella, clinical associate professor of accounting, and her husband, Thomas Tribunella, professor of accounting at SUNY Oswego, wrote “Twenty Questions on the Sharing Economy and Mobile Accounting Apps,” for The CPA Journal, published by the New York State Society of CPAs. In it, they urge CPAs who advise small businesses to become experts on accounting apps.

CPAs who want to stay relevant need to be aware of such apps designed for a large and growing sector of the economy—the solo shops, micro-enterprises, and sideline careers that fuel the new sharing economy, Heidi Tribunella says.

“We really need to adapt to this because the old bookkeeping services are becoming automated,” she notes. “CPAs have to adjust their practices to learn how to advise clients on what is best.”
Small-business owners are using apps on their smartphones and tablets to ring up sales, track expenses, and tackle increasingly sophisticated bookkeeping tasks. The apps, connected to functional accounting systems, boast convenience and speed.

The article explains the sharing economy and the flexible technology that has sprung up to handle mobile accounting. Among the features: quick access to electronic tax filing, invoicing, payments, customer lists, and bank accounts. Apps are available by subscription, ranging in price from free to $70 per month for each user, depending on features and transaction frequency.
The volume of apps for accounting struck Heidi Tribunella.

“I was just amazed at how much was out there to help with bookkeeping for the entrepreneur who isn’t an accountant but needs to keep track of what’s going on in his or her business,” she says.
As mobile accounting options grow, small shops need advisers who are steps ahead of them.
“CPAs need to be up to date on this stuff so they can best help their small, micro-enterprise clients,” Tribunella says.

“That’s really how CPAs compete these days. Anybody can do bookkeeping and accounting, but if they can find ways to automate in a very easy and inexpensive way, that will add value.”

By Sally Parker

Yufeng Huang

In the busy aisles of the grocery store, consumers push their carts past a daunting array of brand options in all food categories. Nowhere is this more true than in the yogurt aisle, where dozens of varieties compete for consumer attention.

The consumer must make quick decisions, so to choose which brand to buy, he or she focuses on a tiny subset of options. In “Pennies for Your Thoughts: Costly Product Consideration and Purchase Quantity Thresholds,” Simon professor Yufeng Huang and Bart Bronnenberg of Tilburg University in the Netherlands examine what this means for product managers.

Price is the main feature busy consumers use to compare products and make purchase decisions, they found. It is a way to lure customers who have a limited attention span—especially when confronted by that giant wall of yogurt options, Huang says. Other distinguishing characteristics, such as nutritional content, take more time to determine.

“It’s costly to the consumer to pay attention to anything,” Huang says. “It’s costly for me to look at Dannon or Yoplait; it’s even more costly to look at both. Usually I’ll look at just one or the other.”
Price is the feature that jumps out most quickly, leading to more price competition on the manager side, Huang says. It is here that the paper differs from typical marketing models: The authors find that a shift to a different brand is not the gradual change predicted in most models.

“If you change prices a little bit, some consumers will find it more attractive to consider your product rather than something else,” Huang says. “Because it’s mentally too costly for me to consider both, I’d rather completely shift my purchase basket from the other product to you.

“Let’s say I usually buy four units of Yoplait. Today I’m in the store and Dannon’s price is slightly lower, to a point where it triggers me to switch to Dannon. In our model, I’ll buy four units of Dannon instead of Yoplait, just because of that small change in price.”

This example is different from how quantitative marketers typically think of consumer demand: A gradual lowering of price leads to a gradual shift from one brand to another. In that case, the consumer changes to a cheaper brand one unit at a time—replacing a container of Yoplait with a Dannon of the same size, for example.

“People do use prices as cues, and that’s why companies compete harder on price than the standard models would predict,” Huang says.

Simon heightens its emphasis on experiential learning as MBA and MS students apply their skills and talents to an array of projects for organizations looking for a fresh perspective on business issues. 

By Charla Stevens Kucko

Classroom instruction is the foundation, but no graduate business education would be complete without hands-on experience in the field. Simon Business School has long provided ample experiential learning opportunities for students through a variety of student projects with both for-profit and nonprofit organizations to help solve complex business issues using the skills gained at Simon. This fall, the School is increasing its emphasis on experiential learning in an effort to meet market demand and to prepare students for real-world problem solving.

“As part of the recent strategic planning exercise, we identified communication, problem solving, and working in teams as three critical elements that employers across all industries rate as very important,” says David Tilson, associate dean for the Full-Time MBA program. “Employers look for evidence of those skills when they interview and select candidates for open positions.” Tilson has overseen nearly 100 student-consulting projects as part of his consulting practicum class. This fall, Tilson is leading a new and expanded three-unit Business Consulting project course for all Full-Time MBAs. The project experience is designed to complement the co-curricular Simon EDGE program, which is focused on the core competencies recruiters seek in job and internship candidates. The initiative also includes a revamped extracurricular Vision program for both MBA and MS students, strengthened communication and program management of project opportunities with Simon alumni and the community, and a broad list of project-based courses available to both MBA and MS students. It is being offered in conjunction with the Office of Student Engagement led by assistant dean of students Carin Cole’99S (MBA). Tilson says the projects benefit the clients as much as the students. “Clients found that the student teams really move the ball forward. Teams have helped clients discover the root cause of issues, find creative potential solutions, and define the criteria for selecting the right solution,” he explains.

Starting last winter, for the first time, student projects became a requirement of the Simon Management Communication curriculum for full-time MBA students. “The objective was to create a kind of learning laboratory for teamwork,” says Carol Shuherk, clinical assistant professor of business communication. Shuherk will collaborate with Tilson on the new student project course and students will get more unit credits and more direct instruction. “We’re not training students to be team leaders in the sense of a designated person being ‘in charge,’” Shuherk says. “We’re training them to organize, allocate, and complete work though a collaborative process in which different leadership roles are distributed as needed over the course of the project.”

One of last year’s projects that stands out for Shuherk was with the wealth management firm Alesco Advisors, based in Pittsford, NY. Student team members and 2017 MBA candidates Charlie Gao, Rinat Gusev, Fisher McKenna, Mridhula Menon, and Erika Nathan worked with Alesco staff, including senior analyst Jeremy Ho’14S (MBA), to study indexing as an investment strategy in inefficient markets. “We wanted to engage the students to do some research [primarily through identification, review and analysis of relevant literature over the past 15 years] on less liquid asset classes in which some practitioners have traditionally thought active managers outperform, such as emerging markets,” Ho explains. “The claims of many portfolio managers have been that active managers fare better, but the students found that for many of these asset classes, active management reduces returns, so their research supported our belief that we are investing client assets in an optimal way, and that indexing produces superior returns.” Ho says the collaborative effort was a great success. “I think the students were excited to work on a project that had a real impact on the firm, and it was particularly engaging for those who want to work in finance.”

Charlie Gao, the team’s point person for client contact, agrees. “Alesco uses passive investing, which means using very low fees to earn market return,” Gao says. “Our project was to collect data from the past 15 years and do a thorough analysis on whether the active investing firms are actually earning excess returns compared to the market.” The project mirrors what Gao plans to do in the future, giving him firsthand experience in the industry he wants to pursue. “Alesco is fighting a war against Wall Street through passive investing, and they’re winning,” Gao says. “This project was a huge supplement to my classroom knowledge.”

Project LeanNation's acting chief operating officer and creator of opportunities Brent DeRouen coaches clients

Another highly successful student project that Shuherk cited as a great example of the benefits of experiential learning is Project LeanNation (PLN), a nutrition education company that sources, produces, and retails prepared meal plans for people seeking to lose weight, build lean muscle mass, or take a more whole-food, natural approach to nutrition. With locations in Rochester, Buffalo, and Providence, expansion plans are underway in the Charlotte, NC, area. Two Simon student teams worked with PLN founder Tim Dougherty and his staff on a competitive business analysis with exploration of growth strategies and a franchising strategy. While both projects were successful, the competitive business analysis created by Simon 2017 MBA candidates Allen Bediako, David Berg, Kathryn Flaschner, Adithya Goudar, and Audrey Tang helped identify the corporate culture and how it affects the PLN user community. “The team did a lot of research on our current client experience, our workspace, and how it could be flexible and more conducive to a community-based business,” Dougherty says. “As a result, we reorganized our space, making it more friendly to our community, and we invested in building an online platform that’s social community driven.”

Students say they were inspired by Dougherty’s passion for his clients. “It was a phenomenal opportunity,” Flaschner says. “We spent a lot of time there, and Tim gave us full freedom to interact with clients.” The team studied the client experience, the brand, and the retail space. “The goal is to be very flexible depending on the client needs, and Tim and his team are really there to work with you,” she notes. “I think that’s one of the strengths of Project Lean Nation.”

The biggest challenge facing the company was client retention. Retention is what it takes to achieve long-term results, PLN’s core goal, so the students focused on client preferences. “We asked them what they enjoyed about the program, and what needed to improve, and we also looked at competitors to get a sense of what they offered,” Bediako explains. Students examined everything from food production and distribution to pricing and cost. “Tim wanted to increase customer retention time from 6 to 12 weeks,” he says. “We recommended hiring a Food Everything Officer to focus on food production and operations to give Tim more time to focus on the customer experience as well as expansion into other markets.”

The result? The students provided fresh insight and perspective on how the younger consumer wants to do business. “We found that their buying patterns and the way they want to be communicated with and how they want to communicate with us as a brand are different,” Dougherty says. “So if we want to be an evolving company that’s going to stand the test of time, having insight from young users offers us a ton of value.”

