Faculty members Harold Welsch and Helen LaVan found their callings to become professors while earning their DePaul MBAs.
DePaul business professors have long been known for incorporating the real world into their teaching and scholarship. In their classroom discussions and research, they explore emerging trends and what they mean for business and society. For management professors Helen LaVan (MBA ’69) and Harold Welsch (BUS ’66, MBA ’68), the seeds of this teaching philosophy were planted when they were DePaul MBA students themselves.
LaVan was taking night classes in the MBA program and working days in the human resources department of Montgomery Ward when executives at that Chicago-based retailer tapped her to work with a team on a special project. She and her colleagues were tasked with researching solutions for the violent unrest that had erupted in Chicago and other American cities in the wake of the 1967 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1968 Democratic Convention. “They wanted to be good corporate citizens, and they were trying to help prevent the riots from happening again,” she explains. The report advocated for better jobs and educational opportunities, among other remedies, to address the roots of violence.
“The fact that I was singled out to work on this was kind of amazing,” LaVan says. It solidified her interest in pursuing an academic career in business from the human resources perspective. One of only four women in her MBA class, LaVan became the first woman graduate assistant at the college. After she finished her DePaul MBA and earned a PhD in organizational behavior from Loyola University of Chicago, she returned to DePaul to teach human resources. This year, she celebrates her 49th year on the faculty.
It was the business school’s first computer class that led Welsch down a groundbreaking academic path. The use of computers in business “was new, innovative, something that appeared from nowhere,” he remembers. The college’s faculty “had the foresight to realize that we needed to harness this for creating some good, and that got me thinking, how do you harness innovations? If the computer is one of the new things happening, what other new things are just around the corner?”
Entrepreneurship was that next big thing, Welsch realized. He finished his MBA, joined DePaul’s management faculty and completed a PhD at Northwestern University. In 1973, he began working with small-business clients to test and apply some of the theories he taught in his classes. In the early 1980s, he founded DePaul’s entrepreneurship program, one of the first in the country. Since then, the nationally ranked program has produced hundreds of successful entrepreneurs who are harnessing innovations to address a wide range of business and societal challenges.
Earning an MBA was a rare accomplishment in the 1960s, Welsch says, and he treasures his degree. With an MBA, “you stood out as a candidate for the career fast track in your chosen endeavor for whatever organization you selected.”
“After graduating from DePaul with a bachelor’s degree in business in February of 1965, I immediately entered the MBA program at DePaul. All classes were in the evenings. During the day I worked as a staff accountant at J.P. Varkala & Co., a small CPA firm on the South Side.
“Among the professors I remember best was Ed Cohen. He taught a graduate financial accounting class that was outstanding. His classes were interesting and very challenging. Between taking him as an undergraduate, the CPA Review and graduate accounting classes, I had Ed for five accounting classes. It provided an excellent background. Later, when I earned a doctorate in accounting from University of Kentucky, I was ahead of my classmates in accounting knowledge and understanding, all because of Ed.
The DePaulia student newspaper highlighted the impact of the Blizzard of ’67 on students.
“(I also remember) Helene Ramanauskas-Marconi. Helene taught the capstone accounting class…She required us to present the results of our research in front of class, which was unusual for the time.
“The two years in the MBA program went fast because I was working in public accounting at the same time. My last class was with Marketing Professor Jack Goldstucker. Getting to the final exam for this course was a chore because it was the night of the Blizzard of ‘67 and Chicago was shut down. I had to hitch hike to the final exam. Only about a third of the class was able to get to the exam.”
— John Ahern (BUS ’65, MBA ’67)
Associate Professor of Accountancy & MIS
Director, Richard H. Driehaus Center for International Business
DePaul University
Sebastian Cualoping (BUS ’77, MBA ’81), former CEO of Ampac International, a worldwide design and plastic packaging company,
Sebastian Cualoping’s short commute to DePaul’s MBA program in downtown Chicago was the first leg of a long adventure in global business. Cualoping (BUS ’77, MBA ’81), former CEO of Ampac International, a worldwide design and plastic packaging company, was a young professional fresh from earning his bachelor’s degree at DePaul when he entered the MBA program. His dream was to found his own international business.
“I decided to pursue my MBA at DePaul part time so I could work during the day,” he recalls. “DePaul being right in the Loop and offering most of its MBA classes at night gave me the opportunity to do that.”
