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Price Newsletter - August 2021

A photograph of the exterior of Price Hall with the words - August 2021 Newsletter, The University of Oklahoma Price College of Business

Welcome

Corey Phelps - Dean, Price College of Business

Friends,

 

As summer draws to a close and we prepare for the start of the academic year, we are cautiously optimistic about the upcoming schoolyear, despite the recent resurgence of COVID. We are excited about the return of students to our classrooms and hallways, and we’re hopeful about in-person events to help provide the best learning and social experiences for our students. We continue to follow the university’s OU Together COVID protocols, including encouraging vaccinations, indoor masking in high-density settings, and testing. We are also preparing for potential contingencies by following OU’s faculty instructional continuity guidance for in-person courses. OU also recently launched its new Healthy Together app to make COVID-19 screening and reporting more convenient for the Norman campus.

 

Our first priority is to create spaces where students, faculty, and staff feel safe, and we will continue monitoring the changing landscape of pandemic protocols to help make Price College as safe as possible. We managed last year’s challenges extremely well, and I am confident we will do so again this academic year by working together and sharing information.

 

Coming Soon: A New Strategic Plan

I am especially excited to share the new strategic plan for Price College with you in the coming weeks. In late July, we wrapped up the third stage of the planning process with our strategic consultancy partner, Juniper. During the process, we engaged hundreds of members of the Price College community, including students, faculty, staff, alumni and other friends. Our final stage will be the rollout of the completed plan to our most important stakeholders – you – as well as the general public this fall. Please stay tuned over the next few weeks. I can’t wait for you to help us realize Price’s future together.

 

At Price College, we don’t simply react to and overcome challenges as they arise, we lead, even during extraordinary times. Our strategic planning effort is a perfect example. We could have concluded, quite reasonably, that dealing with a global pandemic would require too much time and attention to focus on the future of the College. But this would have come at the cost of ignoring the dramatic changes happening in our competitive environment. Instead of viewing the pandemic as a threat and being myopic in our response, we decided to treat it as an opportunity to focus on and prepare for the future. As Dean, I’m extremely fortunate to work with an executive leadership team and a community of faculty and staff who make this possible.

 

Balancing the competing demands of the urgent present with the importance of preparing for the future is a hallmark of good leadership. This is the mindset and skillset we seek to instill in our students. Our world is increasingly uncertain, complex and challenging. We need leaders like those we are developing at Price College who can simultaneously manage for the present and the future. It’s not a matter of doing one or the other well, it’s a matter of doing both.

 

In closing, I want to reiterate that your support, especially on the verge of our new strategic plan, is more important than ever. We are grateful for your partnership now and in the future. Thank you for sharing in our success, and please enjoy the latest news from Price College.

Corey Phelps signature

Corey Phelps
Dean
Fred E. Brown Chair in Business
Professor of Entrepreneurship


Several students sit at a table in class listening intently

Making education affordable and accessible is core to our mission at OU and Price College. Please consider giving to our Momentum Scholarships, which support undergraduate students, or to our Do More Sooner® Scholarships for MBA students. Both scholarships allow students to focus more on their studies and less on financial concerns while obtaining the education necessary for success.

 


Photo of students walking through the hall at Gene Rainbolt Graduate School. Text overlay reads #55 Fortune Magazine's Best MBA Programs - Price College of Business, Gene Rainbolt Graduate School of Businss, The University of Oklahoma

MBA Premieres on Fortune Best List for 2021

The full-time MBA program has debuted at #55 in the nation in Fortune Education’s best MBA programs for 2021. The ranking methodology looked at “programs that not only see their graduates head into good jobs right out of the gate (with high starting salaries) but also have a track record of placing alumni into the highest echelons of corporate America.”


Caitlyn Driskell

Accounting Student Receives PCAOB Scholarship

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has announced their scholars for the 2021-22 academic year, among which is Price College BMAcc student Caitlyn Driskell, who will receive a $10,000 scholarship. The PCAOB Scholars Program was created to identify eligible students and to award funds to students in accredited accounting degree programs. 