Adding value is something professor Richard Couch believes the students are doing for companies that need a new perspective. Couch served as the advisor for more than 20 MBA student projects last year in conjunction with Shuherk, who taught the communication aspect of the MGC course, and each team was assigned a second-year MBA team coach. One of the most meaningful projects for Couch was with the Alzheimer’s Association. “A team of MS students wanted to work on a project, so I assigned them to the association,” he says. “There are 15 million people with Alzheimer’s, and it’s a terribly devastating disease that can go on for many years.” Couch says the cost of care for Alzheimer’s patients and their families is extremely expensive, and most families are hesitant to place their loved ones in specialized care facilities. The topic hits close to home for Couch. One of his late parents had dementia and the other had Alzheimer’s. “The issue for the Alzheimer’s Association is lack of awareness of the services they offer for patients’ families due to limited funds,” Couch says.

“The project was a tremendous learning experience for the students, particularly those from countries where the customs are totally different and elder care happens entirely at home.” With limited budget and resources for marketing and communications efforts, the association was looking for creative ways to get the word out. MS students Siegfried Eggert, Anita Valleria Sangaka, Pooja Singh, and Lu Weiquing created a marketing plan for a one-year period that was aimed at reaching people in need of services provided by the association. The team gathered data on demographic distribution in the nine counties the regional chapter covers, examined available marketing channels, compared them in terms of cost and reach, and came up with non-traditional marketing ideas. “The project was beneficial to us on multiple levels,” Eggert says. “We were engaged in a real-world consulting project, made the most of a limited budget through effective planning, improved our ability to work and coordinate tasks as a team, and learned how to navigate an uncertain situation and solve the issue in the most efficient way. Most of all, we were able to act in a professional setting and contribute to a worthwhile cause.”

The value for the Alzheimer’s Association was substantial as well. “Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States today and the only one in the top 10 with no cure, prevention, or treatment,” says Teresa Galbier, president and CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association, Rochester & Finger Lakes Chapter. “It is critical that we get the word out about how important an early and accurate diagnosis is.” The Alzheimer’s Association offers five core services to assist those with Alzheimer’s and their families to make informed decisions about their day-to-day care and future planning. “With the information that was collected by the students, we are now better equipped to understand our major media markets and maximize our ability to spread the word,” Galbier notes.
Student projects are a significant part of a Simon MS in Business Analytics. In the capstone course, Strategy and Business Systems Consulting Practicum, led by professor Chris Dunstan’81S (MBA), students have to solve a real business problem using a real database, and they have to create a value proposition framed in terms of the industry environment to come up with a recommendation that creates value.

One such project involved hospital readmissions and the government’s curtailing of reimbursements for visits within 30 days. “If you think of the number of independent variables, it’s staggering,” Dunstan says. “There is one for every ailment that can be classified.” So the students are using principal component analysis to find the most meaningful predictors among those categories and adding other variables such as age. The projects involve poring over research and then finding partners, databases, and even live data from previous clients. “For the first time in history, we have the confluence of huge data sets, cheap and vast computational power, and algorithms that can serve as a basis for mining data,” Dunstan says. “It’s not just the amount of data that’s there, it’s the powerful tools that are now at our fingertips to make sense out of it. I’ve helped build three courses in the Business Analytics curriculum and it’s been a lot of fun.”

In addition to curricular changes to enhance experiential learning, the School is expanding international immersion opportunities for full-time students. Two academic courses and one international trip to Switzerland, Israel, or Asia are available to MBA students during winter and spring breaks. An expanded list of several new locations for international immersion opportunities during breaks is under development.

For information on how your company or organization can enlist Simon talent, contact David Tilson at david.tilson@simon.rochester.edu or Richard Couch at (925) 980-7553 or richard.couch@simon.rochester.edu.

By Jim Ver Steeg

Left to right: Assistant Dean Amy Bruinooge, Dean Andrew Ainslie, and Director of Operations AJ Warner outside the Office of Student Engagement

Open work spaces and a more modern look are transforming the Simon experience and helping prepare students for success in today’s collaborative work environments.

By Jim Ver Steeg 

This past May, Simon Business School embarked on several important upgrades that are designed to enhance the student experience, create more space for collaborative learning, and reflect a modern business environment. The first to be updated in the summer of 2016 was the technology and audio/visual equipment in Gleason Hall, Rooms 118/119. This summer, the Eisenberg Rotunda and the newly formed Office of Student Engagement (OSE) have seen some of the most significant upgrades the School has made in decades.

“Understanding that classrooms probably have the most impact in improving student engagement, it only made sense to start with those,” says assistant dean of academic and financial operations Amy Bruinooge. “We’re continuing those updates and have a full remodel planned for room 207 in Schlegel Hall.”

But it is where students gather to meet and interact outside of class that has seen some of the most dramatic improvements. “One of the greatest opportunities for the School is improving the quality of the Simon experience,” says Bruinooge. “That’s why we wanted to create a space for the OSE that will be the center of student interaction. Having it across from the spiral staircase and the Rotunda seems sort of natural. It all helps create a bright, inviting space that we think will really energize the environment.” Bruinooge notes that the Rotunda’s facelift included fresh paint, new window treatments, and movable furniture so students can modify the space to fit their needs.

The transformed space in Schlegel Hall includes a bright new lobby, a remodeled Eisenberg Rotunda, and a modern history of Simon wall that highlights the School's milestones

Recent graduate Mohammad (Moe) Shaikh’16S (MBA), now a consultant at Boston Consulting Group, thinks the new space reflects an important element of the Simon experience. “One of the most valuable characteristics of Simon is the tight-knit community,” he says. “The Office of Student Engagement is the cornerstone of community. It was exciting to get a sneak peek at the beautiful new space and to see how what I experienced at Simon will be passed on to the next generation of students.”
According to Dean Andrew Ainslie, the transformations of the classrooms, the Rotunda, and the OSE comprise the first phase of the improvements identified in the School’s strategic plan. “In the next two years, we will also transform two other areas critical to student success: the Admissions Office and the Career Management Center,” Ainslie says. “We’ve also just completed a new collaborative workspace on the fourth floor of Schlegel Hall. It replicates the interactive spaces found in corporate workplaces such as Google and Amazon. Students are really enjoying the open space with movable furniture. They can use and make the space what they want to make it.”

A Simon student takes advantage of the new OSE workspace

Simon’s director of operations, AJ Warner, has been directly involved with transforming the student spaces. She explains how the new OSE space has invigorated Schlegel Hall. “Room 215 used to be a classroom and was eventually turned into a storage room,” she says. “They tore down the walls between that room and Schlegel 201 to double the space of what used to be the Student Services office. The new space has a bright, collaborative meeting area in the center with glass walls that bring in all the light from the Rotunda. It’s a lot more open and modern.” Warner notes that the Rotunda will have automatic blinds that rise and lower to replace the old drapes and curtains.

Together, the space transformations seek to inspire more collaboration and offer space that studentswill appreciate. However, the new space and exciting building updates don’t mean the loss of Simon’s traditions. “We know our core identity is based on economics and analytics,” Bruinooge says. “That’s not going to change. What is going to change is an even more collaborative spirit with spaces custom made to foster experiential learning.”

Celebrating an Exceptional Career

By Jim Ver Steeg

Ronald W. Hansen

Simon Business School senior associate dean for program development Ronald W. Hansen has announced his retirement, effective September 30. A longtime administrator and faculty member, Hansen had an indirect association with the School in 1969, when he served as a consultant on the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Forces. The commission’s study team, which was led by former Simon dean William Meckling, was charged with studying the feasibility of eliminating the US military draft. The Commission had as its members former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, legendary economist Milton Friedman, and former University of Rochester president W. Allen Wallis.

In 1971, Hansen joined the Simon faculty as an assistant professor at what was formerly known as the University of Rochester’s Graduate School of Management, a position he would hold until 1977. That year, Hansen was named the associate director of the Center for Research in Government Policy, led by his mentor Karl Brunner. The center would later be named the Bradley Policy Research Center.

Hansen earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago, where he also received his master’s degree. His undergraduate work was at Northwestern University, graduating in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics.

Hansen would leave Simon in 1986 to become associate professor, Merrell Dow Professorship, in the College of Pharmacy at The Ohio State University. Research and development in the pharmaceutical industry would become the focus of Hansen’s scholarly work. He authored and co-authored three highly cited papers, which appeared in the Journal of Health Economics. He helped to establish and collaborated on research with the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, and was on the editorial board of the Journal of Research in Pharmaceutical Economics. Hansen also wrote several academic book chapters that concerned government regulation of the pharmaceutical industry.

Hansen returned to Simon Business School in 1988 as the associate dean for academic affairs, later retitled senior associate dean for faculty and research. In 2009, Hansen became the senior associate dean for program development and the William H. Meckling Professor of Business Administration; he was also named director of the Bradley Policy Research Center, which he led until 2014. During his years at Simon, Hansen led the development of new programs, including the undergraduate business program and the Technical Entrepreneurship and Management (TEAM) MS program. He was also responsible for international program development, including European Executive MBA programs and programs with KAIST and the University of Chile. Hansen frequently hosted international students at his home, and each year from his collection of 100 official flags, he would fly the colors of the countries with students in attendance.

In 2011, former Simon dean Mark Zupan established the Elizabeth S. Hansen Award in honor of Hansen’s late wife, a 1974 graduate of the Simon Business School Master of Science program. The award is presented each year at commencement to the graduating student who has the highest grade point average in the MS program.