When he began the part-time evening MBA program, Sebastian Cualoping’s dream was to found his own international business. He discovered the foundation he needed in the courses International Finance and Money & Banking.
Two courses, International Finance and Money & Banking, had a big impact on Cualoping. They were taught by James A. Hart, an economics professor for more than 40 years who also served two stints as dean of DePaul’s business college. Hart, who died in 2003, “recognized the importance of international business before ‘globalization’ became a household word,” according to the Chicago Tribune. Under his leadership, DePaul became one of the first business schools in the country to offer an MBA in international business in 1962, one year before Harvard University.
Cualoping remembers Hart as a supportive teacher whose lessons still resonate today: “His classes were outstanding. His method of teaching was empirical, and I was able to apply what I learned to my business.”
DePaul has a very strong network in Chicago. Pursuing an MBA is not just taking classes, but also building relationships and networking with your fellow students. – Sebastian Cualoping
Beyond the knowledge and skills he learned in the classroom, Cualoping, who serves on the business college’s advisory council, says being part of DePaul’s large alumni community has had a lasting impact on his career and life.
“DePaul has very strong networking in Chicago, especially in the business and finance sectors,” he says. “Pursuing an MBA is not just taking classes, but also building relationships and networking with your fellow students.”
By Robin Florzak
Read about DePaul MBA graduates from other decades:
“On my way to night classes, I would stop at the McDonalds on State Street between Adams and Jackson. One night,(civil rights leader) Jessie Jackson, in the midst of his unsuccessful presidential run, stopped in for a burger and, seeing my books and note pads, came by my table and chatted for a while. I just don’t think you get experiences like that outside a school that is not in the heart of the Chicago Loop.
Happy 70th anniversary, DePaul University MBA Program. Thank you so much for all you did for me, and here’s wishing you many, many more great years.”
Paul Gunning credits the DePaul MBA program for helping him develop skills to create a strong company culture and cultivate disciplined processes for turning revenue into profit.
In 1992, Paul Gunning (MBA ’99) was driving toward Vail, Colo., when his 1969 Volkswagen bus broke down in the middle of Chicago. Gunning, who had just finished an internship in Washington, D.C., was planning to move to Colorado with friends. That plan never came to fruition, and Gunning ended up calling Chicago home.
The Cleveland native now works in advertising as president and chief operating officer of DDB Advertising U.S., overseeing the agency’s offices throughout the United States. Founded in 1949, the global advertising agency is owned by Omnicom Group Inc. and serves major brands such as MillerCoors, Capital One and State Farm.
Gunning’s advertising career started when he began working as an account executive for Frankel & Co. in 1996. His employer offered to pay his MBA tuition. Since Gunning earned an undergraduate degree in history, he took night classes to earn math credits at Harold Washington College before enrolling at DePaul.
“It took a lot of drive to complete (my MBA) but I remember fondly working in groups with other people who had full-time jobs and learning about their jobs, their industries and their roles,” he says. “I liked meeting folks who were in banking, health care, finance and other industries.”
Gunning had a knack for sales and began working for Tribal Worldwide, an agency that is also owned by Omnicom, after completing his MBA in 1999. Thanks to his advanced degree and ability to win new business, Gunning was named CEO of Tribal and oversaw the agency’s financial, strategic and operational leadership globally.
“I was good at sales,” he recalls. “I landed a lot of accounts and, because I was bringing those in and using the skills from the MBA, (I was able) to run them quite profitably.”
Prior to becoming president and COO, Gunning served five years as president of DDB Chicago. Under his leadership, DDB Chicago brought in new accounts including MillerCoors, Symantec and Scotts Miracle-Gro, among others. Gunning credits the DePaul MBA program for giving him the skills necessary to lead.
Those skills include the ability to cultivate both people and profits, he says. “There’s a lot of competition for a qualified workforce, so you need to have a strong culture but also disciplined processes to make sure you can turn that revenue into profit. A lot of those skills were developed because of the DePaul program.”
“Probably one of my fondest memories was going to France and Germany (on a study abroad seminar) with Professor (Ashok) Batavia from the Department of Economics. Professor Batavia was well known among the students for his ability to teach, especially the lessons that were being taught in the world, as they were unfolding in the news. He was a renaissance man and had so much charisma; he spoke five languages, he had multiple post-graduate degrees, he was an international traveler, yet he was so humble and generous with his knowledge. And I remember sitting on a Euro rail train on that trip, talking to him about how to optimize the game of black jack and just sitting there thinking, ‘Is there anything this guy cannot do?’ He was challenging me to use this skill that I really hadn’t used in a long time.
