Inside Dartmouth Tuck’s First-Year Project

A recent FYPGO took students to Peru where they met with a client to learn more about their business objectives. Tuck photo

News at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business 

“Students at Tuck have plenty of unique opportunities to apply what they learn in the classroom to the real world.

“Enter the First-Year Project (FYP): their first chance to draw on knowledge accumulated during the fall and winter terms to help a client solve a complex business problem. Some students even use the opportunity to test a business idea they have.

“As the director of the FYP course, Becky Rice works closely with students, helping them choose clients and projects that will achieve their personal and professional goals, and stretch them outside their comfort zone. Here in an interview, she discusses the different opportunities available for students, from an overseas nonprofit in Nepal to a wool shoe company based in Silicon Valley.”

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“Trading Floor, 1981.” Ready for the New Era in Financial Markets: Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb. Courtesy of the Lehman Brothers Records, Baker Library, Harvard Business School

Lessons From Lehman Brothers

News from Harvard Business School

“Snapshots from an exhibition. A 1957 portrait in the ‘partners’ room’ at Lehman Brothers is the very image of mid-century finance: white, male partners, in fine suits, surrounded by a felled forest of wood paneling, high ceilings, and heavy, formal drapes. A cartoon from the December 1957 Fortune magazine, a cutaway of the headquarters at 1 William Street, depicts ‘A Wednesday Morning at Lehman Brothers,’ with such telling details as the ‘five telephone operators…busy placing the first of 250 to 350 daily long-distance telephone calls,’ as 30 clerks, on a different floor, mail corporate dividend checks to Lehman customers.

“Scroll forward a half-century, by which time trading has grown enormously in importance (the exhibition shows a crowded trading floor in 1981, above). Lehman Brothers, with record earnings of $4.2 billion, earns Fortune’s rank as ‘most admired securities firm.’”

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University of Michigan Master of Accounting graduates who worked on projects in Detroit in 2017 are (left to right): Shannon Galligan, Amber Blanks, Elkena Steele and Angie Pae. Image Credit: Catherine Shakespeare

Finding Lost Income Tax Revenue In Detroit

News from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business

“As Detroit emerged from the largest municipal bankruptcy in 2014, city officials knew they needed to boost collections of income tax — the city’s top source of revenue.

“Increasing tax collection meant finding ways to improve processes and close the tax gap. Detroit finance officials connected with Cathy Shakespeare, associate professor of accounting at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

“Shakespeare teaches a class of Master of Accounting students each winter term that focuses on helping the city of Detroit with tax research and other projects assigned by Odell Bailey, director of Audit & Compliance for Detroit’s Office of the Treasury and the former auditor general of Detroit Public Schools.”

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Darden student Melissa Stefaniak will graduate in May with her startup dessert business, Single Baked Sweets, well underway. Photos by Dan Addison, University Communications

Could This Darden Student’s Startup Be The Next Dessert Craze?

News from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business 

“The idea first came to Melissa Stefaniak when she was baking in her small New York City apartment, which had precious little room for flour and sugar, let alone standing mixers or cookie sheets.

“’I love to bake – it’s always been a creative, meditative outlet for me,’ the University of Virginia Darden School of Business student said. ‘But it was just my husband and me in this tiny apartment, and we really didn’t need a whole tray of brownies around.’

“And so, as Stefaniak stirred brownie batter, frosted cakes and balanced flour precariously on her counter, an idea started to form.”

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Collaborations between journalists and NGOs forge new avenues for mutual value creation – and social impact. INSEAD photo

How Strategic Alliances Can Strengthen Investigative Journalism

News from INSEAD

“Once an American specialty, investigative journalism has become a global movement — and as it expands, it is continuously short on resources. The decline of the mainstream news industry is a major reason. But while the media downsized, NGOs were growing fast and undertaking investigative projects of their own. For us, the question on the table is no longer whether, but how investigative reporters can collaborate with NGOs.

“The main hurdles for reporters concern ethics and credibility. NGOS are considered biased, by their very nature. In this view they can provide information to journalists, like any other source. But they are not media, and so not credible.”

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