Archives
April 2007
Director's Message: Reunion Weekend is Right Around the Corner!
For classes 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1997, and 2002, it is your time to celebrate an anniversary year. The class leaders for all reunion classes have been working hard at making this a memorable reunion for you. Please make your plans to be here, and remember–Reunion Weekend is just two months away. [more]
Dean Candidates Visit Campus
Destination Johnson Scores with Prospective Students
Johnson School Figures Big in Entrepreneurship@Cornell
Boston Alumni Host Asset Management Discussion
Dan Hesse, MBA '77, Talks on Baby Bell Transformation
Students and Alumni Connect over Power Lunch
Johnson School in the news
Events
Dean Candidates Visit Campus
The first two weeks of April saw both candidates for dean of the Johnson School dive into presentations, meetings, and sessions of all sorts with members of the school community and university administrators. David A. Besanko started his whirlwind on campus with breakfast on April 2. Over the next two days, he lunched with students and staff, and gave a presentation at an open forum. Besanko is currently the Alvin J. Huss Distinguished Professor of Management and Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Elke U. Weber , the Jerome A. Chazen Professor of International Business at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, visited Sage Hall on April 9 and April 10, and also experienced a jam-packed schedule of meetings, lunches, and presentations. The Office of the Provost maintains an up-to-date Web site on the Johnson School's dean search that includes videos of the candidates' open forums.
Destination Johnson Scores with Prospective Students
What a weekend – Destination Johnson, the school's premiere yield event for prospective students, leaves current students breathless and future students excited about the school. It started on Friday, April 13. More than 100 Johnson School students volunteered to host, inform, and entertain 172 prospective students and 45 spouses/partners/significant others. More than 100 admitted students were housed by our current MBA students. Casino Night that Friday rocked the Dyson Atrium, and featured casino-style games and scrumptious food. Visitors and school community members also enjoyed a dessert-and-dance party at the Museum of the Earth, as well as tours and information sessions on the core curriculum, immersions, and other aspects of the MBA experience. To see what the weekend entailed, see the DJ itinerary online.
Johnson School Figures Big in Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration
Just days after Destination Johnson closes and prospective students leave campus excited about the Johnson School, the community will plunge into the Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration, in which the Johnson School plays a major role. The event starts on Wednesday, April 18, when MBA '07 students present their ideas for enhancing the visibility of the Parker Center for Investment Research . On Thursday, April 19, the school hosts a series of dialogues in the ILR Conference Center, Room 423. Attendees are invited to a free networking luncheon between dialogue sessions. Here's the lineup:
Dialogue – The Green, the Young, and the Seasoned
8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
Dialogue – Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise
10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Dialogue – Business of Science and Technology Initiative
1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
On Friday, April 20, the Johnson School's own Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital Club and Net Impact present Investing in the Future , 7:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Statler Hotel. See the Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration calendar for a listing of university-wide events.
Boston Alumni Host Asset Management Discussion
Nearly 70 alumni joined at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston on February 22, 2007, for an update on the Parker Center for Investment Research and an interactive panel discussion on asset management. Sanjeev Bhojraj, faculty director of the Parker Center and associate professor of accounting, provided a brief overview of the Parker Center and the new website at www.cayugafund.com . The Cayuga Fund has generated 80 percent return in the last four years with very low volatility. With 172 graduates at the best firms on the buy side and sell side, the Parker Center and the Cayuga MBA Fund represent performance learning at its best.
With Jeff Parker, '65, MEng '66, MBA '70, General Partner, Parker Family Limited Partnership, moderating, three alumni experts brought a collective 70 years of financial management expertise to the event and offered their insights into today's market. Panelists were David Breazzano, MBA '80, Co-founder/Principal, DDJ Capital Management; Arup Datta, MBA '92, Managing Director and Portfolio Manager, Numeric Investors; and George Tall, MBA '82, managing director and co-founder, Burl Capital in 2006.
See photos of the event .
Dan Hesse, MBA '77, Talks on Innovation
The Roy H. Park Distinguished Lecture Series brought Dan Hesse, chairman and CEO of Embarq Corporation, to Sage Hall on March 1, 2007. After earning his MBA at the Johnson School in 1977, Hesse has spent his entire career in the telecommunications industry. He titled his talk, "Why large companies should out-innovate smaller ones."
MBA graduates who are drawn to innovation should consider working for large companies, says Hesse, who spent 23 years at AT&T, during which the company filed for an average of three patents a day. "Young people think that if you really want to innovate, you should work for a small company," Hesse says. "But actually, it's the other way around–AT&T was an extremely innovative company."
Hesse's innovations while at AT&T included taking the company's "800" service from a specialized product for trucking companies, to half of the traffic on the AT&T network. "It was an opportunity to truly innovate and to change a business," he says.
Hesse now heads, Embarq, which generates over $6 billion in revenues annually, providing voice, data, wireless and entertainment services in eighteen states. He joined Sprint in June 2005 to lead the effort to create Embarq, which separated from Sprint Nextel in May 2006. Among Embarq's innovations on his watch are products resulting from operational integration across platforms. For instance, an Embarq customer can have a single voice mail box, which receives messages for both his home and mobile phones.
Students and Alumni Connect over Power Lunch
On March 8, 2007, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion's Women's Power Lunch series presented a panel discussion with women of the President's Council of Cornell Women in celebration of Women's History Month. Faculty, staff and students attended the event. It featured a dynamic panel of Cornell alumni, who offered their "Advice from Corporate Hallways: Things We Learned the Hard Way."
Deborah Smith, MA '71, who runs a human resources consulting business in Naples, Florida served as the moderator. Speakers included Dr. Karel Czanderna (MS '81; PhD '84), vice president and general manager of the brand portfolio at Whirlpool Corporation; Diana Daniels (AB '71), retired vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of the Washington Post Company; Karen Keating (AB '76), member of the Johnson School Advisory Council and managing director in the Risk Management Division of JPMorganChase; Ana Pinczuk (BS '84, ME'85), vice president of engineering with Cisco's IOS Software organization; and Renu Thomas (BS '90, ME '91), director of production for MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.
The Women's Power Lunch Series is organized by the Johnson School's Office of Diversity and Inclusion and sponsored by JPMorganChase & Co.
Johnson School in the news
TV & Autism: Controversial New Theory
ABC News – Good Morning America – April 6, 2007
Professor Michael Waldman talks to Diane Sawyer about his controversial research suggesting a possible link between TV viewing during early childhood and the onset of autism-spectrum disorders.
Meet the Big Commuters on Campus
BusinessWeek – April 6, 2007
Johnson School EMBA student Guru K. Prabhu, MBA '08, is interviewed in an article on commuting long distances to earn an MBA.
target="_blank">Top Business Schools 2008
US News & World Report – March 30, 2007
The Johnson School moved up to #14 this year. Last year (and for many of the past six years) we have been #16 in this survey.
The Best Undergrad B-Schools
BusinessWeek – March 19, 2007
Cornell's undergraduate business school was ranked #10 in this BusinessWeek ranking, in part because of the opportunities for undergraduates to take advantage of the faculty and courses at the Johnson School.
See more news hits that feature our faculty, alumni, and students.
Events
View the online alumni events calendar to check out the latest offerings in your area. It's a great way to keep in touch!