I just remember thinking, ‘He was living his life on his terms.’ I remember thinking to myself this is the way that I should carve out my path – to grow a set of skills and optimize them to the highest level that I possibly could and then use those tools not just to work in corporate America but to carve my path as to how I wanted to live my life. And that was really a distinct memory while I was studying for my MBA at DePaul.”
— Chris Mah (MBA ’96)
Advanced Manufacturing Engineering Product Manager
Xylem
Malik Murray (BUS ’96, MBA ’04) credits DePaul alumni mentors with helping him find success.
When Malik Murray (BUS ’96, MBA ’04) graduated from DePaul’s undergraduate finance program, his mother, Linda Murray, a former high school principal with two master’s degrees, would not give Murray his diploma.
“When I saw my parents at the conclusion of the ceremony, my mom took my diploma and said, ‘You’re not done yet,’” Murray recalls. “So in her mind she was already thinking about me going to graduate school.”
Recruited by former DePaul Blue Demons basketball coach Joey Meyer (CSH ’71), Murray attended DePaul on a full basketball scholarship and, like his father, Leonard Murray, who is a judge, had a natural gift for athletics. Along with his fellow teammates, Murray had dreams of playing in the NBA.
As an undergraduate, Murray interned at First Chicago Futures after being introduced to the industry by Brett Burkholder (BUS ’83) and worked every summer in the eurodollar pits at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Burkholder, an eighth-round NBA draft pick, showed Murray he could earn an NBA salary working in investment finance.
“I have so many examples of experiences where people have shown me what was possible in life, in business, and personally,” says Murray. “I took it in like a sponge.” Murray had worked for eight years in finance when his employer, First Chicago Bank, now part of JPMorgan Chase, told him the company would subsidize his tuition. Most of his peers in the industry had MBA degrees, so Murray knew he would need a graduate degree to continue advancing in his career. Although he looked at other graduate programs, DePaul, a “city school,” felt like home.
“Ultimately, I decided to come here and it’s a decision that, hands down, is the best one I made at the time,” says Murray, who now works as senior vice president of institutional marketing and client services at Chicago-based Ariel Investments, which is the first African American-owned investment management firm in the country.
I’m in a stage of my life where I really want to think about the people behind me, because I think that’s very important. It’s not enough to just look back, you have to reach back. I’m a big believer in that.” – Malik Murray
True to the Vincentian values he learned at DePaul, Murray gives back to the community and helps others find their own path. He’s a graduate of the Greater Chicago Leadership Fellows Program and sits on the boards of St. Ignatius College Prep, where he attended high school, and Ariel Community Academy. He is also director of the National Association of Securities Professionals.
“I’m in a stage of my life where I really want to think about the people behind me, because I think that’s very important,” he says. “It’s not enough to just look back, you have to reach back. I’m a big believer in that. So while I’m kind of entering a window of having some professional success, I also realize that life is much bigger than me, and I welcome the responsibility to help future generations to have the opportunity to participate fully in the American economy.”
For Adam Robinson (MBA ’03), an MBA was key to launching his own business.
Hireology CEO Adam Robinson credits the real world perspectives and network he built through his DePaul MBA program with helping his business grow.
Robinson took management Professor Harold Welsch’s (BUS ’66, MBA ’68) new venture formation class; in it, he built the business plan for Illuma, a recruitment company that Robinson ran for six years. Robinson later co-founded Hireology, a software company that helps organizations improve and systemize their hiring processes. In addition to overseeing Hireology, Robinson is a nationally recognized keynote speaker, an author, a podcast host and an Inc. Magazine columnist.
Hireology was No. 4 on Crain’s Chicago Business 2018 Fast 50 list. In 2017, the company expanded from 111 to 129 employees. Robinson currently serves as CEO.
“The value (from DePaul) was in the network that I built,” Robinson says. “Some of my first connections to entrepreneurs were through the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center and guest speakers Dr. Welsch brought in. Here were people who learned these things and accomplished things I aspired to accomplish.” He credits the network that he built through his DePaul MBA program with helping his business grow.
Robinson studied real estate finance at DePaul and learned the skills that allowed him to manage finance and accounting for the first four years of running Hireology. “I was a history major at (the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign),” he says. “I had never taken an accounting or business course in my life. Most first-time business owners struggle with accounting and finance, and I struggled less because I had that education.”