Photo of Wendy Wilkinson, with the AWESOME logo, acheiving women's excellence in supply chain operations, management, and education

MSCM Student Receives AWESOME Scholarship

MSCM and MIS student Wendy Wilkinson was awarded a $5,000 AWESOME Excellence in Education scholarship. Achieving Women’s Excellence in Supply Chain Operations, Management, and Education (AWESOME) created the scholarship to provide women enrolled in a full-time supply chain program with the opportunity to attend their symposium and conference.


Cordney McClain

Cordney McClain Recognized by Journal Record

Cordney McClain, director of Diversity and Inclusion, has been named one of The Journal Record’s Achievers Under 40 for 2021. A special reception honoring him and 44 others was held Thursday, Aug. 12. McClain, who is also known for his spoken word poetry and community outreach and advocacy, is the only OU staff member who received such an acclaim.


Ron Bolen (pictured second from left) with rescue group in Nevada Inyo National Forest

Ron Bolen Recovering Well After Hiking Incident

After a recent hike in Nevada’s Inyo National Forest left Ron Bolen lost for nearly five days, the entrepreneurship and economic development professor is recovering well and preparing to teach this fall. A Reddit forum drove numerous strangers to help search the area for him, and his inspirational story of survival made national news. We’re grateful for his healthy return!


group photo of the EMBA in Aerospace and Defense cohort visiting Washington, D.C.

EMBA in A&D Cohort Visits Washington, D.C.

Price College’s first EMBA in Aerospace and Defense cohort visited Washington, D.C., this summer as part of one the program’s residency weeks. The team met with Azerbaijan Embassy counselor Aykhan Hajizada (shown here), Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, and former White House administration members. They also visited the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.


Veronica Collazo

Advancement Team Welcomes New Officer

Veronica Collazo has joined the OU Foundation as an Advancement Officer supporting the Price College of Business. A graduate of the Drucker School of Management in Claremont, Calif., where she earned her MBA, Collazo brings an extensive track record of driving business success and building authentic relationships with university alumni, parents, and committed partners.


Ana Bolino, Sherad Cravins, and Kylie Harrison

Price Announces New Appointments

This summer, Price College announced the following new appointments: Ana Bolino, former director of PCOB Study Abroad programs, has been named executive director of Undergraduate Programs; Sherad Cravens, who joined the MSCM faculty in 2019, is the new director of the Center for Student Success; and Kylie Harrison is the new director of Business Communications.

 


Russ Browder

Russ Browder was awarded the Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division’s 2021 best dissertation award, sponsored by the National Federation of Independent Business.


Ashley Newton

Ashley Newton’s article, On the Threshold of Compliance Public Charities and the Public Support Test, has been published in the American Accounting Association’s journal, Accounting Horizons.


Marcus Wolfe

Marcus Wolfe’s co-authored article, Shock and awe: Loudness and unpredictability in Twitter messages and crowdfunding campaign success, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Innovation & Knowledge.


Mark Bolino

Mark Bolino’s co-authored article, Bringing the Great Outdoors Into the Workplace: The Energizing Effect of Biophilic Work Design, was published in the Academy of Management Review.


Will Drover

Will Drover’s paper, Founder passion, neural engagement and informal investor interest in startup pitches: An fMRI study, has been selected as the ‘Most Influential Paper’ by the Academy of Management’s NEU Division (Organizational Neuroscience).


Tom Lumpkin

Tom Lumpkin served as guest presenter at the DCU National Centre for Family Business’s STEP Project Global Consortium in Ireland on the topic, “Family Firms as Civic Wealth Creators.”


Stella Seyb

Stella Seyb has received a Best Paper Award on a General Topic of Entrepreneurship, presented at the recent 2021 Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference.


Andrew Cuccia

Andrew Cuccia’s co-authored article, The Impact of Tax Incentive Structure On Taxpayers’ Retirement Savings Decisions, has been printed in the American Accounting Association’s Journal of the American Taxation Association.



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University of Oklahoma
Price College of Business
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Norman, OK 73019-4004
(405) 325-3611

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