Loyola University Chicago MBA students create study abroad course in Croatia

Four ambitious Quinlan MBA students created their own study abroad course using the Ignatian Pedagogy framework—a model for teaching and learning with emphasis on experience, reflection, and action—as a guide for their time abroad.

In June 2016, students Abby Annala, Magi Zlatkova, Emily Schroeder, and Amanda Schaumann and management professor Mike Welch spent 12 days in Croatia. There, they consulted with two major Croatian companies and provided market trend research, industry analysis, and information on the American consumer.

Professor Welch advised the students and worked with them to apply the Ignatian Pedagogy framework to their time in Croatia.

“I really admired how the students took ownership over the course and their learning,” said Welch. “They successfully used the Ignatian Pedagogy framework to maximize their time in Croatia and provide their client with an actionable business plan.”

The students also relied on the international connections and insight of information systems professor Nenad Jukić. A native of Croatia, Jukić introduced the group to one of their clients and helped them navigate Croatian culture and customs.

Gaining insights in Chicago

Classwork began well before the June trip. Months beforehand, the students began working with their first client, Kraš, a Croatian company specializing in chocolate. The students researched the company to determine its market share in Croatia, while also analyzing American market trends from the confectionery industry. The result was a SWOT analysis of potential U.S. distribution and operations.

“Our detailed SWOT analysis showed Kraš how serious we were, and it made them open to scheduling Skype meetings with us and sending additional documents to help us better serve them,” said Annala. Ultimately, the students chose to write a business plan for opening a Kraš retail storefront in Chicago.

For an additional perspective on retail operations in Chicago, the students visited World’s Finest Chocolate and toured its local manufacturing facilities. This was made possible thanks to Anthony Gargiulo (MS ’87), a Quinlan alumnus and vice president of human resources at World’s Finest Chocolate.

Hands-on experience in Croatia

Once in Croatia, the students met with representatives from Kraš and their second client, Stemi.

“During the company visit, we met with several members of the supervisory board of Kraš in the marketing, exports, and manufacturing departments,” said Schroeder. “The meetings were extraordinarily useful for us to gain a deeper understanding of the company and the cultural differences of operating a business in Croatia versus in the U.S.”

The students also visited several Kraš retail stores and toured its facilities, which came with the added perk of eating freshly made chocolate.

Their second client, Stemi, is a start-up company focused on educating women and children about STEM. Stemi requested insights on the American education market and consumer, as they are looking to market a build-your-own hexapod robot to American consumers.

The robot kit teaches STEM in a fun and interactive way, as it challenges the consumer to assemble its various parts. However, the students identified a major challenge for marketing the robot to American consumers: a 10-month wait to receive it.

Providing value to their clients

While in Croatia, the students provided Stemi with research on the U.S. education market. They also advised Stemi to shift its marketing focus from individual consumers to educational institutions, such as schools and libraries. These institutions are more likely to wait up to 10 months to receive the hexapod robot.

Following the trip, the students provided Kraš with an actionable business plan to help the organization bring retail operations to Chicago. The plan relied on knowledge gained pre-trip, their experiences during the trip, and group reflection.

“I’m very proud of what we accomplished in Croatia and our deliverables for Kraš and Stemi,” said Zlatkova. “At times it was challenging for us to balance both full-time school and work, on top of creating a study abroad course from scratch, but in the end it was all worth it!”

Group reflection

An important part of the class—and of Ignatian Pedagogy—is reflection. After each meeting, the students created time for focused group reflection and discussion. This time enabled them to brainstorm ideas and work together to meet the expectations of their clients.

“Each of us on the trip came from a different field of study, which meant we all came away from each meeting with a different perspective,” said Schaumann.  “Having the opportunity to reflect throughout the trip helped me to develop a broader business understanding.”