“What I liked most about the program were the people,” he says. “Most, if not everyone in the class, were working. They were in careers, and they were contributing real perspectives and calling on their own real-world experience, (and) that contributed to the class. That made a big difference.”
By Jaclyn Lansbery
Read more about DePaul MBA grads from other decades:
Elizabeth Stigler says her MBA in entrepreneurship helps her to think creatively and strategically, which is useful for succeeding in any role.
Chicago native Elizabeth Stigler (MBA ’13) originally aspired to a career in publishing when she graduated with an English degree from a small liberal arts college in 2005. For five years, Stigler held internships at the University of Chicago Press and Poetry magazine and later worked for the Poetry Foundation managing public events.
After moving to a small town in Colorado for a few years, she realized she missed Chicago. “I decided that I really wanted to go to business school and be more marketable,” Stigler says. “I thought that given where I want to take my career and what I want to do, I really needed an MBA.”
Currently Stigler serves as managing director of external relations at The Chicago Network, a nonprofit organization that unites leading professional women from a range of industries throughout the Chicago area. The role, she says, allows her to combine her English background and the business acumen she gained from her MBA coursework at DePaul.
A huge draw for Stigler in choosing to attend DePaul was the college’s Coleman Entrepreneurship Center, which launched in 2003. She also liked the college’s central location in the Chicago Loop.
“Another aspect that I really liked was the cohort structure, which offered an effective networking mix to me as a fulltime student,” she says. “I had the benefit of a close cohort during the first year, and from that solid foundation, my network grew as we took classes alongside part-time students who were new to us and who were already active in the workforce.”
Stigler pursued an MBA concentration in entrepreneurship. “We can all be entrepreneurs in some way, even if you’re not an ‘entrepreneur’ launching your own business,” she says. “Part of my role (at The Chicago Network) is thinking creatively and strategically about what partnerships we should be seeking in the community and making those connections. Just being innovative and thinking on my feet as far as what we could be doing differently is how DePaul informed how I think now in my role.”
In addition to meeting lifelong friends through her cohort, Stigler credits DePaul with giving her the confidence to speak knowledgeably with CEOs. She also recalls an operations class she took with Nezih Altay, a professor who specializes in supply chain management, for understanding how seemingly disparate elements, such as communications infrastructure and humanitarian relief logistics, are intertwined.
Stigler says, “There are all these surprising connections that my MBA background allows me to make on a daily basis as a result of the classes and exposure to all of the great professors I had at DePaul.”
DePaul University founded its current Master of Business Administration (MBA) program with little fanfare 70 years ago. The new degree received only a brief mention in the minutes of a business faculty meeting preserved in the Richardson Library archives. “Graduate work for the M.B.A. will begin in September and will be thirty hours with no thesis,” the minutes record. “Candidates will major in Accounting, Economics, Finance, Management and Marketing …”
Forty years earlier, Harvard University launched the first MBA program, seeking a scientific approach for teaching management at the dawn of America’s corporate age. DePaul initiated its MBA during the post-World War II economic boom, and its program differed from others by enrolling working professionals and emphasizing a practical business education—distinctions that remain today.
While the introduction of the DePaul MBA may have been modest, its impact over the past seven decades has been momentous. Among the program’s more than 25,000 alumni are generations of chief executives, board members, presidents, accounting partners, bankers, investment managers, marketing strategists, economic forecasters, real estate developers, entrepreneurs and other professionals who have served as the backbone of Chicago business. The DePaul MBA also shaped the futures of 41 professors and business professionals who are members of the business college’s faculty today. The program’s reach extends beyond Chicago, too. DePaul MBA alumni now live and work in all 50 American states and 43 countries.
We mark the 70th anniversary of the DePaul MBA through stories of alumni from each of these seven decades, which you can read below. You can also contribute your own memories at go.depaul.edu/MBA.
“There’s no better group of individuals to inspire the next generation of Driehaus alumni than our past alumni” — Dean Misty Johanson
July marked the one-year anniversary of Misty M. Johanson’s tenure as leader of the Driehaus College of Business. She was recently named a “Notable Woman in Chicago Education” by Crain’s Chicago Business, which highlighted her role in promoting strategic enrollment growth, student success and industry-college engagement. An award-winning teacher and prolific scholar, Johanson joined DePaul in 2009 to help establish the college’s School of Hospitality Leadership, which she directed for four years. She previously served as an associate dean of the college, overseeing areas that include academic quality, accreditation and alumni/industry relations.