“Ron has been an invaluable resource in my first two years at Simon,” says Dean Andrew Ainslie. “His wealth of institutional knowledge has made so many initiatives possible, particularly the expansion of the undergraduate program. All of Simon owes Ron Hansen a debt of gratitude for his decades of service.”

Hansen already has several plans for retirement, including serving in leadership positions in his church and the regional Presbytery. “Right now I’m serving on four separate committees,” he says. “With that, I have assignments to a mission group and the Korean church. There’s also a chance that by next year, I’ll be chairing the board of trustees.” In his spare time, Hansen likes to garden and spend time with his two sons and grandchildren; he also plans to continue his involvement and research in pharmaceutical economics and do some traveling, but not nearly as much as he has been doing for the School. “I’ve been averaging between 50,000 and 80,000 miles per year,” Hansen notes. “I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing a lot less than that.”

Our heartfelt congratulations to senior associate dean Ron Hansen. We thank you for a career that spanned the terms of six deans, touched the lives of thousands of students and alumni, and contributed to the academic excellence of the Simon Business School.

Celebrating Commencement

Nearly 650 students received graduate degrees during Commencement ceremonies on June 5. University president, CEO, and G. Robert Witmer Jr. University Professor Joel Seligman presided, and Dean Andrew Ainslie delivered an address to the graduates.

Maggie Wilderotter, former CEO and executive chair of Frontier Communications, received an honorary doctor of laws degree. Alan Zekelman’87S (MS), director of JMC Steel Group, also received an honorary doctor of laws degree. Zekelman leads JMC Steel Group, the largest independent tubular products manufacturer in North America. Zekelman has served on the School’s Executive Advisory Committee, National Council, and Simon Advisory Council, and was recently named a University trustee. Laurence H. Bloch ’75, P’13S, a private investor and the former chair of TransWestern Publishing Company, was awarded the Charles Force Hutchison and Marjorie Smith Hutchison Medal for his extraordinary record of achievement and service. He is a University trustee and Executive Committee member. In 2009, the Blochs were instrumental in creating the George Eastman statue to recognize Eastman’s philanthropic legacy and the launch of the University’s giving society in his honor.

Pramit Jhaveri ’87S (MBA) delivered the Commencement address and became the first alumnus from India to receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award. Jhaveri is the CEO of Citi India, responsible for all Citi businesses throughout the country, comprising nearly 14,000 employees and 2.5 million customers. Jhaveri is a member of the George Eastman Circle and is a champion for Simon student recruitment. In 2015, he established a scholarship for Indian students seeking a Simon degree.

Simon Games Winners

Congratulations to 2016 Simon Games winners. First place in the Part-Time category: Carter Middleton, Greater Rochester Enterprise; second place: Patrick Johnson, Enterprise Rent-A-Car; third place: David Kish, RoofMarketplace.com; and fourth place: Nick Garofoli, The Hartford Financial Services Group. In the Executive MBA category, first place: Sudhakar Sivaraj, SPX Flow Lightnin; second place: Benjamin Papp, ConServe-ARM; third place: Geoff Lawrence, Gorbel Inc.; and fourth place: Stacey Saracene, Causewave Community Partners (formerly Ad Council of Rochester).

Simon Among Top Schools for Placement, MS in Finance

Simon Business School is ranked among the top business schools for job placement and for its Master in Finance program.

U.S. News & World Report ranked Simon among the top MBA programs that lead to jobs. The April 5 U.S. News Short List focused on specific data points to help prospective students find the best graduate programs. Recognized for its 96 percent placement rate three months after graduation, Simon was listed among the top MBA programs in the country for its ability to place high-quality candidates in a range of business lines and industries.

The Financial Times of London counted Simon among the top five business schools in the United States for its MS in Finance program for the second year running. Simon is ranked 5th in the United States in this year’s survey and 39th among the top 55 MS in Finance programs in the world.

Simon Business School graduates are employed by the world’s premier companies in the financial services sector at such firms as Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan Chase & Co., among many others. Finance is the School’s leading specialized master’s program, with 69.8 percent of master’s graduates going on to work in finance and accounting.

Zimmerman Honored with Accounting Educator Award

Jerold Zimmerman, professor emeritus, is a co-recipient of the American Accounting Association (AAA) PricewaterhouseCoopers Foundation 2016 Outstanding Accounting Educator Award.
Zimmerman, who was recognized for his impact on the field of accounting through his groundbreaking research and teaching, has received all of the four major AAA awards for his accounting research and teaching.

Prior awards include: the 2004 AAA Seminal Contribution to Accounting Literature Award, the 1979 and 1980 AICPA Notable Contribution Award, and the 1978 American Accounting Association Competitive Manuscript Award. Zimmerman’s textbooks include Accounting for Decision Making and Control, 9th ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2017), Managerial Economics and Organizational Architecture, 6th ed. with James A. Brickley and Clifford W. Smith Jr. (McGraw-Hill, 2016), and Management Accounting in a Dynamic Environment, with Cheryl McWatters (Routledge, 2016).

A founding editor of the Journal of Accounting and Economics, he earned a PhD in Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley, after completing undergraduate studies at the University of Colorado.

Inaugural Gitner Prize Presented at Commencement

Gerald Gitner’68S (MBA) and his wife, Deanne, are creating the Gerald and Deanne Gitner Prize for Teaching Excellence, which honors a junior faculty member for teaching and research excellence and overall impact on the School and the University. The award is presented during Commencement ceremonies.

The inaugural Gitner Prize went to professor Mitch Lovett for his exemplary teaching and research.
A retired airline industry CEO, Gitner received his Simon MBA in May 2015, 47 years after attending the School. Gitner went on to become the youngest vice president in Trans World Airlines (TWA) history, later rising to CEO, and held senior-level roles at Texas International Airlines, Pan American World Airways, and Texas Air Corp. Gitner also co-founded People Express Airlines.
“Our deepest gratitude to the Gitners,” said Dean Andrew Ainslie. “It is an honor to have the Gitner Prize at Simon.”

Prominent Executives Speak at Simon

Jim Stengel

In April, prominent executives visited the Simon Business School to deliver lectures through the Sands Lecture Series, the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship, the Frederick Kalmbach Lecture Series, and the Max Farash Lecture Series.

Jim Stengel, former global marketing officer at Procter & Gamble and author of Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies, spoke at Simon on April 6 as part of the annual Sands Lecture Series. Stengel explored the characteristics of top leaders and inspired students to think about leadership standards and activities, and stimulated thinking on ideals and growth.

Jeff Hoffman, cofounder of Priceline.com, uBid.com, and CTI, and founder of ColorJar, presented his talk, “Keys to Success for Entrepreneurs,” on April 7. The lecture was hosted by the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship. Hoffman gave an interesting and informative glimpse into the inner workings of the online travel giant, as well as his other ventures.

Leonard Schutzman, former PepsiCo senior vice president and executive professor, spoke to students on April 12, about his new book, Fast Track Up the Corporate Ladder: The 8-Step Guide to Turbo Charge Your Career. While researching the book, Schutzman spent time with C-level executives of leading companies and asked them what it takes to rise to the C-suite. They all agreed the most important factor in being a leader is multidiscipline cross-functional thinking—the ability to look at an issue from all perspectives.

Roger W. Ferguson Jr.

Roger W. Ferguson Jr., president and CEO of TIAA, delivered a Kalmbach Executive Lecture on April 25. As the former vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Ferguson was the only Fed governor in Washington, DC on 9/11. He served during the Obama administration on the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, and co-chaired the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Long-Run Macroeconomic Effects of the Aging US Population.

Maria Pereira, author and former managing director of Brown Brothers Harriman and Co., shared her perspective during a Farash Executive Series Lecture and panel discussion; the topic was “A Banker Reflects on Money, Love, and Virtue.” Joining the panel were professors Clifford W. SmithJr., Louise and Henry Epstein Professor of Business Administration and professor of finance and economics; David Primo, Ani and Mark Gabrellian Professor and associate professor of political science and business administration; and Ed Deci, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester.

Leading Research Conferences Held at Simon Business School

Simon Business School hosted two prestigious academic conferences this past spring, bringing prominent scholars to campus from around the globe.

Dean Ainslie welcomes attendees of the Strategy and Business Environment Conference on April 29

The 16th annual Strategy and the Business Environment Conference was held at Simon Business School on April 29 and 30. The global conference, organized by professors David Primo and Mark Zupan, was sponsored by the Simon Business School, the Bradley Policy Research Center, the Department of Political Science, the W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy, and the Politics and Markets Project with additional support from Christopher Dunstan’81S (MBA) and Martin Stern’80S (MBA). Academics from business schools around the world presented their research on public policy topics. Stern, partner at Womble Carlyle, delivered the keynote address. Daniel Blake, a member of the strategy department faculty at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain, presented his paper, “How Does Political Risk Affect Firm Performance? Evidence from Telecommunications License Cancellations in India,” with co-author Srividya Jandhyala of ESSEC Business School. “If you’re doing research like I do that’s interdisciplinary, it’s a fairly easy opportunity to get all these different perspectives in the same room,” Blake said.