Sharing the lessons learned

In August 2016, the students presented at the Focus on Teaching and Learning Conference, a Loyola conference on effective teaching and learning practices. They discussed their experiences and how this model can replicated by business students and others interested in international experiential learning.

The students all agree that creating their own study abroad course and spending 12 days in Croatia working with international clients were life-changing experiences for them, both individually and as a group.

“This has been a self-actualizing experience,” said Annala. “Our time in Croatia allowed me and my classmates to directly apply skills from the classroom to solve a real-world business problem for a company.”

Picked up story from http://www.luc.edu/quinlan/stories/archive/mba-students-create-study-abroad-course-in-croatia.shtml.

DePaul Ranks Highly for Entrepreneurship Education

Robin Florzak  /  11/16/2016

The entrepreneurship program at DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business has again earned top-25 rankings from the Princeton Review in its annual survey.

DePaul’s graduate program was ranked 13th and the undergraduate program 25th in the Princeton Review’s “Top Schools for Entrepreneurship Studies in 2017.” DePaul was the only Illinois university to capture a spot on both lists.

DePaul Coleman Entrepreneurship Chair Harold Welsch (BUS ’66, MBA ’68), founder and director of the program, says the its focus on practical learning, innovation and connections to Chicago’s start-up community make it distinctive.

“We offer students a unique combination of classroom and real-world experiences,” Welsch says. “We teach students the theoretical principles involved in entrepreneurship, but we also make sure students get out into the community to learn how entrepreneurship works.”

Resources to support the academic program and help DePaul students develop and launch businesses have expanded this year. DePaul’s Coleman Entrepreneurship Center opened a new, dedicated spacefor students to develop their business ideas on campus.  DePaul also became a member of 1871, the city’s premier technology and business incubator located in the Merchandise Mart.

a survey of more than 300 schools offering programs in entrepreneurship studies. The survey looked at each school’s commitment to entrepreneurship education inside and outside the classroom. More than three dozen data points were analyzed for the rankings. Among them were the percentage of faculty, students and alumni actively and successfully involved in entrepreneurial endeavors; the number and reach of mentorship programs; and funding for scholarships and grants for entrepreneurial studies and projects.

More about the rankings can be found on the Princeton Review’s website and in the December issue of Entrepreneur magazine.

Picked up from https://business.depaul.edu/news-events/Pages/201611/DePaul-Ranks-Highly-for-Entrepreneurship-Education.aspx.

Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge Announcement

Workshop: Comparing Practices of Knowledge

When: Monday, January 9, 2017 4:30–6:00 p.m.

More information to come.

Picked up from: http://events.uchicago.edu/cal/event/showEventMore.rdo.

The Stevanovich Center

The Stevanovich Center advances the understanding of the increasingly complex world of financial markets by integrating mathematics, statistics, and economics. The Center brings together leading academic researchers and financial professionals whose insights from daily experience in the markets can help translate theory into improved practice. This interaction will lead to more sophisticated tools to address challenges that range from analyzing, visualizing, and interpreting massive data sets, to building more accurate, tractable, and robust models to measure, price, and hedge risk.

The Center has researchers from the University of Chicago and around the world (People), ranging from senior faculty to Ph.D. students. Both faculty and students are spread around the departments of the university, and the Center is a meeting place for interaction, and for Seminars and Conferences. Our newly refurbished building provides physical space where University of Chicago researchers as well as visitors from academia and the marketplace work, meet, discuss, share and debate ideas that advance our understanding of the mathematical basis of financial markets.

The main focus of the Center is quantitative finance, ranging from mathematical finance via financial econometrics to asset pricing.

Prof. Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer discusses humanities and the Stevanovich Institute

Interlitq interviews Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer in “The Groves of Academe” series. Read it here: http://www.interlitq.org/groves/shadi-bartsch/job.php

Retrieved from SIFK.uchicago.edu.

Stevanovich Center for Financial Mathematics

Review of 2013-2014 Accomplishments and Activities

Thanks to your philanthropic partnership with the University of Chicago, the past year has yielded impressive results across campus and beyond.

