Category Archives: Notes from the Dean

Dean Misty Johanson | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

Spring usually marks the end of the academic calendar at our college, but this year, it represents a new beginning. We recently finalized the Driehaus College of Business 2024 Strategic Plan: Connection, Culture & Commitment, and our community has sprung into action to start implementing its ambitious initiatives. The plan’s goals are grouped around strengthening these three pillars of our success:

CONNECTION to the Chicago business community and our global alumni network.

CULTURE of academic excellence within our faculty, staff and student community.

COMMITMENT to student success and the high-value experience.

As alumni, you play a vital role in helping our college achieve its strategic goals, especially those associated with our first pillar of success. Our city is home to many options for business education, but the Driehaus College of Business is distinctive among them. Founded in the heart of Chicago’s business district more than a century ago, our college has built its reputation on producing career-ready graduates who make business work in “The City That Works.” Today, more than 67 percent of our 66,888 business alumni live and work in the Chicago area.

Our strategic plan calls for our college to strengthen its bond with this extensive, local network by better engaging alumni in the life of our college. Our aim is to build a community of alumni leaders who inspire our students by guest-lecturing on campus, opening their organizations to experiential learning and job shadowing, and mentoring the future business leaders studying at our college. We plan to invite more of you to serve on our advisory boards to help guide our curriculum and programming. We also want to partner with you to host alumni networking, professional development, social and fundraising events, as well as connect you and your organizations to our centers and institutes in mutually beneficial ways. Together, we can firmly establish our college as a top choice for Chicago business education, talent recruitment, thought leadership and professional engagement.

The other pillars in our strategic plan challenge us to enhance the market-responsiveness of our programs, expand student services that support success, facilitate the recruitment and retention of top scholars, and create new cutting-edge business centers and institutes, among other goals. Our Vincentian values also commit us to providing students from diverse and financially disadvantaged backgrounds access to a high-quality, holistic, real world college education. Reaching our goals in a mission-focused way means that we will be seeking more resources to support our strategic initiatives.

What energizes me most about our new strategic plan is meeting students who embody our college’s mission. That mission pledges us to “develop socially responsible leaders and managers who are prepared to add immediate value in today’s diverse and globalized environment.” In our cover story, you’ll meet four of these young leaders who are using their DePaul business education to make a difference today on our campus, in business and in our community. These young leaders inspire us to embrace our role as Chicago’s business school.

Misty Johanson
Dean
Driehaus College of Business

Driehaus College of Business Dean Misty Johanson | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

Here, our students are transformed into socially responsible leaders through a real-world education and experiential learning opportunities involving the Chicago business community and our strong alumni network.”

If you’ve ridden on public transportation or driven in Chicago over the past six months, you’ve likely seen billboards featuring DePaul’s new brand campaign, Here, We Do. The campaign succinctly expresses what’s uniquely rewarding about the DePaul educational experience. It proudly says that at DePaul, students learn by doing in an urban environment full of opportunity, inspired by Vincentian values that encourage our graduates to make a difference in the world.

This message applies especially well to our business college. Here, our students are transformed into socially responsible leaders through a real-world education and experiential learning opportunities involving the Chicago business community and our strong alumni network.

Our college recently expanded these opportunities by creating two new student success centers modeled after the Marriott Foundation Center for Student Development and Engagement, which opened at the School of Hospitality Leadership two years ago. We have established the John L. Keeley Jr. Center for Financial Services, which will encompass academies supporting finance students (see page 2), and an Office of Student Success and Engagement for accountancy majors with support from alumnus Kent Klaus. The goal of both initiatives is to engage industry partners and alumni mentors with our students to ensure that students not only gain business expertise, but also master communication, networking, teamwork and leadership skills that are essential for professional and personal success.

Our college’s centers and institutes also embody Here, We Do. In July, we opened the Women in Entrepreneurship Institute at the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center to promote the growth and sustainability of women-founded businesses through education, research and incubation initiatives. The institute is supported by an outstanding committee of Chicago women business leaders who believe that here, we can do more to help women entrepreneurs succeed.