The semi-annual Carnegie-Rochester-New York University Conference on Public Policy welcomed prominent scholars to the Rochester campus on April 8 and 9. The theme was “Globalization in the Aftermath of the Crisis.” The Carnegie-Rochester Conference on Public Policy was initiated in the early 1970s through the efforts of the Bradley Policy Research Center at the Simon Business School and the Center for the Study of Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Under the leadership of the late Karl Brunner (University of Rochester) and Allan Meltzer (Carnegie Mellon University), the conference became a semi-annual event initially occurring in April in Rochester and November in Pittsburgh. The objectives of the conferences are to stimulate policy relevance and empirical research in economic science, to encourage the exchange of scientific ideas among analysts, and to generate a greater understanding by academic economists of practitioners’ environments.

Simon Partners with City Schools

Simon hosted the 4th Annual Minority Male Leadership Association Leadership Symposium, “A Tale of 2 Cities: Being Who I Want to Be (The Blueprint to Success).” The event helps combat the Rochester City School District low minority male graduation rate through educational and motivational activities. Students attended self-motivation, goal setting, and other workshops. Former NFL player Roland Williams, founder of local nonprofit Champion Academy, delivered an inspiring keynote.

New Faculty Hires

Nine expert educators join Simon Business School’s world-class faculty.

Allyn Evans, senior lecturer of communications, taught public speaking full time at Oklahoma State University and at Northern Oklahoma College as an adjunct faculty member. She also taught marketing, business law, and career development at several colleges, including Texas Tech University. Evans has extensive communications experience, having worked with organizations including Toastmasters International, Lubbock (Tex.) Area Coalition for Literacy, Women’s Protective Services Inc., and Court Appointed Special Advocates Inc. (CASA). Evans holds a BA in Psychology with a minor in business from the University of Mississippi and an MBA with a concentration in Marketing from Texas Tech.

Becky Landy, senior lecturer of communications, has been a visiting lecturer at SUNY Geneseo and an adjunct lecturer at Hilbert College, where she taught marketing and business management, as well as senior capstone classes. She is a principal at MJ Associates in Orchard Park, NY, a consultancy that helps organizations analyze, create, and execute business strategies, marketing plans, and project management, and supports economic development initiatives. Landy is also a partner at Tell Design, providing idea generation, positioning, and marketing and market research support to the toy-invention industry. Previously, she was COO at UB Business Alliance and executive director for the Center for Industrial Effectiveness at the University of Buffalo. She holds a BA in English from Colgate University and an MBA in Marketing from Clarkson University.

Young Sun Lee, clinical assistant professor, communications, recently earned a PhD in Communication from Florida State University. Her dissertation topic was “How to Maximize Self-Efficacy in Health Messages: Exploring the Relationship Among Responses to Messages and Behavior-Specific Cognitions Using Self-Affirmation Theory.” Lee earned an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication and a BA in Political Science at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea. She served as a senior marketing consultant and executive researcher for The Nielsen Company in Seoul, and has taught a variety of communication courses at Florida State.

Thom Shaw, clinical assistant professor of business communications and leadership, joins Simon with more than twenty years’ experience as a communications consultant and leadership coach with Kenning Associates and McKinsey & Company. Shaw advises clients on using communications to support and lead change efforts; strengthening performance of executives and change leaders; building high-performance teams; defining targeted messages; and synthesizing and presenting insights from extensive analysis. He prepares rising leaders for new responsibilities through a mix of technical and adaptive growth, building on theories of meaning-making and adult development. Shaw received a BA in English from Yale University, an MA in English and American Literature from the University of Chicago, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College.

Yaron Shaposhnik is joining as assistant professor, operations management. He received his PhD in Operations Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in June 2016. His research interests are in stochastic dynamic optimization with learning, data analytics, and applications of operations research, primarily in health care. Shaposhnik earned a BS in Information Systems Engineering and an MS in Industrial Engineering from Technion–Israel Institute of Technology.
Giulio Trigilia, assistant professor of finance, received his PhD in Economics from Warwick University in June 2016. He obtained a Master in Economics from Collegio Carlo Alberto in 2010, and a Master in International Relations from the University of Bologna in 2009. His scholarly interests are in financial economics and information economics, with a focus on the contractual and institutional design problems facing financial markets under asymmetric information. He is also interested in the history of finance.

Kent Walker, senior lecturer of communications, has taught writing courses in the English department at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada, and was an English professor at Niagara College, St. Catharines. He also served as a professor and program coordinator in the English department at Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto. His expertise includes communications and presentation skills, collaboration, networking, team building, technology-based instruction, and program and course design and development. Walker earned a BA in English Language and Literature and an MA in English at the University of Western Ontario, and a PhD in English at York University in Toronto.

Jason Xiao, assistant professor of accounting, earned his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School in 2016. His research interests are in corporate governance, executive compensation and incentives, and disclosure. Xiao holds an MA in Statistics from Wharton, and a BS in Business Administration with a double major in Accounting and Economics from The Ohio State University.
Chenyu Yang, assistant professor of economics and management, received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2016. Yang’s fields of interest are industrial organization, innovation, and applied econometrics. His research focuses on how market structures affect innovation, product positioning, pricing, and welfare. Yang also earned a BA in Mathematics from Gustavus Adolphus College.

Got Mock?

Will Reynolds Inspires at Invictus Games

Will Reynolds’10S (MBA) was featured in global media coverage of the 2016 Invictus Games, held May 8–12 in Orlando, Fla.—the first time the competition took place in the US. An injured Iraq War veteran, Reynolds served as captain of the US Invictus Games team, winning two gold medals and two silver medals in track and field events. President Obama introduced Reynolds at his Wounded Warrior Ride kickoff speech.

Evans and Susanna Lam Receive Museum Award

Evans Y. Lam’83, ’84S (MBA) and his wife, Susanna, were awarded the Judge Ronald S. W. Lew Visionary Award by the Chinese American Museum as history makers for their contribution to the Chinese American community and their efforts in philanthropy. The award was presented at the museum’s 20th annual Historymakers Awards gala in September.

As generous supporters of the University of Rochester and the Simon Business School, the Lams committed $1 million to the River Campus last year to establish the Evans and Susanna Lam Library Revitalization Fund. The fund supports the modernization of the patron services area in Rush Rhees Library, which is named Evans Lam Square. Lam worked at the Rush Rhees circulation desk as an undergraduate student.

The Lams also endowed the Susanna and Evans Y. Lam Professorship in 2012, held by Simon faculty member Joanna S. Wu, and have supported many other University-wide faculty and student initiatives. A University of Rochester trustee and Simon National Council and Simon Advisory Council member, Evans Lam is managing director, wealth management and senior portfolio manager at UBS Financial Services Inc. in Pasadena, Calif. The Lams are charter members of the George Eastman Circle, the University’s leadership giving society.

First Wealth Management Masters Class Graduates

The first graduating class of UBS global wealth managers in the Rochester-Bern Master in Wealth Management program in collaboration with UBS AG received dual degrees in Zurich. Participants earned an MS in Wealth Management from the University of Rochester and a Master of Advanced Studies in Finance from the Universität Bern.

Faculty Promotions and Appointments

Jeanine Miklos-Thal, associate professor of economics and of marketing, recently earned tenure. Miklos-Thal is a micro-economist with research interests in industrial organization, antitrust policy, marketing, and personnel economics. Her papers have appeared in leading economics and management journals including the Journal of the European Economic Association, the RAND Journal of Economics, the Economic Journal, the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Games and Economic Behavior, the International Journal of Industrial Organization, the Journal of Marketing Research, and Quantitative Marketing and Economics. She serves as an associate editor for the European Economic Review and Management Science. Miklos-Thal teaches classes in pricing and game theory, and holds an MA in Economics from Maastricht University and a PhD in Economics from the Toulouse School of Economics.

Robert Novy-Marx, the Lori and Alan S. Zekelman Professor of Business Administration, has beenJournal of Financial Economics, the Financial Analysts Journal, the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and the Journal of Finance, among other publications. His accolades include the 2012 Whitebox Advisors Selected Research Prize (second place); the Fama-DFA Prize for the best capital markets/asset pricing paper in the Journal of Financial Economics in 2012 and 2013; the 2012 AQR Insight Award Distinguished Paper Prize; the 2011 Smith-Breeden Prize for the best capital markets paper in the Journal of Finance; the 2011 Spangler IQAM Prize for the best paper in the Review of Finance; the 2010 Mill’s Prize for the best paper in real estate economics; the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association Dissertation Award in 2005, and the Western Finance Association’s Trefftz Award in 2004 for “An Equilibrium Model of Investment Under Uncertainty.” His “Hot and Cold Markets” paper won the 2010 Mill’s Prize for the best paper in real estate economics. A member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, he taught at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago before coming to Simon Business School in 2010. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
appointed as the Lori and Alan S. Zekelman Distinguished Professor of Business Administration. The Board of Trustees voted to rename the professorship last spring. Novy-Marx’s research focuses primarily on asset pricing, both theoretical and empirical, though he also has interest in industrial organization, public finance, and real estate. His work has been published in the

Vera Tilson, associate professor of operations management, was recently granted tenure. Tilson’s research interests include operational issues in the health care industry, project management under uncertainty, the effects of new technologies on supply chain contracts, and production and pricing decision challenges faced by producers of durable goods selling to strategic consumers. Her interest in a variety of applications led her to use diverse methodologies in her research. Tilson’s current emphasis is health care operations, in which she focuses on the construction of models that explore trade- offs in the operations problems in this setting and the structure of good solutions, as well as the creation of algorithms designed to tackle these problems. She has published articles in Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Operations Research, Production and Operations Management Journal, Decision Support Systems, and the European Journal of Operations Research, among others. Tilson was a co-recipient of the Superior MBA teaching award and the 2016 G. Graydon Curtis ’58 and Jane W. Curtis Award for Nontenured Faculty Teaching Excellence, and was a winner of the 2015 INFORMS Teaching Case Competition. She earned an SB in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MS in Applied Mathematics from the Colorado School of Mines, and a PhD in Operations Management from Case Western Reserve University.