In this Q&A, Dean Johanson looks back on her first year as dean and ahead at the college’s future, which will be guided by a new strategic plan that will be completed this fall.
How does your expertise in hospitality leadership and human resources influence your approach to leading the college as dean?
When you look at hospitality organizations, such as hotels, many offer similar products and experiences. The ones that succeed differentiate themselves by offering more personalized levels of service and value than their competitors, and by focusing on specific markets. We’re trying to do something similar at the college by transforming how we do business in higher education.
We’re moving from a transactional delivery of programs to a much more service-oriented model. We are focusing on delivering value and establishing long-term relationships with students to build a satisfying experience for them. This means personalizing our programs and services, as well as offering stackable degrees and professional education that serve students’ needs at various stages of their careers and lives. We’re building a portfolio of student segments we serve rather than focusing on maintaining a rigid portfolio of program offerings.
Our service orientation means that, for example, with our cohort MBA programs, instead of having separate people providing recruitment marketing, advising, development and coaching, we’re having a dedicated person provide all of these services for specific segments of students.
We’re also strengthening our relationships with industry to support this model. We are forming partnerships with companies and associations to deliver MBA and MS degree programs onsite for their employees. This serves both the employees’ career advancement goals and the organization’s workforce development plans.
At the undergraduate level, we are partnering with major Chicago employers to create mentoring and career development programs. This adds value for our undergraduate students because it provides experiential learning and skills that enable them to place in good positions after graduation, while also adding value for our partners who are seeking to access to career-ready graduates.
In short, we see ourselves as a concierge of education.
Dean Johanson chats with members of the college’s advisory council, which includes prominent alumni and business leaders.
What’s different about Generation Z, the generation the college is currently recruiting, compared to past generations of students?
Students in this generation have grown up as “screenagers” – they are immersed in technology. They are not high-tech experts necessarily, but they are accustomed to communicating and in some ways learning through high tech phones and gadgets. And this has created a challenge in higher ed for developing their soft skills, especially their written and oral communications skills, which are essential for succeeding in any career field.
The other part of this is that this generation is looking for a lot of hands-on support, especially when they are going away to college. This fits well with our move to a more service-oriented culture. They seek personalization, high-touch engagement and for their needs to be met. So, it’s important that our advising offices, faculty and academic units know who each student is, where they need to go academically and what skills they need to develop. By keeping our classes small and the experience personalized and high-touch, we are adding the value that this generation – and their parents – look for in a university.
When a parent asks ‘Why should I send my son or daughter to study business at DePaul?’, how do you respond?
DePaul has an unbelievable business and liberal studies curriculum that provides analytical, technical and leadership skills. But other universities could say the same thing. So the question is, what differentiates us? What is our value proposition?
At the college we have an opportunity to add value through our centers and institutes. They have different missions and purposes, but most offer the opportunity to support the student and the student experience by engaging alumni and industry partners with students, faculty and the life of the college.
What we’re doing is developing new programming at these centers and institutes in the form of co-curricular plans for students that will go along with their curricular plans. These plans support what students are learning in the classroom with mentorships, internships and hands-on learning experiences involving our industry partners, and soft skills development.
The model for this is the Marriott Foundation Center for Student Development and Engagement at the School for Hospitality Leadership, which was endowed in 2016. Students take introductory classes in hospitality leadership, hotels, etc. while getting internship experience and skills development. They are learning skills such as how to get a job, how to review their résumés, how to make the 30-second elevator speech, etiquette training so they know how to properly dine at work events and use social media properly. As their academic scores grow and their internship experience deepens, the center matches students to additional soft skills training.
This has come to fruition beautifully; these students have extremely high learning outputs and extremely high placement rates because they are graduating with technical and analytical skills as well as career skills and experience. The center’s success also has helped us to expand the school’s advisory board to include the who’s who in the field because of the high caliber graduates we are producing.
Our plan is to expand this model to other relevant centers at the college. Our fundraising and engagement priorities are to seek support from alumni and donors who want to be part of these efforts to engage our students and faculty with industry and alumni through our centers. We’ve already had success creating two new student success hubs with the launch of the Keeley Center for Financial Service in our finance department and the Office of Student Success and Engagement at the School of Accountancy. Now we’re turning our attention to creating success centers in other areas, including real estate, marketing and leadership.
