Briefcase
Seniors
Named "Most Promising Minority Students"
Two GW School of Business seniors have been named among
the country’s “Most Promising Minority Students”.
Seniors Adette Contreras and Christopher Pitre were
selected as members of the American Advertising Federation’s
(AAF) Most Promising Minority Students (MPMS) Program.
MPMS is the premier advertising industry award to recognize
and recruit exceptional minority college students studying
advertising, marketing, media and communications.
“Winning the award means so much to me. I was
notified on the same day that I became an American citizen,
and it had to have been one of the most memorable days
of my life. It was a little bit unreal, and for the
next few days, I had to keep reminding myself that I
wasn't dreaming,” said Adette Contreras, GW senior.
“Winning the award meant a lot to me because,
I’m from Houston, I’m not from NY and in
the ad world. It was a gateway into the world of advertising
being from Houston and going to GW. Having this opportunity,
is a big thing,” said Christopher Pitre, senior.
MPMS was created in 1997 to provide
opportunities for minority advertising students and
broaden employee diversity. Since its inception the
program has connected nearly 300 minority college students
with recruiters and employers. This year’s honorees
represent 35 colleges throughout the country. During
the past five years GW has had at least one student
selected for the program. The recognition is also a
boost for GW’s marketing program.
“Ten years ago I did not have
any minority students in my class to nominate and about
five years ago that changed. All of a sudden I had the
most wonderfully qualified people and I started nominating
students at that point and we had students selected
every year,” said Lynda Maddox, GW Marketing and
Advertising Professor. “We don’t have a
big advertising program and we don’t have an advertising
major and to be able to compete with students from across
the country who are majoring in advertising, I think
it’s really amazing.” Previous GW awardees
were heavily recruited by top firms and most are now
successfully working in the advertising industry.
Adette Contreras is a 22-year old
senior pursuing a degree in marketing and international
business. She is a native of the Philippines and moved
to Chicago, Illinois when she was ten years old. Christopher
Pitre is a 21-year old senior from Missouri City, Texas
(a suburb of Houston) pursuing a degree in business
with a concentration in marketing.
“As a freshman, I couldn't
decide if I wanted to be a writer, an artist, a psychologist,
or a businesswoman. Then, I discovered that, in advertising,
I can do it all,” said Contreras.
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Tongue
Twisters and Limericks for Masters Students
Why are highly successful international students practicing
limericks and tongue twisters on the weekend? To develop
the confidence and skills needed to master American
English.
This spring the Finance and Investment Club hosted a
three-day session for International M.S.F. and M.B.A
students that focused on taking their English skills
a step beyond fluency. The RITHMS SM (Rhythm and Intonation
through Musical Speech) program helps international
professionals with intermediate to advanced levels of
English accurately produce American English. “The
ability to effectively communicate gives business professionals
an added boost of confidence and credibility in the
work place,” said Jill Diamond, CEO and President
of Lanartco, Inc.
The RITHMS SM program offered by Lanartco teaches students
how to speak like an American, not in terms of vocabulary
and grammar, but in terms of rhythm and flow. “Our
program helps international speakers of English reduce
the ways in which their native rhythm and intonation
patterns get superimposed onto English,”added
Diamond. “We give them speaking tools that show
them how American English speakers chunk words together,
which syllables they emphasize in multi-syllabic words,
and where they raise their pitch for clearer focus words.
All of this is fundamental to both speaking and hearing
American English most effectively. It is a communication
skills training that is not something taught in traditional
English courses that focus on grammar and vocabulary.”
The
eleven students who participated in the program were
Ted Chiu, Korhan Erdogan, Yumiko Fujisawa, Li Huaning,
Shashi Lakkaraju, Tuan-Anh Le, Ronghong Ma, Zied Massad,
Giang Nyugen, Atsuko Suzuki, and Kenji Suzuki.
“The amount of progress participants make in the
training is amazing,” said Brian Katz, M.B.A.
candidate ’06 and president of the Finance and
Investment Club. “We compared recordings of a
phone interview done before the class with the students’
final recorded presentations. It was remarkable to hear
the change and how many of the students truly reduced
their heavy accent in just three days.”
