The Black School of Business is celebrating another successful academic year! Throughout Spring 2024, we have continued the positive momentum from the fall semester and achieved significant progress in our strategic initiatives. In this edition of the Director’s Update, we’re excited to highlight our students’ latest achievements, from engaging company visits and conference presentations to prestigious honor society inductions. Our faculty members continue to be recognized nationally and internationally. Our outreach programs, such as debate tournaments and business competitions, introduce the youth in our region to exciting career opportunities within the business world. With generous support from industry partners and sponsors, our centers remain vibrant hubs of activity for community engagement and idea exchange to drive regional progress.
The dedication of our supporters, such as yourself, ensures the ongoing success and growth of the Black School of Business. We invite you to join us in celebration of our accomplishments and look forward to our continued collaboration in the future.
Sincerely,
Dr. Ozgun Demirag
Interim Director, Black School of Business
Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management
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Kyle Chalupczynski, lecturer in management information systems, is a recipient of the 2023-2024 Jack P. Royer Active and Collaborative Learning Award. This award recognizes Commonwealth Campus faculty and staff who demonstrate innovative teaching practices to enhance student learning.
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Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Jeff Pinto, professors of management, have been recognized among the top 2 percent of the world’s most-cited researchers, as compiled by Stanford University.
- Our faculty members are utilizing summer grant support from the school to advance their research endeavors. In 2024, this support is enabling 15 research projects, including initiatives aimed at scholarly work with a positive societal impact.
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Students Grow Their Professional Networks |
Our May the Fork Be With You business etiquette dinner was back by popular demand and quickly sold out. This event teaches students which fork to use and how to carry a dinner conversation, and also provides tips on how to network in new situations. Students practiced their new skills at a networking session with alumni and professionals and a formal dinner.
These skills came in handy for students who attended company visits, such as:
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Spring Student Trip to Chicago. Students had the opportunity to visit the Chicago Board Options Exchange, Initiative Marketing, Chicago Bulls, Logistics Plus, and the Federal Reserve’s Money Museum. Moreover, they connected and networked with alumni during a formal dinner.
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Our finance students had several opportunities to expand their network, including:
- A trip to Pittsburgh, where they visited Schneider Downs Wealth Management Advisors finance department, First Commonwealth Bank, and Federated Hermes.
- A networking event at the Erie Club sponsored by the CFA Society of Pittsburgh.
- A visit with Erie Insurance Group’s investment team.
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The Black School of Business is proud to be one of 600+ business schools across the nation to host a Beta Gamma Sigma business honor society chapter. On April 12, we recognized and honored 20 top performing students, including Behrend business students, World Campus students obtaining Behrend’s Finance degree online, Master of Project Management students, and Master of Business Administration students.
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- Our Executive in Residence program continues to thrive and benefit our students. Highlights include a discussion on Innovations in Marketing and IT Project Management with Kim Kaercher and Melissa Gustafson from Erie Insurance. Jeremy O’Mard from IBM also hosted a Cyber Security Careers Panel.
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- Our chapter of the Delta Sigma Pi (DSP) Business Fraternity continues to earn top marks. This year, the chapter was recognized as a Chapter of Excellence and received the region’s Most Outstanding Alumni Relations award. Congratulations to Michaela Florence (shown in photo), a third-year Marketing and Business Economics student, who was recognized as DSP’s Northeastern Provincial Collegian of the Year.
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- Sophia DiPlacido, a fourth-year marketing and psychology student, attended the 2024 Society for Organizational and Industrial Psychology (SIOP) annual conference in Chicago, where she presented her academic research project, “Right Now, Wrong Then: How Moral Flexibility Shapes Unethical Behavior via Bottom-Line Mentality.” Her research, conducted under the supervision of Dr. Joongseo Kim, was supported by the Black School of Business Innovation Through Collaboration program and Behrend’s undergraduate student research grant. Sophia is also a recipient of Behrend’s 2024 summer fellowship research grant and the John and Jane Herbert Undergraduate Research Award, recognizing the high quality of her undergraduate research.
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- Hayden Adams and Zane Lewis competed in a finance planning competition hosted by the CFA Society Pittsburgh, CFA Society Philadelphia, and the FPA-Pittsburgh Chapter. Hayden (pictured at left) was a top 10 finisher out of 250-plus submissions from 11 universities.
Congratulations, Hayden and Zane!
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- We were pleased to once again be the host site for the McDowell and Mercyhurst Lake Erie Invitational Speech and Debate Tournament (photo on right) and the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) Competition with more than 350 students in attendance.
- Our Women in Business event was a huge success, attracting participants from 18 high schools. Students learned about business majors, heard from female professionals, toured the campus, and ate lunch at Dobbins Dining Hall, always a favorite with high school students.
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The Center for Financial Literacy received a $25,000 EITC grant from Erie Insurance. This grant will enable the Center to expand its outreach and provide financial literacy resources to high schools within Intermediate-Unit 5 and Intermediate-Unit 6, benefiting more than 3,000 students. Additionally, the grant will support sponsorship of students for the Junior Achievement BizTown simulation session.
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The Center for Family Business held its first conference, titled "The Entrepreneurship of Family Business" on May 15 and 16 with nearly 100 participants in attendance.
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Our K-12 outreach website, which provides middle and high school teachers with lesson ideas, overviews on business majors and careers, and classroom activities, added new content.
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- The Project and Supply Chain Management program has established a partnership with the SAS Institute, offering students the opportunity to earn a Tier 1 SAS Academic Specialization credential as they progress through the program curriculum. The Finance program is now a participant in the Certificate in ESG Investing Recognition Program by the CFA Society.
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Members of the Black School of Business Advisory Board, alongside other professionals, presented on Next Generation Workforce Dynamics: Effective Multigenerational Strategies in Recruitment, Retention and Engagement. This engaging event attracted guests from both the university and the broader community.
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Dr. Charity Tinofirei, the Head of Operations for East Asia at the United Nations, delivered a seminar on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals to faculty and staff from the college.
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We were honored to host Tesha Nesbit ’93, founder and principal of A Phoenix Rising Coaching, and Dr. Jamie Campbell, associate dean for diversity enhancement at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business, who presented “Collaborative Approaches to DEIB: Bridging Academia and Industry.”
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