Our belief in Here, We Do also is part of our future plans. This fall, we will finalize the college’s strategic plan for the next six years. The three pillars of this new plan are to strengthen our connections to the Chicago business community, alumni and donors; expand our student success initiatives that add value to earning a DePaul business degree; and deepen the culture of excellence in our academic community. The plan also challenges us to examine our graduate program mix to ensure that it is addressing the evolving needs of our students. As we celebrate the 70th anniversary of our flagship part-time MBA program, our college also is reaching new student markets through on-site corporate MBA programs, specialized master’s degrees and a doctorate in business program, which produced its first graduating class in June.

Together we are embarking on our 2024 strategic plan with a Here, We Do spirit. To learn more, I invite you to read this Q&A, where I’ll discuss where our college is headed under our new strategic plan.

Misty Johanson
Dean
Driehaus College of Business

Dean Misty Johanson | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

Together, we can strengthen our mission to transform students into socially responsible leaders ready to thrive in a diverse and global business environment.

What should the Driehaus College of Business Achieve by 2024?

Over the next few months, our college community will answer this question by creating a new strategic plan that will define our vision and goals for the next six years.

Our college’s path forward will be guided by the priorities set by the university’s 2024 strategic plan, which will be finalized soon. Shaped by insights contributed by faculty, staff and students across campus, the draft plan is scheduled to be presented by DePaul President A. Gabriel Esteban, PhD, to the university’s Board of Trustees for their approval this month. I encourage you to visit president.depaul.edu to read more about this strategic plan.

While the university’s road forward is still being mapped, it’s clear that both our university and college strategic plans must embrace change. Our institution’s business model is facing unprecedented challenges caused by national demographic and competitive trends that are depressing enrollments and revenues. At the same time, stagnant family incomes and government funding uncertainties are threatening college affordability. In this environment, we must make bold plans to ensure the long-term sustainability of DePaul’s mission.

I believe we must emphasize strategies that improve the value proposition and mix of the academic programs we offer. We must create new programs that address market demands and contribute revenues that sustain our future, while also seeking efficiencies that free resources to invest in our most successful initiatives. We must expand our efforts to promote student academic achievement, retention and career readiness. We must continue to develop faculty excellence in teaching and research.

We also must strengthen our engagement with alumni, business leaders and the community. These relationships are essential for us to continue offering students a DePaul education grounded in real-world learning and community service, as well as a powerful alumni network they can rely on throughout their careers.

I am excited about my appointment as dean and look forward to partnering with our faculty, staff, students and stakeholders to define the strategic direction of our college. Together, we can strengthen our mission to transform students into socially responsible leaders ready to thrive in a diverse and global business environment.

Misty Johanson
Dean
Driehaus College of Business

Interim Dean Misty Johanson | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

As an educator, researcher and professional focused on the hospitality industry for the past 20 years, I have gained a deep understanding of what makes organizations successful: the ability to build relationships and provide exceptional service.

The same two factors are important to the success of a business college. That’s why, as interim dean of the Driehaus College of Business for 2017–18, my priorities are to build relationships and to ensure that our programs and people serve our students well.

Our relationship-building goals for this year encompass both fundraising and friend-raising among our alumni and champions in the business community. The support you and the business community provide our college ensures that we can offer our students an enriching, real-world academic experience, as well as mentorships, internships and career opportunities that lead to post-graduation success.

Within the college, we are updating our programs and seeking new ways to improve the student experience. We have expanded our corporate partnerships to offer professionals the convenience of cohort degree programs at their workplaces. We recently moved our weekend MBA program to the Loop Campus to better serve students who want to attend classes downtown, near where they live and work. We also are offering more STEM-designated master’s programs, which are appealing for international students. You can read more about our new academic offerings in College News.

As this issue’s cover story about the experience-driven economy suggests, businesses must continually evolve to adjust to the needs of the marketplace. So must business schools. This year we plan to introduce a new master’s degree focused on data analytics, which responds to the market’s demand for more professionals who can mine business intelligence for actionable insights that enhance organizational performance. In addition, we are exploring an expansion of online programming and plan to introduce a second international MBA program in 2018.

