Author Archives:
Ryan Dolan: Giving Is Good For Business
Ryan Dolan spoke at TEDxUniversityofNevada 2013 about the impact a business can have on a community through charitable giving. Ryan goes beyond simple giving to connecting with students personally through the projects his business developed to give money directly to local classrooms. Ryan personally visits each winning classroom to distribute a check and to talk to students about simple principles for success in both life and business. Ryan closed his talk with this quote: “A wise man once told me the more I give, the luckier I get. I like to change it to the more I give, the more successful I will be in life and business. And Dad, luck has nothing to do with it.”
After you watch the Ryan’s talk, please share your thoughts in the comment section below!
Mark Estee On The Value Of Relationships For Business
I want to share with you another video from one of our TEDxUniversityofNevada speakers, Mark Estee. In this video, Mark discusses how relationships are the key to his success. Strong relationships with suppliers, customers, employees, the community, professional advisors, and family help Mark’s business thrive.
I am a raving fan of Mark and his business, Campo Reno. Oddly enough, the first experience I had in Mark’s restaurant was not a good one. But I gave him another chance after he reached out to me personally to try to recover, and I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with Mark and his business ever since.
I hope you take the time to watch the video and hear from Mark first hand his advice for success. After doing so, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Laura Zander At TEDxUniversityofNevada
The Online Executive MBA program at The University of Nevada was the sole sponsor for TEDxUniversityofNevada. The event was held January 25, 2013 on the campus of the University of Nevada. There were 18 total speakers from the community, 100 registered participants, and about 30 volunteers. By all accounts the event was a big success.
One of the speakers in the business and entrepreneurship session was Laura Zander of Jimmy Beans Wool in Reno. In her talk, Laura briefly discusses how she started her company and has quickly grown it to a seven figure revenue stream. Laura gives examples from her own life about how the ability to dream big and stay flexible are important entrepreneurial skills.
Take the time to watch this video – it is very insightful. After you do, please share your thoughts in the comment section below!
Responsible Online Gaming
In this video from TEDxUniversityofNevada, James Kosta of 3G studios shares how the next generation of young adults will be very attracted to online gaming. Kosta identifies the “3R’s” of regulated gaming as risk, randomness, and reward, then explains how online platforms will excel at providing this experience to users. Because of this, Kosta makes a call for a fourth “r” – responsibility.
Kosta provides extensive research and insight in this 15 minute talk. Take the time to watch it and then share your thoughts in the comment section below.
No Plan Survives Contact With The Enemy
The Online Executive MBA was the proud sponsor of Reno’s first ever TEDx event, TEDxUniversityofNevada. The event was held on Friday, January 25, 2013 and featured 16 dynamic presentations in the topic areas of health, education, entrepreneurship, and bold ideas.
In this talk, Dr. Michael Morkin of Renown Health discusses the 2011 Reno Air Races Crash. Dr. Morkin helped treat patients in the Renown ER that day. In this video, Dr. Morkin describes how good planning helped the community respond effectively to this crisis. His main points are you can’t micro-manage a crisis – you have to have a team of good people and trust everyone to do their job. Thick books full of plans to cover every contingency just won’t work, because no plan ever survives contact with “enemy”, or situation is was designed to address.
Please watch the video and share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Statistics for Decision Making
My name is Bahram Adrangi, and I teach BADM 700 Statistics for Decision Making. I have been teaching a variety of statistics, econometrics, and forecasting classes for over thirty years. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to class, and hope that this will be a productive and enjoyable learning experience for all of you. I also want to say a few words about statistics and its uses and applications in life.
I am aware that statistics is often viewed as the bogeyman of most schools of business. I try in my classes, online and on ground, to dispel that image. Statistics has also been confused with probability theory, drenched in combinatorial arithmetic that students suffer through and forget about after finals. I must say that I have been able to dispel that one too. While statistics is imbedded in probabilities, it is more than esoteric probability problems. Furthermore, I cannot remember a single student of mine from schools of business who pursued a career in actuaries.
In my years in academia, which has coverd my entire professional career, I have applied some form of statistics or econometrics in my academic research, forecasting, and limited consulting. I hope I can bring my years of experience to this course. Ultimately, I hope that some of you will put these skills to immediate use. We will cover data analysis, graphing, descriptive statistics, making inferences from samples about populations, and see applications of regression analysis in almost all fields of business, from management to production and finance. Furthermore, our course constitutes a strong foundation for some to continue and be certified as quality control engineers. I have had a few students, undergraduate and MBAs, who pursued that path very successfully. I am excited to work with UNR EMBAs for the first time and hope that the excitement will be mutual.
Bahram Adrangi is professor of economics at the Robert B. Pamplin School of Business Administration, University of Portland. He received his BS in economics in 1973, his MBA in 1975; and a Ph.D. at the University of Oregon in 1982. His areas of research interest are financial economics, transportation economics and international economics. His published papers have appeared in the Journal of Futures Market, Financial Review, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Applied Financial Economics, Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, Transportation Journal, The Logistics and Transportation Review, and Journal of Industrial Organization, among others. He is also a regular presenter at economics and finance conferences nationally and internationally.
Executive MBA Mixer
We held a mixer for the first and second cohorts of students in our Online Executive MBA program on September 7, 2012. The mixer was optional, and was the first opportunity many of the students have had to meet each other and the faculty in person since we don’t require any campus visits as part of our program. Posted below are some of the photos from the event:
Students from our first cohort
Students from our second cohort
Executive MBA Director, Dr. Kambiz Raffiee
Faculty and staff of our program
Executive MBA (EMBA) Online: Program Progress
The Online Executive MBA program at the University of Nevada was approved by the Nevada Board of Regents in late spring 2011. With minimal time to market and recruit, we were able to start our first cohort in the fall of 2011 with 14 exceptional students. For the second cohort, we got another round of exceptional applications and are expecting to select 30 students to start in fall 2012.