The following sections provide an updated snapshot of the far-reaching impact of your generosity on the University community.

• Seminars at the Stevanovich Center: Seminars led by University of Chicago researchers as well as visitors from academia and the marketplace work, meet, discuss, share and debate ideas that advance our understanding of the mathematical basis of financial markets.

• Stevanovich Student Fellowships: The Stevanovich Student Fellowship is awarded to University of Chicago PhD students in economics, mathematics, or statistics who work on novel techniques in financial econometrics/statistics and/or financial mathematics, or econometrics/statistics research that could lead to applications in finance and economics.

• Stevanovich Center Conferences: At its core, the Stevanovich Center advances the understanding of the increasingly complex world of financial markets by integrating mathematics, statistics, and economics. Both faculty and students are spread around the departments of the university and the Stevanovich Center is a meeting place for interaction.

• Karl Weintraub Professorship in History and the College: Constantin Fasolt continues to serve with distinction as the Karl J. Weintraub Professor of History and the College.

Retrieved from http://stewardship.uchicago.edu/stevanovich/.

2016-2018 Research Theme at Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge: Comparing Practices of Knowledge

Excerpt from the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge’s website:

“The SIFK 2016-18 research theme is Comparing Practices of Knowledge.  The intensity of contemporary culture contact is providing dramatic illustration of the potential for confluence between frameworks for knowledge—Scientific?  Indigenous?  Non-western?  Religious? Universalizing? Local?  We invite scholars to do research at the meeting point of these different frameworks, delineating each framework’s particular approach to the legitimization of knowledge and explaining the impact of different knowledge-assumptions.

Knowledge claims require a context of assumptions and purposes in order to make sense.  Different eras and areas often offer different frameworks of explanation, different tacit understandings of how the world works and what it means to give reasons.  What binds or associates different ways of knowing to one another, and what divides them?  How has the existence of these multiple systems been studied in the past, and how should they be studied now?

A long-standing problem arises from the tales that practitioners of one form of knowledge tell about themselves.  These not only justify their asserted facts, but their very ways of acquiring and verifying knowledge:  knowledge not simply as lists of propositions, but knowledge as practice.  These dynamics raise the question of whether any one form of knowledge can easily account for, let alone make room for, any other?

Such situations bring the institutions we know well (fact-finding, archiving, critical assessment, experiment) in contact with institutions that apply different criteria to legitimate knowledge claims. Is it a matter of the majority culture making room for the exception, of confluence between different streams (as if a common denominator could be found), or of such far-reaching incompatibility that only words like alternative can describe the relation among the fields of knowledge?

The notion of rationality and its connection to science may serve as a case in point.  According to a common view, rational activity consists in the derivation of abstract principles from observations or experiments that have been conducted methodically and applied to an extended range of objects or events in order to understand their behavior or predict their dispositions.  This description would fit many different kinds of knowledge systems, which might thus be considered rational. Knowledge systems the world over might therefore be studied as rational or, indeed, claim rationality for themselves.  Many knowledge systems, including those of Plato, medieval Christianity and the post-Cartesian West, claim to have discovered their principles, and not just their facts, out there in the world, or to have received them from some source beyond the human.  They arrogate to themselves a universality and necessity, which sanctions them to judge other claims to knowledge that might look rather different.

Such rationalities also press us to ask what purpose they might serve if not the scientific one of providing predictability about the natural world and improving life quality through the adaptation of technology.  This invites us to ask what exactly those scientific practices are (e.g. experiment, quantification, peer review); how they stand in relationship to other modes of acquiring knowledge; and what claims might be unique to this form of knowledge alone.

These questions broadly underpin the Stevanovich Institute’s 2016-18 research agenda. Our aim is to put different approaches towards knowledge in discourse with each other even as we conduct “deep digs” into those approaches.”