While our program offerings evolve over time, one thing remains constant—our dedication to producing graduates who succeed personally and professionally while bringing value to the business world. DePaul’s most recent Post-graduate Outcomes Survey shows that this commitment is fostering positive results. The DePaul Career Center’s survey of the Class of 2016 found that 94 percent of business majors and the same percentage of Kellstadt graduates were employed, continuing their educations or not seeking employment. Among bachelor’s degree recipients, median salaries increased 3 percent, and marketing and economics majors saw 10 and 8 percent increases, respectively.

With the support of our alumni and the business community, we look forward to building on these gains and ensuring that our graduates continue to achieve success in the future.

Misty Johanson
Interim Dean
Driehaus College of Business

After serving for 11 years as dean of the Driehaus College of Business, I will return to my roots in the School of Accountancy this summer, resuming my previous role as director of the school. Misty Johanson will become interim dean of the college on July 1. I encourage you to read more in College News about Dr. Johanson, an accomplished academic and industry leader who is the first woman to serve as DePaul’s business college dean.

Reflecting on my tenure as dean, I am grateful for the tight-knit academic and business community that supports our college with a shared commitment to create a vibrant and innovative learning environment. Business students enter DePaul with an abundance of talent and drive, and they emerge as graduates ready to bring value to the business world. Along the way, their futures are shaped by a faculty passionate about teaching, a staff devoted to fostering student achievement, and you—our alumni and donors— who care deeply about their success.

Our alumni bring lessons to life by speaking on campus, sharing real-world case studies with our classes and opening their workplaces to student groups. With donor and alumni help, we are able to provide scholarship assistance to students with financial need, complement their classroom education with valuable mentoring and internships, and place our graduates in rewarding professional positions. I thank you for giving generously of your time and resources to support our mission.

As we transition to new leadership, our college faces both challenges and opportunities. Demographic changes and growing competition in the higher education market made recruitment of undergraduate students more challenging this academic year, and these trends are expected to continue. Uncertainty about state scholarship support for our low-income students also has budget implications for the university, which has increased its institutional financial aid to help fill the gap.

To address the changing higher education landscape, we are focusing on initiatives that enhance the value of a DePaul education for students and create new business education markets for the college. We’ve increased our combined degree offerings, which allow students to save time and tuition dollars by earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees together in as little as five years. We’ve expanded the Double Demon scholarship program that offers alumni a 25 percent tuition discount for graduate study. I’m also excited about the growth of DePaul’s Corporate Employer Outreach (CEO) initiative over the last three years. CEO has forged agreements with 25 companies and organizations to provide their employees with professional and graduate education, including corporate on-site DePaul MBA programs. Alumni have played a key role in many of these agreements, serving within their organizations as liaisons who attest to the power of a DePaul education.

We will continue to strengthen these relationships among students, faculty, the business community and our alumni and donors as we chart our path for the future. Your ongoing engagement with our college ensures a bright future for our students.

Ray Whittington

Dean
Driehaus College of Business

Walk five minutes west of the Driehaus College of Business to the intersection of Jackson and LaSalle, and you’ll be in the heart of Chicago’s financial district. Our college and this vibrant community of banks, exchanges, investment firms and other financial services have enjoyed a close relationship for more than 75 years—ever since DePaul first offered students an opportunity to major in finance and banking.

Our connection is more than just proximal—it’s synergistic. DePaul is a major provider of alumni and intern talent for Chicago financial institutions. Financial leaders provide us with practical advice for designing a curriculum that prepares our graduates to succeed. Many of these leaders, including finance pioneer Richard H. Driehaus, also donate generously to DePaul to support teaching, research and scholarships.

Our professors regularly share research with industry experts at conferences co-hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and other major institutions. Meanwhile, the DePaul Finance Institute’s trio of centers connects faculty, students, alumni and industry representatives on campus.