The online EMBA at UNR continues to improve, expand, and evolve. Our program is housed in an AACSB accredited College of Business and is taught by many of the same faculty that earned our part-time MBA a top national ranking. Check us out – we think you will find that we offer an excellent program that is also an exceptional value.
If you are interested in joining our 2013 cohort, be sure to apply early!
Related Posts:
Are You Prepared For The Online Executive MBA Program?
Executive MBA Class Assignment: Evaluate Super Bowl Ads
My marketing class in the Executive MBA program at UNR held discussed the effectiveness of the recent Super bowl commercials. They were tasked with describing how advertisers segment their market and discuss the effectiveness of the strategy. Their conclusions were very interesting.
Mass marketing as a strategy is a difficult one. Consumers today expect more one to one marketing; a one size fits all approach is problematic in many cases. Some products, like beer, aren’t really differentiated, except for a brand. Mass marketing works well with products like this, where they are largely undifferentiated and fill a basic need. Other products, such as computers and even cars are increasingly customized based on customer preferences.
The class focused on one particular ad: the Clint Eastwood Halftime in America Chrysler commercial. (see it on YouTube at http://youtu.be/_PE5V4Uzobc) Despite not really knowing who was sponsoring the commercial until the end, the students in the class wisely identified several key segments the commercial was targeted. Using Clint Eastwood helped reach multiple generations in the audience but really positioned the Chrysler brand particularly well to an older generation. Despite the international audience of the game, the commercial was targeted to an American audience evoking a sense of loyalty and patriotism to products made in the United States. Many students noted the political overtones in the commercial but didn’t feel it took away from the experience.
The students in the UNR EMBA program are very bright and experienced. They handle discussion topics like this easily and they teach me something new each week.
James McClenahan, MBA
Jim McClenahan is the Director of Management and Executive Programs for Extended Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, responsible for more than 150 professional development courses annually as well as several major conferences.
He serves as the Treasurer to the Northern Nevada Chamber of Commerce, chair of the Schools to Careers committee for Washoe County and on the advisory board for St. Albert the Great Catholic Church. He completed his MBA at the University of Nevada, Reno in 2006.
Decisions Executive MBA Students Face
The decision to enroll in an Executive MBA program is one rife with difficult questions, the answers to which may well determine the extent of your success as a future executive. Most people entering Executive MBA programs are young professionals aspiring to reach greater heights in their field; they want the education to temper their passion for leading a business in the right direction, but it’s not easy choosing the best program or teaching style. Business schools around the country design Executive MBA programs in any possible format: online education, classes that emphasize peer involvement, mentorships from industry professionals—the list goes on. I wish all MBA students could take the outstanding classes offered at various Executive MBA programs, but that’s hardly a realistic aspiration.
Let’s address some of the biggest decisions a student has to make when you look through potential Executive MBA programs.
Classes taught online or in person?
The difference between online and in person education is one of the biggest issues concerning graduate business degrees in general. There are strong arguments to be had on both sides, but I think the decision really hinges on whatever works for your unique lifestyle. If you’re simultaneously interning at another business or even running your own small enterprise on the side, you might see great appeal in taking an online Executive MBA program that offers a relatively freer schedule. You might be the lone wolf student who thrives on the challenge of completing coursework on your own, relying on your own philosophy of leadership to guide them through lessons and hypothetical management scenarios.
On the other hand, you might thrive in an environment where you’re among your peers, bouncing ideas and strategies off one another. The idea of working alongside a professor with real world experience leading a business and a team of trained professionals might appeal to you if you’ve never worked with someone like that before. If you’re looking for greater involvement and interaction from your faculty and classmates, taking your MBA classes in person is obvious the right choice for you.
Fulltime or balanced with work?
Once you’ve decided on the atmosphere of your Executive MBA program, it’s time to decide the extent to which you want to involve yourself in classwork. Some students prefer to get their degree out of the way as quickly as possible so they can enter the working world immediately. These ambitious students usually cram as many classes as they can per semester, trying to graduate in record time. You might prefer the lightning round MBA path, but there are more steadily paced options.
Though it’s tempting to choose the quickest path to your Executive MBA, not every student has the luxury of dropping everything in their life to go back to school. It takes a serious time commitment to complete an MBA, and you might not have the option of sacrificing your day job for it. If that’s the case, then I highly recommend completing your Executive MBA over a number of semesters, giving yourself only as much classwork as you can handle. There’s no use overloading yourself if you have obligations outside of class.
Where to find the best connections
And finally, you want to be careful about choosing the Executive MBA program that has the right connections for you to advance your business career. This isn’t as simple as choosing a business school with the most famous faculty; it’s a matter of researching business schools with professors and lecturers with experience and knowledge that’s relevant to your field of interests. If you have ambitions to found a startup tech company, you want to look at schools with faculty that have successfully founded small business venture in that field. Applying anywhere else would be to miss the most important aspect of graduate education in business: meeting the right people, absorbing their industry advice, and applying it to your own venture.
By-line:
Alvina Lopez is a freelance writer and blog junkie, who blogs about accredited online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: alvina.lopez @gmail.com.
Bret Simmons
UNR EMBA
