13 PhD Students Graduate from Smith School

13 PhD Students Graduate from Smith School

The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business congratulates the 13 doctoral candidates who graduated with their PhDs on May 20, 2013. Smith’s PhD program was recently ranked 17th in the world by Financial Times (January 2013).

Abrar Al Hasan
Information Systems
Dissertation Title: Information Transparency and User Behavior in Emerging Online Marketplaces: Empirical Studies of Social Media and Open Innovation Markets

Seth Carnahan
Strategic Management
Dissertation Title: Employee Departure from Organizations: Three Empirical Essays Examining Causes and Consequences

Yu-Jen Chen
Marketing
Dissertation Title: Investigations of Factors that Affect Consumers’ Online Word of Mouth Behavior

Robert Felix
Accounting and Information Assurance
Dissertation Title: Financial Reporting: A Look at Different Settings

Brad Greenwood
Information Systems
Dissertation Title: Pokes, Prods, and Pushes: Information Availability and Decision Making in Ambiguous Environments

Qiang Li
Strategic Management
Dissertation Title: Antecedents and Consequences of Insiders’ Equity Share and Selling IPO: Three Essays

James Edward Matherly III
Marketing
Dissertation Title: Observer Interpretation of Signaling in Consumer Decision Making

Mahka Moeen
Strategic Management
Dissertation Title: Reconfiguration Strategies for Entrepreneurial Entry and Incubation of Nascent Industries

Ali Pilehvar
Operations Management/Management Science
Dissertation Title: Essays on Studying the Sellers and Buyers Challenges in Business-to-Business Auctions.

Yixin Qiu
Information Systems
Dissertation Title: Institutional Logics, Indie Software Developers and Platform Governance

Onur Tosun
Finance
Dissertation Title: Essays on Executive Compensation, Capital Structure and Corporate Governance

Shun Ye               
Information Systems
Dissertation Title: Reciprocity in Online Markets: Empirical Studies of Auction and Barter Markets

Dobin Yim
Information Systems
Dissertation Title: Online Networks and Pro-Social Behaviors: Empirical Studies of Charitable Donations and Environmental Sustainability

About the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business
The Robert H. Smith School of Business is an internationally recognized leader in management education and research. One of 12 colleges and schools at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Smith School offers undergraduate, full-time and part-time MBA, executive MBA, MS in business, PhD and executive education programs, as well as outreach services to the corporate community. The school offers its degree, custom and certification programs in learning locations in North America and Asia.

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University of Maryland’s Center for Social Value Creation Expands Grassroots.org Social Venture Consulting Program to MBA Students Nationwide

University of Maryland’s Center for Social Value Creation
Expands Grassroots.org Social Venture Consulting Program
to MBA Students Nationwide

College Park, Md. – January 10, 2011 — The Center for Social Value Creation at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business is expanding its Grassroots.org Social Venture Consulting Program in partnership with Grassroots.org, an organization that provides free technologies and resources to nonprofits. The innovative experiential learning program matches MBA students with nonprofit organizations around the country for semester-long consulting projects. Make Change! Trust provided a $120,000 grant to expand the program and the Center for Social Value Creation is inviting students nationwide to participate.

Since 2006, the competitive program has served more than 75 organizations and involved nearly 300 students, providing MBAs with practical consulting experience and the opportunity to give back to their community. Make Change! Trust has supported the program since its inception.

“This program provides a valuable service to nonprofits around the country and gives our students the hands-on experience coming up with innovative solutions to solving social issues,” said G. “Anand” Anandalingam, dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business. “This type of experiential learning is what all MBA students need to develop as the next generation of leaders. We’re happy we can help provide this beyond Smith to students around the nation.”

The consulting projects range from creating marketing campaigns, to designing donor outreach, to building financial models. U.S. nonprofits served by Grassroots.org apply to the program each semester to receive the consulting work from MBA student teams at no charge. Currently, the popular program can only serve about 10 percent of nonprofits that apply, but Make Change! Trust hopes that number will increase with the expansion of the program. The trust and the Center for Social Value Creation share the goal to provide more nonprofit organizations with mission-critical project work while providing a skills-based volunteer opportunity to more MBAs across the country.

“We are thrilled to be able to provide a greater number of nonprofits with capacity-building expertise,” said Melissa Carrier, executive director of the Center for Social Value Creation. “We’ve had tremendous success with our students and this program and we’re excited to replicate that success with MBAs at other schools.”

Smith’s Center for Social Value Creation and Grassroots.org will support other business schools that apply to take part in the program with a database of projects to match with student consulting groups, templates for successful outcomes, and a knowledge toolkit. The center will also provide ongoing advising to participants, much in the way center staff and faculty currently advise Smith student teams. Each consulting project is managed and completed by a group of three to five students.

The Grassroots.org Social Venture Consulting Program fulfills one of the main missions of the Center for Social Value Creation, which was launched in September 2009 to engage students in courses and experiential learning programs to enable them to become global leaders who understand how to use business as a vehicle for both economic prosperity and transformative social change. The center also supports faculty research in related areas.