Tilson Receives Teaching Award

Vera Tilson received this year’s G. Graydon ’58 and Jane W. Curtis Award for Nontenured Faculty Teaching Excellence, established in honor of Professor Ralph Helmkamp’11. Tilson’s honors include twice being on the Simon teaching honor roll, a co-recipient of the Superior MBA teaching award, and the 2015 INFORMS Teaching Case Competition.

Zupan Named Alfred University President

Mark Zupan has been appointed the 14th president of Alfred University. He succeeds Charles Edmondson. “Mark Zupan has provided outstanding leadership to the University, first as dean of Simon Business School and in his latest role leading the Bradley Policy Center,” said University of Rochester president and CEO Joel Seligman. “I’m delighted that Mark has been selected to lead Alfred University, where he will build upon the university’s long-standing commitment to academic excellence. We wish him much success in this new endeavor.”

Simon Team Competes for Hult Prize

Full-Time MBA Class of 2016 graduates Mohammad Shaikh, Andre Segovia, Gregory Sheldon, Mikayla Hart competed in the regional finals for the prestigious Hult Prize in London in March. Driven by their academic experience, the team developed an innovative concept to address critical social issues of urban poverty and food insecurity. Nia Nest leverages mobile technology, banking, community organizations, and food distribution models to create a sustainable impact in Pakistan.
and

Ceremony and Ambulance Dedication Honor Fallen 9/11 Alum

The University of Rochester community gathered in May for an ambulance dedication and Zhe (Zack) Zeng’95, ’98S (MBA). Zeng, who was an emergency medical technician for Brighton Volunteer Ambulance (BVA) while he was a student, died helping the injured at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Zeng was working at the nearby Bank of New York in lower Manhattan. When his building was evacuated, Zack ran toward the scene with as many emergency supplies as he could carry. He was last seen assisting a woman on a stretcher on the sidewalk outside the South Tower. Paul Burgett, vice president and senior advisor to the president and University dean (pictured) knew Zeng as an undergraduate student and served as emcee. Dean Andrew Ainslie and provost and senior vice president for research Robert Clark made their remarks. Members of Brighton Volunteer Ambulance were on hand to honor Zeng and give tours of the ambulance dedicated in his memory. President, CEO and G. Robert Witmer Jr. University Professor Joel Seligman welcomed Zeng’s mother, Jiao Xian Cen, his two aunts, and a cousin to the campus to see the Gleason Hall fourth-floor patio dedicated in memory of Zeng and Jeffrey R. Smith’88S (MBA), the two Simon Business School alumni lost on 9/11.

Cardot Named to New Post

Richard (Rick) Cardot’07S (MBA) has been named the director of the Barry Florescue Undergraduate Business program, a joint effort between Simon Business School and the University of Rochester. Under Cardot’s leadership, the University will expand its Bachelor of Science in Business and serve a growing pool of students who are interested in business careers. Since 2011, Cardot was the director of the Center for Pricing, and taught pricing strategy to both Simon and undergraduate students. Ron Carlson, previously with the Career Management Center, will now direct the Center for Pricing.

Ain Competition Winners

First place in the Mark Ain Business Model Competition went to 0Limits, for its Everywhere Pen™, a device-neutral smartpen. MS TEAM students Facundo Ciancio, Ian Lin, Alvise Pallaro, and David Thomas won $10,000 and space in the UR Student Incubator. Second place went to StimSense for a device that measures anesthesia depth. Biomedical engineering and TEAM students Martin Gitomer, Alin Ponici, Shwe Pyie, and Jia Shi won $2,500. TEAM student Aaron Allen won third place for Endogenesis, a device for real-time cancer detection. Judges were: Mark S. Ain’67S (MBA), Kronos Inc.; Lance Drummond ’85S (MBA), TD Canada Trust Bank; Carol Karp’74, biotechnology industry and academia; and Nicholas Lantuh’90S (MBA), eSentir.

Simon Grads on Poets & Quants Best MBAs List

Three recent Simon graduates, Megan DaGraca, Mohammad Shaikh, and Gregory Sheldon, are among Poets & Quants’ Class of 2016 MBAs to Watch. Classmate Mikayla Hart appeared on an earlier list. DaGraca was a Forté Fellow; Shaikh founded Nia Nest, a food subscription service; and Sheldon plans to start a business to help alleviate poverty.

Ainslie Op-Ed Wins PRSA Awards

Dean Andrew Ainslie’s message on the value of an MBA, which first appeared as a Simon Businesscover story and video, recently received three prestigious awards for public relations excellence. The October 7 Poets & Quants Op-Ed by Dean Ainslie won the 2016 PRSA Bronze Anvil Award in the Op-Ed category, the 2016 PRSA–New Jersey chapter Pyramid Award in the Content/Op-Ed category, and the 2016 PRSA–Rochester chapter PRism Award in the corporate Op-Ed category.

Moore Receives Catalyst Award

Duncan Moore, vice provost for entrepreneurship and Kingslake Professor of Optical Engineering, received the inaugural Catalyst Award during the Rochester Museum & Science Center STEM Awards ceremony. The award recognizes an individual or organization that develops and encourages an environment promoting innovation in science and technology or utilizing science and technology to form a lasting impact on the Greater Rochester region. Moore, who leads the University’s Ain Center for Entrepreneurship and is area coordinator of Entrepreneurship at Simon, was one of seven finalists for the award.

Robert J. Keegan

University Trustee Robert J. Keegan has committed $1.5 million to create the Robert J. Keegan Endowed Professorship in Pricing. The Keegan Professorship was the 100th professorship to be established at the University during The Meliora Challenge: The Campaign for the University of Rochester.

“I cannot overstate my appreciation for Bob’s continued support of the University of Rochester and the Simon Business School,” said Joel Seligman, University president, CEO, and G. Robert Witmer, Jr. University Professor. “Professorships are the cornerstone of all thriving universities. I am delighted that his name will be forever linked to this major milestone in the University’s history.”

At the public launch of The Meliora Challenge in 2011, the University set out to establish a minimum of 80 endowed professorships. The goal was met in May 2014, at which time it was raised to 100.

Andrew Ainslie, dean of Simon Business School, said endowed professorships help recruit and retain the world-class scholars who provide the exceptional business education that has become a Simon hallmark. He added that this particular professorship will contribute to the school’s leadership in pricing research and education.

“We are deeply grateful to Bob for enabling us to recognize a preeminent scholar in the growing field of pricing,” said Ainslie. “This gift underscores Bob’s commitment to Simon and helps us provide students with a premier pricing education.”

Pricing has been an area of interest and study for Keegan since his days at Simon Business School, where he earned an MBA in 1972. For him, the School highlighted how critical pricing decisions are, a lesson that took on even greater value when he served as CEO and chairman of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.

“Pricing is a key factor in any business success,” said Keegan, chair of the Strategic and Financial Planning Committee for the University of Rochester’s Board of Trustees. “You can have the right product or service, but if you price it wrong, you have a problem.”

Under Keegan’s direction, Goodyear was recognized as the world’s most admired company in the motor vehicle parts industry by Fortune magazine in 2008 and as America’s most respected automotive company by Forbes magazine in 2009. Prior to leading Goodyear, Keegan was a senior executive at Eastman Kodak. He currently is involved in various entrepreneurial activities and serves on a number of corporate and nonprofit boards, including Xerox Corporation and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Citing his own experience, Keegan points to underdeveloped theory as a significant contributor to the difficulties involved with pricing decisions. “It’s incredibly difficult. There’s a lot of trial and error,” he said. “My hope is that this professorship will serve as a catalyst for Simon to conduct extensive pricing research that leads to more effective and profitable decision making.”

A member of the Simon Advisory Council and a former member of the Simon Executive Advisory Committee, Keegan received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University’s Simon Business School in 2007 and an honorary doctor of laws degree at Simon’s 2010 Commencement ceremony. He and his wife, Marilyn Diehl Keegan, are charter members of the George Eastman Circle, the University’s leadership annual giving society.

Parker is giving back to Simon to show thanks for the support he  received, and to recognize those who helped shape his career.

A $1.5 million gift commitment from Barnett R. Parker’72S (MS), ’76S (PhD), will establish the Barnett R. Parker Professorship in Multidisciplinary Studies. Parker says that his gift reflects, among other things, gratitude to the School for the financial and moral support he received as a student, including a pivotal conversation with Professor Marshall Freimer. “It was one of those epiphanies,” Parker says. “One evening, while waiting for class, Marshall and I were talking, and he resolutely proposed that, ‘You need to be in our doctoral program.’ That single suggestion changed the course of my professional life ... in retrospect, it was my ‘tipping point.’”

Parker’s dissertation was the first multidisciplinary study of its kind in that it academically linked the Graduate School of Management (GSM at the time) and Strong Memorial Hospital. In particular, it examined the structure of consumer preferences in seeking primary health care, and was based on a pioneering 1950s study of health care behavior in rural populations entitled The Health of Regionville, which was actually Dansville, New York. The dissertation committee members included GSM professors V. ‘Seenu’ Srinivasan and William Gavett, Dr. Andrew Sorenson from Strong, with ongoing support from Freimer. Parker spent countless hours in Dansville interviewing residents about their health care preferences and related thinking. The data were collected and analyzed using a then-emerging consumer preference model developed by Srinivasan.