Dean Johanson prepares for the college’s faculty and staff strategy kick-off meeting in September with Professor of Management Erich Dierdorff, co-chair of the college’s strategic planning committee.Professor of Management Nezih Altay; Dean Misty Johanson; Kellstadt Academic Success Office Administrative Assistant Karla Brooks, and Assistant Dean for Financial Management Helen Conroy show their support for the college’s strategic plan creation.
What are the highlights from your first year as interim dean and then dean?
In addition to the student success initiatives I mentioned earlier, we are focusing on innovative initiatives such as the recently launched Women in Entrepreneurship Center. The institute supports women entrepreneurs through education, business plan competitions, and research into how to improve the investing climate for women-owned startups. It’s a great initiative that has already attracted support from an extremely strong board and we’re continuing to raise funds for it.
I’ve also made it a priority to support diversity and inclusion at our college. I’m reaching out to develop leadership opportunities for our women faculty and faculty of color.
This fall our enrollment was solid, supported by our strategies to build relationships with students and partner with companies to offer onsite graduate programs. The Doctorate in Business Administration just graduated its first class. We launched a new Master’s in Business Analytics degree this fall and enhanced our analytics course content throughout the curriculum to provide students with skills that are sought-after in the marketplace. We’re looking to create an analytics center.
It’s been a fantastic year with more to come.
Tom Berry, finance professor and associate dean for faculty and student success, and Dean Johanson prepare to attend DePaul’s 121st Academic Convocation to kick off the school year this fall.
What’s in store for the college in its new strategic plan, which will be completed for launch in January 2019?
Over the last year the university completed its strategic plan, Grounded in Mission, and did it differently than the university ever done before, not only setting baseline metrics and goals but also aligning dollars to support initiatives within the strategic plan.
At the college, I pulled together a group of advisory board members, who are alumni and industry leaders, students, faculty from all ranks, staff and college leadership to discuss how to do our strategic plan. With guidance from the president’s office, we built our framework based on the higher education challenges and opportunities that are happening not only in the business college but in higher education as a whole. We looked at challenges in the economy and factors such as there being fewer college-aged students in Illinois. We also looked at how DePaul is positioned — we need to compete with lower-priced public institutions as well as private universities that have similar academic profiles. We need to understand how this impacts DePaul and how we should position ourselves to add value through our strategic plan.
We came up with three defining pillars that are the basis of our plan — supporting academic excellence, engaging the Chicago business community and alumni,elevating the reputation of the college. We’re focusing on our value proposition, and I believe we have a really great opportunity to address our challenges and create value through the greater service orientation and the student success centers mentioned earlier, among other strategies.
We’ve come up with six key initiatives, and this fall units throughout the college have been asked to create strategic tactics to carry out these initiatives, align with the pillars, and move us into the future.
Dean Johanson addresses business alumni at the annual Driehaus College of Business and Kellstadt Graduate School of Business fall reception in September.
How do you see alumni and the business community contributing to the achievement of the college’s strategic goals?
There’s no better group of individuals to inspire the next generation of Driehaus alumni than our past alumni. We want to connect alumni to current students to provide mentorships—have alumni talk with them about what their challenges were, what pitfalls to look out for, and how to take advantage of opportunities in their future careers.
Mentoring programs are the hallmark of the student success centers we are developing. We want to provide more opportunities for one-on-one engagement between alumni and students, as well as alumni and industry engagement with student groups, center activities and with faculty members. We need to have deeper alumni engagement with the college and offer better mentoring than before, and encourage “hire DePaul” better than we ever have before — and offer more reasons for the alumni to be engaged.
We’re looking at ways to expand the success of Alumni University by offering more professional development and enrichment opportunities for alumni online. There’s a demand for continuing education among alumni and we’re exploring ideas for creating ongoing seminars.
We also want to expand our corporate connections, especially with Chicago organizations, that employ a lot of DePaul alumni. We’re looking at what these alumni are doing to engage with each other and the college — are they hiring DePaul (graduates) and are they seeing the college as a source of degrees and continuing education that will help them advance?
We’re looking at how we can take these initiatives to the next level—how can we collectively add value and create a win-win for our students and our alumni.
“After graduating from DePaul with a bachelor’s degree in business in February of 1965, I immediately entered the MBA program at DePaul. All classes were in the evenings. During the day I worked as a staff accountant at J.P. Varkala & Co., a small CPA firm on the South Side.