About the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business
The Robert H. Smith School of Business is an internationally recognized leader in management education and research. One of 12 colleges and schools at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Smith School offers undergraduate, full-time and part-time MBA, executive MBA, executive MS, PhD and executive education programs, as well as outreach services to the corporate community. The school offers its degree, custom and certification programs in learning locations in North America and Asia.

About Grassroots.org
Grassroots.org serves as a catalyst for positive social change by leveraging modern technologies and best business practices. Grassroots.org provides nonprofit organizations with free valuable technologies and resources to increase their efficiency and productivity. Grassroots.org’s goal is to adopt 10,000 nonprofit members, and to provide each of them with an average of $10,000 per year worth of services at no charge (for a total savings of $100 million per year!). Today Grassroots.org offers nonprofits free technology and business services available through its “Nonprofit Toolbox” and currently serves more than 3,500 nonprofits worldwide!

About Make Change! Trust
Make Change! Trust is a charitable fund developed by Internet entrepreneurs and philanthropists devoted to using technology to improve the world. MC!T makes donations to nonprofit organizations that are empowering other nonprofits and the underserved through innovative uses of technology. MC!T has donated more than a million of dollar to technology-focused organizations serving others, and directly to nonprofits fighting disease, homelessness, poverty, and supporting other humanitarian causes.

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Smith Students Attend Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

Smith Students Attend Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business finance faculty members David Kass and Elinda F. Kiss and eight Smith undergraduates recently traveled to Omaha, Neb., to attend the annual shareholder meeting for Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate holding company chaired by Warren Buffett.

Kass, who writes a blog about Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway, described the event as an “eye-opening” experience into the investment world for the students, while Kiss said it was a great opportunity for students to learn what a shareholders meetings is like.

Teresa Russell, a junior finance-information systems major and sustainability minor who attended the meeting, agreed with that assessment.

“The meeting itself was very informative and inspired me to learn more about the stock market and how to make smart investment decisions,” she said. “I also enjoyed getting to know the professors and the classmates who attended the trip on a more personal level.”

“The real benefit … comes from just being in that environment,” said Pavan Rangachar, a junior finance major who also attended the meeting. “Just being surrounded by intelligent people from the investments industry while listening to a legendary investor speak will teach interested students a lot.”

Rangachar said he and another student got in line for the meeting at 2 a.m., four-and-a-half hours before the doors were opened.

“We were third and fourth in line out of the entire conference of about 40,000 people,” he said. “The next five hours of waiting were just cold and bitter, but more people started to come, and it was just a period of time where you talk to a lot of other people who are interested in the same thing as you: investing.”

By getting in line that early, they were able to get seats for everyone close to the front of the room. Kiss said being able to sit so close was a highlight of the trip for the students.

Russell said she enjoyed Buffett’s sense-of-humor. “At the beginning of the meeting, after showing a few video clips, music was playing and Warren was dancing around to a Berkshire version of YMCA; I thought it was great that he doesn't take himself too seriously.”

The presentation also included a film featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger in which Buffett attempts to get a part in “Terminator 5,” Kass said.

Although they did not get a chance to meet with Buffett or Berkshire Hathaway’s Vice-Chairman Charlie Munger, the students were able to meet a few “hot shots” of the business world, Russell said.

While dining at Gorat’s, one of Buffett’s two favorite restaurants, the night before the annual meeting, they were seated adjacent to a table that included Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times and CNBC, Doug Kass, founder of hedge fund Seabreeze Partners Management (no relation to Professor Kass), and Mario Gabelli, founder of GAMCO Investors, each of whom chatted and took photographs with the professors and students.

Kiss said the students were thrilled to get “up close and personal” with people they’ve heard about in the investment community.

“It was pretty impressive that he would even talk to us, so that alone was surreal in itself,” Rangachar said regarding meeting Gabelli.

He said he plans to return to Omaha each May to attend the annual meeting. “A friend of mine and I have started looking at booking plane and hotel tickets for next year, and we encourage anyone else who is interested to do the same,” he said.

“Overall, I'm glad that I attended the meeting because it refocused and motivated me to be more proactive about my business education both inside and outside the classroom,” Russell said.

Rangachar also had some advice for students who travel to the annual meeting in the future. “I would advise students with a business card to bring a few copies,” he said. “You will exchange plenty as you meet many investors who either run their own asset management firm or work for a large Wall Street firm. I personally met many other investors, some of whom who live in the DMV area, that looked for interns as well.”

Kass has closely studied Buffett since the early 1980s and is frequently interviewed in business publications as an expert on Buffett. This was the eighth time he has traveled to the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, and the third time he has traveled with a group of students from Smith. He plans to continue the student trips in the future. He has also twice taken Smith MBA students to Omaha for private meetings with Buffett.

Kass’s notes about the meeting are posted on his blog.

Peter Haldis, MBA Candidate 2014, Office of Marketing Communications

About the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business
The Robert H. Smith School of Business is an internationally recognized leader in management education and research. One of 12 colleges and schools at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Smith School offers undergraduate, full-time and part-time MBA, executive MBA, MS in business, PhD and executive education programs, as well as outreach services to the corporate community. The school offers its degree, custom and certification programs in learning locations in North America and Asia.

View the original article here