B-School Bulletin: Students Band Together at UVA, & More

As Charlottesville Recovers From Violent Weekend, Alumni Band Together To Help

News from Virginia Darden School of Business 

“As neo-Nazis and white supremacists converged on Charlottesville for this weekend’s protests, which left a Charlottesville woman and two state troopers dead and dozens more injured, University of Virginia alumni began organizing in person and online, ready to help the school and town they call home.

“Cameron Webb, a 2005 UVA graduate living in Baltimore, was eager to get to Charlottesville to join his wife, a student in UVA’s Darden School of Business executive MBA program, and sister, a fourth-year student. He jumped in the car on Saturday with friend and fellow alumnus Gregory Jackson, both of them alarmed by the violent turn the protests had taken.

“’I was frustrated and scared for the students and for my family living in Charlottesville,’ Jackson said. ‘I was also discouraged because I felt like this was unfairly tarnishing the image of the school that I call home.’

“During the course of the three-hour drive from Baltimore to Charlottesville, Jackson and Webb brought more than 200 alumni together on the messaging app GroupMe, all talking about what they could do to help students and correct inaccuracies in the national conversation.”

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UVA Darden Community Embraces ‘Moment Of Truth’ After Weekend Violence

“The University of Virginia Darden School of Business community came together on Monday, 14 August to discuss the racism, hatred and violence that took place after white supremacists descended on the city of Charlottesville the previous weekend — and to plot a path forward.

“The community dialogue took place two days after the so-called Unite the Right rally resulted in a series of violent clashes that thrust Charlottesville and UVA into the national and international headlines. The conversation included many Darden students who have just returned to the School after summer internships and members of the newest Class of 2019, many of whom are just getting to know Charlottesville.”

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Be Yourself (Within Reason) And Other Job Search Survival Tips

News from Harvard Business School

“If you think looking for a job in your profession is difficult, try being an accounting Ph.D. looking for work in academia.

“Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Ethan Rouen advises job hunters to start a physical exercise regimen to prepare, be ready with a healthy-eating strategy, and develop a hobby — all to face weeks on the road interviewing at far-flung institutions. Rouen teaches in the Accounting and Management Unit, having recently completed his own job hunt, which brought him to Harvard.

“Although his advice in the just-published The Accounting Rookie Job Market: A Practitioner’s Guide is targeted at young accounting Ph.D. job seekers looking for teaching and research positions, we thought it contained interesting advice that could help out many job-seekers. We asked Rouen about his job tips in this email Q&A.”

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New WSB Dean Brings Plans For Collaboration, Innovative Technologies

News from Wisconsin School of Business 

“As a scholar, she recently ranked in the top 2.5 percent of researchers published in the most prestigious information systems journals and has received more than a million dollars of grant funding from organizations such as the National Science Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. As a leader, she founded a center to encourage women in technology, and holds advanced degrees in industrial engineering and decision sciences and engineering systems.

“So it might come as a surprise to discover that Anne P. Massey, Wisconsin School of Business’s new Albert O. Nicholas Dean, carries a three-year-old phone that keeps alerting her the storage is full.

“’People seem to find it amusing that I’m a bit of a technology laggard,’ Massey says with a laugh. ‘I’m very intrigued by how things work, but I don’t feel any need to be a lead adopter.’”

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Jane Chen: Be Courageous Because You Will Fail

News from Stanford Graduate School of Business

“One out of every 10 babies in the world is born premature. One million die each year, many due to lack of warmth. Jane Chen, who earned her MBA in 2008, wanted to change that. ‘No baby should die from being cold,’ she says.

“This core value was the center of her team’s project for Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Design for Extreme Affordability class in 2007. Chen and her team designed an inexpensive incubator that offered a low-cost way to keep premature babies warm. Their inspiration came from the concept of a tiny sleeping bag that heats up to regulate a baby’s body temperature. Embrace Innovations, born out of the Center for Social Innovation, has saved more than 200,000 premature babies and hopes to increase that number to 1 million.

“But from the start, Chen faced challenges. First, her team’s truck got a flat tire on the way to a small Indian village where they planned to share their product. Next, Embrace Innovations nearly lost its funding. And working with foreign governments proved difficult. But Chen took a ‘never give up’ attitude that has helped her company prosper.”

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Bigger Than The Grasshopper And The Ant: A Macroeconomic View Of Saving For Retirement

News from Virginia Darden School of Business 

“Many have sounded alarms to a looming crisis in retirement savings in America, citing statistics like these:

• The median amount a working-age American family has saved for retirement is only $5,000.
• Nearly half of working-age Americans (45%) have no personal retirement savings.
• Americans stow away just 3.8% of their disposable income for retirement — a remarkable drop from several decades ago, when the rate was over 10%.

“Frequently, these issues are approached with a micro perspective on the problem of individuals’ undersaving, and standards are set to encourage the shortsighted grasshopper of the fable to be more like the ant, who gathers provisions in the summer of its working life in order to gain comfort and safety in the winter of retirement. To encourage people to save more, various policies are in place: tax breaks on 401(k) contributions, penalties for early withdrawals from those accounts, a cap on capital gains income taxes, and a maximum level of income ($118,500) on which employees are required to pay into Social Security at the standard rate of 6.2%.”

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