“This was the first time any sort of management or business model had been used in the health care system,” Parker says. “The dissertation won first prize that year in the American Marketing Association’s national competition, and was recognized as the first inter-disciplinary work that connected health and business,” he notes.

Parker went on to teach for 20 years at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill School of Public Health, and another 18 years at nearby Pfeiffer University, where he taught marketing and strategy to executives at state and private medical centers. He also served 23 years as editor in chief of Elsevier’s Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, one of the earliest scholarly, inter-disciplinary journals. Currently, Parker leads global seminars in emerging market countries on strategies for publishing in English language journals.

Parker is establishing the professorship in honor of those who created the environment at the University of Rochester that made his work possible: Freimer, Gavett, Sorenson, and Srinivasan. “I would like this professorship to be filled by people who have a passion for creating value in new and unusual ways,” he says.

“I would like to thank Barnett for this generous and impactful gift,” says Dean Ainslie. “This will allow us to recruit a faculty member from any area of study who is focused on adding value to underserved or marginalized populations.”

A look at William E. Simon’s legacy and how he shaped one of the world’s top business schools.

By John Robortella

Change sometimes comes slowly to academic institutions, measured in time by years or even decades.

But a specific date—November 6, 1986—was a turning point in the history of the University of Rochester’s Graduate School of Management. Thirty years ago, the School was renamed the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration, and everything changed.

Established in 1958, the School of Business Administration—renamed the Graduate School of Management in 1970—had been led from its inception by three successive deans who built it from the ground up and attracted a world-class faculty on a founding principle that the local business and industrial community depended on the University for the training of its executive leaders.
But although the School was known in academia, it lacked a national presence among the top-tier business schools of the day.

“At the time, the School was a leader in free-market economics with the Center for Research in Government Policy and Business, and the likes of [Karl] Brunner, [William] Meckling, [Michael] Jensen, and others,” said Charles W. Miersch ’70S (MBA), who retired in 2004 as senior associate dean for corporate relations and institutional advancement, following a career of more than three decades at the University. “The School was well known in academic circles but not the corporate world, except for a few financial economists like Joel Stern. So being named for someone with Simon’s success and reputation would help put the School on the map,” Miersch noted.

Paul W. MacAvoy in front of the construction of Schlegel Hall

In 1986, Dean Paul W. MacAvoy sought world and national recognition for the School. Some leaders might have considered strategies on how to approach donors for contributions and endowments, but MacAvoy had a different thought in mind—an “audacious idea”—as described recently by Simon School professor emeritus and Ronald L. Bittner Professor of Business Administration Jerold L. Zimmerman.

MacAvoy and David T. Kearns, then chief executive officer and chairman of Xerox Corporation and the former chair and a member of the University’s Board of Trustees, had a request of William E. Simon—the treasury secretary in the Nixon and Ford administrations—who, as an investor and Wall Street trader, was undoubtedly entrepreneurship personified.

“I’m not in the position of buying B-schools” was Simon’s first reaction when
MacAvoy and Kearns arrived at his office that year. Simon thought that they sought a major financial gift. “When Bill Simon inquired about how much money Paul wanted him to donate, Paul had the brilliant and provocative idea of saying, ‘Nothing; we just want your name,’” Zimmerman recalled.
“Immediately, it was recognized that this place existed and was in the major leagues,” said MacAvoy, when he reflected years later on the impact of that day and Simon’s name.

William E. Simon

“The renaming took a school that was probably ranked 50th in the country and, by itself, without any change in student body or faculty, put it in the top 20,” he said. “In polls that rank business schools, Rochester was never mentioned before it became the Simon School. In the first BusinessWeek poll with a ranking after the renaming, it made the top 20.... There was just an immediate and positive impact. Our enrollment of good students more than doubled.”

Simon had accepted the invitation to lend his name. His decision led to a profound and enduring impact upon the Simon School that has continued for 30 years.

“The naming for Dad was unconventional for its time,” said J. Peter Simon, one of Simon’s seven children, who served as one of the original members of the School’s Executive Advisory Committee and was chair of the committee for 15 years. He recently received emeritus status. “Most schools were asking for donations. Dean MacAvoy and David Kearns asked for Dad’s name—not for his money—and for his help to raise the funds required by the University,” Peter said.

Business education at the University of Rochester started long before the School was named for Simon. In 1945, the University announced two new undergraduate degree programs: The Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Business Education and the Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Accounting.

John M. Brophy (right)

The Department of Business Administration was formed within the College of Arts and Science in 1957. John M. Brophy, PhD, was appointed professor of business administration and chair of the department. His fields of interest included personnel administration, education and training in industry, wage and salary administration, and industrial and technical education. He previously served on the faculty of the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.

The School of Business Administration was formed in 1958. Three faculty members were appointed; one student enrolled. The formation of the School was described in the public announcement as “the most significant development at the University since the opening of the Eastman School of Music in 1921 and of the School of Medicine and Dentistry in 1925.”

“The decision to establish a School of Business Administration resulted from the recognition that an active industrial and business community depended upon the University for the training of a large proportion of its executive personnel,” University president Cornelis de Kiewiet said at the time. “Although the School of Business Administration has a more local character than the new colleges of engineering and education, there can be no question about its need.”

Brophy moved quickly to establish the School as a leader in the business education of women when he joined with the Rochester Personnel Women organization in 1959 to sponsor “Women in Management,” a two-day seminar held at Cutler Union with the theme of exploring the “increasingly vital role of women in our industrial society.” He explained that the conference was planned “in the belief that women in management, regardless of position, often discover added areas of service and advancement.” Angela Parisi, then former chair of the New York State Workman’s Compensation Board, gave the keynote address. Betty Brownell served as conference chair.

At the inaugural convocation of the School in 1959, three students became the first to receive honors from the School: David F. Hertle received the $150 prize of the Society for Quality Control, Webster (N.Y.) Branch; Charles Moore received a $50 prize as the Outstanding Student in Industrial Management; and Gareth A. Chasey received the General Business Administration Award. The guest speaker was Joseph C. Wilson, president of Haloid Xerox Inc.

The School was renamed the College of Business Administration in 1962. Brophy was appointed its first dean; 11 men from the Rochester area enrolled in the first class. Since 1993, graduating part-time MBA candidates with the highest record of academic achievement are presented with the John M. Brophy Award, established in Brophy’s honor.

W. Allen Wallis (left) with economist Milton Friedman in the lobby of Rush Rhees Libarary

Also in 1962, W. Allen Wallis, the former dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, was inaugurated as the sixth president of the University of Rochester. Among his goals, he embarked upon a strategy to shape the direction of the College of Business Administration. In 1964, he recruited economist William H. Meckling as dean. Meckling served 19 years, during which the School adopted the philosophy that a thorough understanding of markets and a healthy respect for the scientific method provide the best foundation not only for scholarly research in management, but also for the sound decision-making skills that are necessary in the business world. Meckling’s greatest accomplishment: Building a strong faculty of acclaimed scholars, including internationally recognized economist Karl Brunner.

A year later, Meckling established an Annual Business Forecasting Day (the precursor to Dean Charles I. Plosser’s annual economic outlook seminars). Held at the Manger Hotel in downtown Rochester, the inaugural speakers were professors James Lorie and Irving Schwieger of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business; and Beryl Sprinkel, vice president and director of research at the Harris Trust and Savings Bank, Chicago. (Sprinkel went on to become undersecretary of the treasury for monetary affairs from 1981 to 1985 and chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1985 to 1989 in the Reagan administration.)

By 1966, the foundations established by Brophy and Meckling brought academic attention to the College:

• The MBA program earned accreditation by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).
• The PhD program in Business Administration was established and enrolled its first student.
• The Center for Research in Government Policy and Business was established (later renamed the Bradley Policy Research Center).
• The Executive Development Program was created.

“The introduction of the PhD program in business administration is another major step in placing the College of Business Administration in the ranks of the nation’s leading schools,” said Meckling. “Since 1958, when the College was established, the undergraduate curriculum has undergone a top-to-bottom revision. A Master of Business Administration program has been added and already enrolls 90 full-time students. The faculty has changed from three full-time and 39 part-time members to 21 full-time members. By this September [1966], there will be 29 full-time faculty members, 20 of whom hold the PhD degree. The fact that this year alone we have been able to add eight outstanding men reflects the strength of our present program and our commitment to the future,” Meckling noted.

In 1968, the College joined Indiana University, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, and Washington University in the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management to enhance educational opportunities for those traditionally underrepresented in higher education and the corporate ranks.

On March 27, 1969, President Nixon announced the creation of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force (the Gates Commission, as it was known, named for Thomas Gates, its chair), which included representatives from the University and the College on the commission and its staff.

Ronald W. Hansen

“Public policy was becoming an area of study at the University and the College, as professors with policy-related research interests joined the faculty,” said Ronald W. Hansen, the senior associate dean for program development and the William H. Meckling Professor of Business Administration, who retired from the Simon School earlier this year. “Rochester was represented national policy discussions as our reputation increased.”

Among the commissioners was University president W. Allen Wallis. Meckling served as executive director of the commission staff; College of Business faculty members Walter Y. Oi and Harry Gilman served as staff economists; and Hansen, then a PhD student, prepared a research study entitled “The Conscription Tax.” Each is credited in the report, which led to the end of the military draft and heightened the College’s visibility.

