California Lutheran University — Upward – School of Management Community Newsletter

by Community Contributor • February 4, 2020 • Comments Off

FEBRUARY | 2020

California Lutheran University’s School of Management is happy to share a selection of exciting news, updates and upcoming events to our communities in Southern California and beyond. Please reach out to us if you are interested in being involved in our programs or simply wish to learn more about them.

Celebrating the Achievements of our Faculty! It’s our pleasure to report on the winners of our annual School of Management Advisory Council Awards for Outstanding Achievement. This year’s award for Research and Scholarship went to Professor Ran Lu-Andrews, Program Director, Business Administration. The award for Service went to Mike Panesis, Executive Director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. And our third award, for Teaching, went to Judith Richards, Senior Lecturer for Marketing, Negotiations and Conflict Resolution. We are truly proud of the achievements of our faculty. To read their bios and see our other award recipients, go here.

Providing Value to our Communities Through Economic Forecasts. We held our annual Ventura County Economic Forecast with Matthew Fienup, Executive Director, Center for Economic Research and Forecasting (CERF) and Dan Hamilton, Program Director, Master of Quantitative Economics, who delivered a realistic outlook on the regional, state, and national economies. The event also included an inspiring presentation on post-millennial Latinos and a panel discussion under the motto “An Honest Conversation”. Although the news for the local economy was troubling – no or negative growth in GDP, a net outflow of people, and a shrinking labor pool – the feedback from the audience was enthusiastic. With 260 people in attendance, it was the largest of the forecasting events we’ve had. We also held the 2020 Annual San Fernando Valley Economic Forecast event, which was produced in collaboration with the San Fernando Valley Business Journal where we drew a large crowd of close to 150 business leaders from the Valley. While the news of predicted slowing growth in the Valley (that is still outpacing Ventura County’s, LA Metro’s, California’s, or the US’s) was mixed, the mood in the room was good. See clucerf.org for more information.

Fond Memories of their Time at Cal Lutheran. We recently held an alumni dinner in Beijing, China and another in Bangkok, Thailand. It was great to see how our international alumni succeed and how they are crediting Cal Lutheran with their success. Inspired by their education in California, four alumni who were in attendance have started their own businesses in China! While there, we also hosted a dinner for more than a dozen of the top educational counseling agencies in Beijing and discussed strategies for continuing our partnerships and worked on strengthening the relationships. In Bangkok, we drew about 30 of our alumni together, most of them having graduated from our MBA program in the past decade. Our alumni all hold very fond memories of the university and Thousand Oaks, and enjoyed swapping nostalgic stories about their favorite professors and places.

Community Partnerships in Solving Problems. Recently, two of our program areas cooperated on an exciting project for the Ventura County Lodging Association (VCLA). Under the leadership of program directors Chia-Li Chien (Financial Planning) and Stefan Cosentino (Hospitality and Tourism Management), teams of students collaborated on a specific business challenge, the short-term cash management for VCLA. In a two-stage process, students and program directors worked with the VCLA Board of Directors to create a Request for Proposals, and then evaluated submitted proposals. The project culminated in board presentations and recommendations for a highly satisfied VCLA board. A short video on the project is available here.

Scholarships Awarded Across our Programs. The Central Coast Chapter of the California Society of CPAs (CalCPA) presented its annual scholarship awards and six out of nine awards were given to students from our undergraduate Accounting program! We also held a reception for the recipients of the Overton scholarships to students in the Masters in Quantitative Economics program (MSQE) and honored our generous donors, represented by several members of the extended Overton family. Additionally, we celebrated the recipients of two scholarships to our Executive MBA in Austria program which were provided by one of Austria’s major newspapers, Kleine Zeiting. At the recent California Industry Lodging Association conference, the association announced a scholarship award for one of our Hospitality and Tourism Management (HTM)students, who received a $1,000 scholarship from the Los Angeles chapter of the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI). The School of Management certainly is grateful for its incredible community that continues to make us proud – especially our students.

Introducing You to Two New EIR’s We have a new Executive-in-Residence (EIR), Nick Shauer (left), and a new Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Michael McCrary. Nick currently leads human resources at Tutor-Perini, a $4.5B, 8,700 employee, industry-leading construction and engineering business. Michael is the founder and CEO of PureSpectrum, one of the fastest-growing consumer insight tech firms which is a modern-day sample automation platform based in Los Angeles which was started at our own Hub101 in 2015! Entrepreneur- and Executive-in-Residences’ are volunteers who guest speak in courses, mentor students, and help us with access to their networks. In Michael’s case, his involvement with the School of Management goes farther and deeper – he has already hired several Cal Lutheran interns and graduates, and he has supported the School and Hub101 financially. Nick has keynoted and facilitated talent management seminars at SOM. We are very grateful that both have accepted this new role at the School of Management. Read their full bio’s here.

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS

Dazhi Chong (MSIT) (together with Yan, He, and Shi ) published the paper “Rank and Location-based Security Mechanism for Mobile Networks” in the International Journal of Signal Processing Systems, 7(2): 43-48.
Sabith Khan (MPPA) has published the article “Toward a Theory of Professionalization of the Saudi Nonprofit Sector” in the Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership (Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 82–101).
Mary Jo Shane ( along with the Pearson Library’s Mondschein, H. and Patel, T.) published the chapter “An interdepartmental collaboration to target research and writing challenges of international graduate students” in the book “Supporting today’s students in the library: Strategies for retaining and graduating international, transfer, first-generation, and re-entry students” by Tran, Y. and Higgins, S. (Eds.), Chicago, IL: ACRL Press (in press).
Dazhi Chong (MSIT/Data Analytics, together with Yi, Jia, et al) published the paper “An IoT-based risk warning system for smart libraries” in Library Hi Tech, 37(4): 918-932.
Chia-Li Chien’s (Director, Financial Planning programs) case study “A case study of the Succession Planning in Ensemble Financial Planning Practice” has been accepted for publication by SAGE Business Cases.
Mary-Jo Shane (together with Ana Azevedo) published “A new training program in developing cultural intelligence can also improve innovative work behavior and resilience: A longitudinal pilot study of graduate students and professional employees” in The International Journal of Management Education, Vol. 17, No. 3 (2019).
Sabith Khan’s (Program Director, MPPA) article “Leadership, Professionalization and Impact: Lessons from a national survey of Nonprofit Leaders in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” was accepted for publication by the Voluntary Sector Review.
Armin Kammel (Adjunct Professor, EMBA in Europe) published “Praktischer Materialienband – Investmentfondsgesetz und AIFM Regelwerk” (in German, “Practitioner Guide on the Investment Fund Act and the AIFM Framework”).
The paper “Negotiation competence: Improving student negotiation self-efficacy”, co-authored by Judy Richards, Veronica Guerrero and former faculty member Sarah Fischbach has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Education for Business.
Carl Oliver (Adjunct Professor, MBA) published the article “Tattling Syndrome: What to Do About It” in the January 2020 issue of ethikos: The Journal of Practical Business Ethics, Vol. 34, No. 1.

UPCOMING EVENTS

The local events that the SOM hosts and/or participates in are great places for networking with current Cal Lutheran students and faculty, as well as our greater SOM community!