Lanartco is an arts-based language and communication
skills training organization for Professionals. For
the last eight years, the company has been working with
Fortune 500 corporations in industries such as: Financial
Services, Pharmaceuticals, Information Technology, Cosmetics,
Diplomacy and more. Lanartco delivers Communication
Skills that establish full-body listening and authentic
expression; Language Skills for professionals working
in multi-lingual environments; and Translation &
Interpreting for private companies and government agencies.
For more information on Lanartco visit www.lanartco.com
or email info@lanartco.com.
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Washington Area Finance
Association Hosts Annual Conference at GW:
Chester Spatt Delivers Keynote Address
On March 17, the Washington Area Finance Association
(WAFA) hosted its conference at GW. The event attracted
over one hundred attendees, including press correspondents
from Dow Jones Newswire and BNA News. Chester Spatt,
chief economist and director of the Office of Economic
Analysis of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,
presented the keynote address.
The conference featured 30 papers at sessions that covered
the topics of: Mutual Funds and Portfolio Allocation;
Asset Pricing; Mergers, Spinoffs, Venture Capital; Market
Legal Issues and Regulation; Credit Markets; Derivative
Instruments; Economic and Systemic Perspectives; Corporate
Governance; Earnings and Audit. Participants from GW
included Senay Agca, Meghana Ayyagari, Chintal Desai,
Steven Hansen, Sam Nasypbek, Robert Savickas, Stuart
Umpleby, and Arthur Wilson.
WAFA is a not-for-profit corporation chartered in the
State of Maryland. The Association was initially organized
in the Spring of 1997 by a group of researchers at Washington
area universities, including Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou
and Arthur J. Wilson of George Washington University.
The mission of the Association is to promote high quality
research in finance and related fields by providing
researchers with a suitable venue for presenting their
work and receiving conscientious feedback and scrutiny
from other researchers in a cost effective manner.
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TIA Crosstalk Unites Tourism
Managers and Academic Researchers
More than 40 academic researchers from academia
and travel industry executives gathered in Duquès
Hall on March 13 for the first TIA Crosstalk Symposium.
The Travel Industry Association of America (TIA) is
the trade association that represents the common interests
of the entire U.S. travel industry.
Held
in partnership with the International Institute of Tourism
Studies/George Washington University and the Journal
of Travel Research/Virginia Tech, the goal of the TIA
Crosstalk Symposium is to improve the transfer of knowledge
and information from the academic sector to tourism
management.
Douglas C. Frechtling, professor of tourism studies,
kicked off the event with a keynote talk stressing the
spread of new knowledge to management. The TIA Crosstalk
Symposium is expected to spur additional initiatives
and opportunities for collaboration to improve management
research in tourism and hospitality.
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Intellectual
Contributions
Publications
Sanjay Jain, assistant professor of decision
sciences, published "An
Integrating Framework for Modeling and Simulation for
Incident Management,” in the Journal of
Homeland Security and Emergency Management. The
paper was co-authored with Charles R. McLean of the
National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal
agency within U.S. Department of Commerce.
Fernando Robles, professor of international
business and international affairs, co-authored an article
with Syed Akhter on “Leveraging internal competency
and managing environmental uncertainty: Propensity to
collaborate in International Markets." The article
was published in the International Marketing Review.
Refik Soyer, professor of decision
sciences, published "Bayesian Portfolio Selection
with Multivariate Random Variance Models" in the
European Journal of Operational Research. The
paper is coauthored with Kadir Tanyeri.
Stuart Umpleby, professor of management, published
"Intellektuelle Bewegungen schaffen und foerdern,"
(Creating and Promoting Intellectual Movements) in Lernende
Organization (Learning Organization) in German.
> Back to Top
Presentations
Stuart Umpleby, professor of management, presented
the paper, "Agenda Setting and Improvement Monitoring
in a University Department" at the 12th Annual
International Deming Research Seminar at Fordham University
in New York City. The paper was co-authored with Igor
Dubina, visiting professor from Barnaul, Russia during
the 2004-2005 academic year.
Getting
Ink
Theodore S. Glickman, associate
professor of management, was interviewed by Business
Week for the article "These Chemicals Are
So Deadly". Glickman stated that
"in some cases rerouting may be safer, but that
railroads resist because they might have to hand off
cargo to competitors."
Susan M. Phillips, dean and professor of finance,
appeared in the
SmartCeo feature on books business school deans
recommend for CEOs. Dean Phillip's suggested "Built
to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies"
by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras.
Academics