The College phased out undergraduate education in 1970 and was renamed the Graduate School of Management (GSM). Enrollment had increased to more than 150 full- and part-time MBA students.

In the 1970s, three academic journals were founded at the GSM: The Journal of Financial Economics in 1974 with associate professor Michael C. Jensen as founding editor; the Journal of Monetary Economics in 1975 with professor Karl Brunner as founding editor; and the Journal of Accounting and Economics in 1979 with professor Jerold L. Zimmerman and professor Ross L. Watts (today the Erwin H. Schell Professor of Management, Emeritus and professor of accounting emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management) as founding editors. In addition, the Simon School became the new academic sponsor of the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance.

William H. Meckling

In 1976, Meckling and Jensen (today the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard Business School) published Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure, which integrated elements from the theories of agency, property rights, and finance to develop a theory of the ownership structure of the firm.

“My perspective coming from the legal academic world was that the Jensen and Meckling piece, in particular, was a breakout piece for the School,” said Distinguished University Professor and president emeritus Thomas H. Jackson, who today holds faculty positions in the Simon School and in the University’s Department of Political Science. “Prior to that, the School was generally completely off the radar screens of legal academics.”

In 1978, the Managerial Economics Research Center was organized to encourage scholars of diverse interests and backgrounds to focus attention on the problems of management, to develop theories and evidence that enable managers to understand the world around them more thoroughly, and to provide the foundation for improved decision making. A CEO Seminar Series (later renamed the Frederick Kalmbach Executive Seminar Series) was initiated.

Having succeeded William Meckling as dean in 1984, Paul MacAvoy sought to broaden the appeal and reputation of the MBA program at the School and to secure a solid financial footing. Among his first accomplishments toward these goals was receipt of a $2 million grant from IBM to support education and research in the management of information systems. The School was one of only 13 institutions nationwide to share in this newly established IBM support for graduate business programs.

At this point in the GSM’s history, MacAvoy came to the decision that a bold step was needed to reach his goals for the School. He believed that someone’s name was the key.

“The School had been called the Graduate School of Management,” MacAvoy wrote in 2000. “It had an excellent faculty, highly expert in two areas—finance and accounting—and pretty good in marketing and production. The faculty was probably uniformly the most conservative of the business school faculties. Quite a number of them had degrees from Chicago’s business school, and they had remained relatively pure in their dedication to market economics.

“I sat down with the president of the University and some of the trustees and we tried to think of a way to find leadership in the business community that would support us—help us develop a trademark or brand name or to establish a presence,” MacAvoy recalled. “We knew what Bill Simon had done and thought he could be a role model for our students, that a connection with him would identify the School with a business leader—if only we could put his name on the place.

“We had a need for Simon’s name more than we had a need for money. And we approached it that way,” MacAvoy wrote.

Charles Plosser

“I think the rationale was twofold,” said former dean Charles Plosser, who had joined the faculty in 1978. “In no particular order, one was to establish great name recognition for the GSM. We were a relatively small regional school with a good and growing national reputation in research. I, after all, chose to leave Stanford to join the GSM in large part because of the innovative research going on there as well as the Economics department at the University. MacAvoy came to the School from Yale to be dean with a full appreciation of this extraordinary environment. The challenge was to leverage the recognition of the faculty’s excellence to achieve a similar reputation for the MBA program and its students. Approaching a well-known person whose name and accomplishments could help provide greater name recognition was seen as an important step in that direction.

“The other rationale, of course, was financial,” Plosser noted. “The GSM was a relatively young program without the benefit of a long history of alumni like that of some other schools. Nor did the University carry the national name recognition that benefited some of the other young business schools such as Duke.

“With fewer and younger alumni, fund raising was always a challenge,” he said. “The School had little endowment of its own and needed funds to move to the next level. The competition among business schools was growing for faculty and students, and better endowed institutions clearly had an advantage.”

When MacAvoy and Kearns met with Simon at his Olin Foundation office in 1986, Simon had earlier that year resigned from the boards of several corporations and had relinquished all his national directorships.

“I began exploring other pastures,” he wrote in A Time for Reflection, his autobiography.
MacAvoy said to him, “Bill, the name of the school is really a problem.”

“Take off ‘management,’” Simon answered, “and put in ‘school of business administration.’ It’s more direct, and it’s what you really do.”

“I said, ‘That’s half of it,’ ” MacAvoy replied. “ ‘The other half is that it needs to be the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration.”

MacAvoy and Simon

“Total silence,” MacAvoy recalled. “Bill was really shocked. I think he was expecting us to hit him hard for a major gift, so by catching him off-guard I think we got the opening for him to
really consider it.”

Simon remembered the request and moved quickly in his direct and practical way.

They said they wanted to name a business school after me. “That’s very flattering, but I’m really not in the business of buying ‘B’-schools,” I said, assuming that what they were mainly looking for was a sizable donation in exchange for naming a school in my honor.

“No,” Dr. MacAvoy said, “you misunderstand. We want to have the school named for an entrepreneur, a successful business and government leader, who has done all the things you have done. That is an inspiration. We would ask to you do one thing. We need to raise $30 million and the University is willing to pitch in $15 [million], so that leaves $15 million to raise. We’re not asking you to give anything. We’re just asking you to help us raise it. Would you do that?”

“Well, that sounds like a fair deal,” I said, turning to Dave Kearns. “David, why don’t you start us off by pledging $5 million from Xerox?”

“You’re a bastard!” David joked. Xerox came through with the donation.

Within six weeks, we had the $15 million and the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration was born.

The William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration was formally dedicated on November 6, 1986.

G. Dennis O'Brien

In a letter signed by Simon and University president G. Dennis O’Brien, they wrote that the Schoo was renamed “with the expectation that its graduates will mirror the image of entrepreneurship and creative leadership in management bestowed by that name.”

“[Bill] goes there to interact with every class,” wrote MacAvoy. “He talks to the students individually. He walks the corridors. He goes to classes and often gives a major talk. He really promoted the Simon School image as entrepreneurial, venturesome, courageous, and free-market oriented.”
The naming, which was covered by the local and national press, highlighted the announcement of the formation of the inaugural 52-member Executive Advisory Committee (EAC) of global business leaders, educators, and entrepreneurs, among them (corporate affiliations at the time of their appointments in 1986) James S. Gleason of Rochester’s Gleason Corporation; J. Peter Grace, W. R. Grace & Co.; General Alexander M. Haig Jr. (who previously served as chief of staff to President Nixon) of Worldwide Associates Inc.; Dr. Henry Kissinger (former secretary of state in the Nixon administration) of Kissinger Associates; Sir Ian MacGregor of Lazard Brothers & Co. Ltd.; T. Boone Pickens of Mesa Limited Partnership; and John M. Templeton of Templeton, Galbraith & Hansberger Ltd.

“Mr. Simon’s leadership and the creation—with Dean MacAvoy—of the School’s Executive Advisory Committee was instrumental in raising the visibility of the School,” said Hollis S. Budd, executive director of the Max and Marion Farash Charitable Foundation and former associate dean for MBA administration and external affairs at the Simon School. “Being present during those meetings was always a great learning experience.”

“Dad ran the meetings,” said Peter Simon. “And he knew how to run a meeting. He was able to bring so many leaders onto the EAC by using the same request that Paul MacAvoy asked of him. He told them the University wanted their advice and expertise, not their money. That wasn’t the way it worked at most other institutions.”

Peter noted that the EAC members discussed the needs and challenges of the Simon School at its meetings, most of which were held in New York City.

The Simon name brought immediate value to the School and to the University.

Reflecting today on the School’s naming, president emeritus Jackson says that although the School was transformed by Meckling with the support of then president Wallis, “it still struggled with being relatively small, attached to a relatively small university, and in a city that is somewhat off the beaten path of recruiters. The School’s economic orientation, I think, helped it stand out among other schools. Branding the School for Mr. Simon was a very good move and the School at that time fit very well with the ‘brand’ of Mr. Simon—reflecting its strong academic and economic focus—a heritage of President Wallis, Dean Meckling, and the enormously talented group of then-young faculty assembled.”

Jackson remembers his first meeting with Simon.

“I first met Mr. Simon at his office in New Jersey when I accompanied Dennis O’Brien, who was still president, to meet Mr. Simon,” Jackson says. “I next spent several hours one evening with Mr. Simon and Dean Plosser in what I would describe as a ‘pleasant and intense’ evening going over the Simon School, its future, and its relationship to the broader University. While Dean Plosser remained his principal contact, I met with Mr. Simon several other times and spoke with him, not frequently, but several times a year. I would describe his interest in the Simon School as intense, but I never got a sense that he was overly intrusive on decision making. Part of that clearly rested with his clear preference for Plosser as dean, which I fulfilled, as well as the involvement of two of Mr. Simon’s sons with the Executive Advisory Committee and the School more generally. So, he felt his School was in good hands.”

“The value in a name is the attention it brings and the endorsement it represents,” notes Charles Miersch, “especially when the namer has no alumni or obvious ties to the School. Reactions were varied. Faculty were, as usual, more concerned with their careers, which were primarily academic, [and] to the extent naming would bring more funding without significant interference in their daily lives, they were for it. Students at the time were very excited and hoped it would help their postgraduate success. The administration—both Simon and the University—was all for it.
“My interactions with Bill were generally positive and mostly revolved around the Executive Advisory Committee and helping to plan his visits,” Miersch says. “I believe he spoke fairly regularly with Dean MacAvoy about daily business, especially if it reflected on the School’s reputation. He was always willing to help make connections for us, and he made several additional gifts after the naming. There is little doubt Simon had deep respect for the School, but it was only one part of a very full life.”

William E. Simon (center) tours the University's iconic painted tunnel with W. Allen Wallis (right)

“Bill was committed to the School,” said Plosser, who served as dean from 1993 to 2003. “He did a great many things to help promote it and support it. He was not particularly involved in day-to-day management, as he thought that was appropriately delegated to the dean and the faculty. He was interested in the marketing strategy and direction of the School, and that it stood up to the principles he and the School espoused.”

Budd characterized Simon as a business renaissance man. “His long and illustrious career varied from banker to trader to public servant and nonprofit leader,” she said. “He gave his time, talent, and treasure freely and the Simon School benefited greatly from this generosity. His passion for helping others, though, was most prominent at the Simon School. He always made time to help the students, faculty, and staff. This included bringing the whole family along, too. His beloved wife, Carol, and many of their children were active at the School.”

The Simon name and his family affected Mark Zupan’s decision to seek the position of dean, which he held from 2004 to 2014.

“Peter was instrumental in getting me to join Simon,” Zupan remembers. “His involvement and leadership spoke volumes about his family’s commitment to our School and to making it ever better.”
Zupan said that a name is critical to any leading business school, “and it is not just any name, but what that name represents. Bill was approached not for the philanthropic support but, first and foremost, for what his name represented in terms of entrepreneurial spirit, an enduring commitment to freedom, integrity, and policymaking impact. His name and support put our School on the map.”
 “Our goal is to attract students who have Bill Simon’s entrepreneurial spirit,” said Paul MacAvoy at the School’s formal dedication in 1986. “Our approach is not to give our students old solutions to new problems. Rather, we teach them how to problem-solve. Even more important, we show our students how to use these skills throughout their careers to create wealth in an open marketplace that welcomes the power of new ideas.”

MacAvoy then announced six new-venture goals for the School’s first decade with the Simon name:

1. Appoint outstanding senior scholars.“We will increase the number of faculty by 25 percent. The student body will grow by 20 percent. Our goal is to add named professorships across all of our fields as a way to attract preeminent scholars to the Simon School.”

2. Appoint the very best young scholars.“Here, our goal is to make available similar junior faculty chairs as term positions for younger scholars with great promise. These will be transferable as the new faculty members reach maturity. In addition, we will increase the number of fellowships for MBA and PhD students to attract exceptional applicants and increase the number of minority students in the program.”

3. Recruit experienced Management Fellows. “We will appoint experienced senior executives as Management Fellows. As new faculty, they will teach capstone courses in their fields of expertise—from industrial product marketing to investment banking. This capstone curriculum will give our MBA students the advantage of combining classroom studies with intense exposure to the real-world skills of successful business leaders.”

4. Create two journals.“We will create two pioneering journals—one on manufacturing management, the other on the management of information systems—that incorporate both technical and economic perspectives. Our goal is to fill an obvious need to publish applied articles that meet scholarly standards, to disseminate new insights developed by research scholars throughout the United States, and to provide managers with new knowledge to aid them in decision making.”

5. Expand curriculum.“We strive for constant improvement in graduate business education. That means generating new findings and bringing them to the classroom. To this end, we will concentrate on activities that elevate our work in other functional fields—i.e., marketing and computer-based information systems—to match the national prominence of our work in finance and accounting. We will also expand our international presence by staffing new offerings just getting under way at Erasmus University in Holland and Keio University in Japan.”

6. Enhance public policy research at the Simon School.“Our goal is to enhance our role as a leader in public policy research in the business school setting, and to integrate our findings into the curriculum. We believe that maintaining a free marketplace is critical for the most efficient use of resources, including management talent. Further, we believe it is our responsibility to educate managers who understand the impact of government policies that hamper the freedom to take risks in an open marketplace. They must cope with the impact of these policies—and advocate against them.”
On dedication day, Simon chaired the first meeting of the Executive Advisory Committee, which featured a series of presentations by faculty members on their research.

Events also included the unveiling of an eight-foot-long bronze Simon School nameplate; a convocation attended by more than 400 students, faculty, and staff; the introduction of a new Simon School logo (via first-edition T-shirts); and an evening dinner at which president Dennis O’Brien read the trustees’ resolution proclaiming the name change.

At a press conference on dedication day, a reporter asked Simon, “Can you really take ten years and $30 million and make an outstanding school?”

Henry Kissinger (left) with William E. Simon

“Paul has outlined the steps that are going to be taken about attracting professorships and scholars and how to build the School, the curricula, and the rest,” he answered. “I would hope that 30 million dollars would be the beginning. It’s going to take an education process. It’s going to take a lot of people understanding that there is a significant graduate school of business at the University of Rochester. If my name helps that, and if Henry Kissinger and Al Haig and Peter Grace and all the people who have joined the visiting committee—a very distinguished group of businessmen and Americans—will help do that, we’ll achieve Paul’s goals. Those people just don’t join committees for the sake of joining. They do it because they believe it’s meaningful. That’s the reason I’m here, too.”
“Say one, fifteen, twenty years from now, what do you want to see the School become that will make you immensely happy—and not just its ranking?” asked another reporter.

“I really believe that we will be graduating young men and women who are going to go out and teach the world of business what entrepreneurialism is all about, and what this great free enterprise system can produce for the betterment of mankind,” Simon answered. “Education is a very important thing to me and to many people. I believe in this system that we have—a democracy—even with the poor record that democracies have had through history. The most critical ingredient to the maintenance of freedom is education, the kind of education students get at the University of Rochester and will get in the William E. Simon School. I’d like to see it ten and twenty years from now accepted as the best graduate school in the United States, and I think that’s going to happen.”

“Is this a direction you see business going in—to educate entrepreneurs? It seems that you’re looking to bring out instinctive feelings with these students,” the reporter asked.

William E. Simon (right) with G. Dennis O'Brien at the press conference announcing the School's naming

“Well, I would hope it would be,” Simon answered. “It’s not an apparent direction nationwide yet, but I think it’s required. Having sat on a great many boards of directors in this country and having known many businesses myself and lectured at many universities, I believe that businesses on occasion most certainly have to be called ambiguous in their feelings. They all love free enterprise and yet when times get tough and the free-enterprise system lets them down, they have to remember that a business cycle is the price one pays for economic freedom. And there are automatic adjustments in cycles. They cannot be abolished, and government intervention has only exacerbated the cycles on the upside and downside. When times get a little tough—and even when they don’t—businessmen clamor for more government regulation, more government intervention, more protection from the very system that’s so dynamic and gave us all the prosperity that we have today.”

“So perhaps you’re trying to set a tone?” a reporter asked.

“Yes, exactly, set a tone,” Simon answered, “not only philosophically but actually—by having the graduates out there in the business world in key spots in the corporations and in the financial community, who absolutely believe that it is the free markets that provide opportunity. And one must take risks. Risk is inherent in everything we do in life. And intelligent risk has great reward.”

Building a Future on Solid Foundations

Dean Andrew Ainslie

Welcome to the Fall 2016 edition of Simon Business magazine. As you know, the Simon School is at the beginning of a five-year journey, where our intention is to be ranked in the top 25 of US business schools. We are well on our way to doing that by focusing on two early stages of our strategic plan: One is ensuring the students have a wonderful experience at Simon, and the other is to make sure our students get the salaries that we believe they deserve when they leave here.

For many MBA students, a first step in securing top salaries is landing the more competitive early internships. The Career Management Center has reported an exceptional year for our first-year MBA students, and year to year, the number of students with internships confirmed by mid-March is up nearly 50 percent. This is a critical benchmark, as it shows the students are getting the internships most likely to convert into full-time offers. We are encouraged to see so many students exhibiting the commitment and drive it takes to be successful in business.

In keeping with our dedication to improving the student experience at Simon, we recently held a ribbon cutting for our new Office of Student Engagement. As you will see in this issue’s special feature, the bright and open space offers a modern meeting place for students to meet and interact. Our outstanding staff in the Office of Student Engagement are taking full advantage of the new location, and all reports indicate that the students are delighted with this significant upgrade to the services they use the most.

Updating our facilities and transforming student spaces is made more possible through the generosity of our alumni. The Annual Fund is an excellent way to support everything from room renovations to technology upgrades, and your support will go a long way in offering the very best Simon experience we can for our current students. There are also opportunities for high-level donors to name the Office of Student Engagement, the Career Management Center, and the bright new collaboration lab we have created on the fourth floor of Schlegel Hall. It is an exciting time at Simon as we move forward with the dynamic world of modern business. I hope you will be part of it.

Of course, among all the updates and transformations, the Simon tradition continues. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the naming of the Simon School, and we celebrate that milestone with a feature that highlights the history of our school. William E. Simon’s sons continue to be actively involved with the University, and we just celebrated 10 years of Peter’s leadership on the National Council. Finally, I would like to thank senior associate dean Ron Hansen for his decades of service to the Simon Business School. Ron recently announced his retirement, and as you will read in the feature that celebrates his career, we all owe him our profound gratitude for his longtime commitment to the entire Simon community.

Enjoy this issue. As you read it, I think you will see that as we continue to move into the future of business education, we keep in mind Simon’s tremendous history and hold fast to its tradition of being a school that was one of the first in analytics, and remains one of the best at producing so many of the world’s best and brightest business leaders.

Sincerely,

Andrew Ainslie
Dean