The effects of this synergy are far-reaching. Our finance degree programs and the city’s status as a major financial hub attract international students to DePaul. Our finance alumni are well prepared to work not only in Chicago, but also in New York and other major financial centers around the world. DePaul also collaborates with institutions locally and internationally to provide programs tailored to specific industry needs.

The university’s CEO Initiative and our graduate program recently formed partnerships with Northern Trust and MB Financial to launch MBA programs for their employees. Another MBA program partnership between DePaul and the Bahrain Institute for Banking and Finance celebrates its 15th year this fall.

In our main story, we explore the benefits finance alumni, students, faculty and industry have realized from these relationships. I also invite you to read about our newest finance faculty member, Professor Hongjun Yan. Appointed in July as Richard H. Driehaus Chair in Behavioral Finance, Hongjun will further advance our cutting-edge research and real-world teaching in finance.

Ray Whittington

Dean Driehaus College of Business

Alumni often tell me how much they appreciate our professors for being great teachers who shaped the way graduates think about business and practice their professions. But many alumni may not know how widely our faculty members, as researchers, influence business thought and practice by publishing their scholarship in top journals and sharing these discoveries with fellow academics, students, industry and the public.

Our faculty research has broad impact because it focuses on real-world issues facing business leaders, policymakers and professionals.

This research explores such diverse questions as: How do interest rate hikes affect the housing market in our region? What leads a white-collar professional to commit fraud, and how can it be prevented? How can health care providers improve the patient experience? What do population, income and education trends tell us about the economy in Chicago? What can professionals do to achieve work-life balance?

In this issue of Business Exchange, we spotlight seven professors who are exploring these and other questions through research that sparks new ways to think about business, from the classroom to the boardroom.

As you can tell, I am proud of the Driehaus College of Business’s reputation for excellence in both teaching and research. Our dedication to both areas is the reason that our college is among only 5 percent of institutions worldwide to earn accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB), a distinction that shows our programs have met rigorous standards for quality.

Every five years, the college and School of Accountancy and Management Information Systems undergo an assess¬ment of our educational standards and goal achievement by a team of AACSB representatives. I’m pleased to share that after a thorough review of the college and school by an AACSB team this past fall, AACSB has renewed our accreditation through 2020. This is a testament to the strong commitment our faculty members make every day to excel in teaching and research.

Ray Whittington
Dean, Driehaus College of Business

Dean Ray Whittington

The growth of the global marketplace is changing not only how business is conducted, but also how it is taught. Employers increasingly seek to hire graduates who possess international business knowledge, global experience and the ability to work in multicultural environments. As a result, the Driehaus College of Business has made it a strategic priority to teach business from a global perspective. To achieve this goal, our college is bringing the world into our classrooms and our classrooms to the world.

Our students acquire a global view of business through professors who incorporate their international experience into lessons, executives from multinational organizations who speak on campus, and study abroad opportunities that provide students with firsthand exposure to business practices around the world. Our classrooms also have become a rich environment for cross-cultural business discussions because our students come from more than 40 countries. They include hundreds of students from China who have chosen to study business on our Loop Campus in recent years, as well as Middle Eastern professionals who are pursuing DePaul MBA and MS degrees in Manama, Bahrain, thanks to our partnership with the Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance. In our cover story, you’ll meet alumni who have emerged from these international initiatives to succeed as global-minded business leaders.

As we begin another academic year, the Driehaus College of Business continues to seek ways to expand our portfolio of global education opportunities. We recently embarked on a number of initiatives that support international education at DePaul and entrepreneurship in Qatar. For the second consec­utive year, DePaul MBA students will have the opportunity to enroll in an international business seminar that culminates in a week-long educational trip to Qatar. Our newly opened Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al-Thani Center for Entrepreneurship in the Middle East, supported by a generous gift from the Sheikh, is planning a number of new programs that will bring high-potential Qatari startups and entrepreneurs to DePaul to learn from our faculty, network with our students and connect with the Chicago entrepreneurial community. We’ve also submitted a proposal to the Supreme Education Council of Qatar to launch a DePaul MBA program in Doha.

Meanwhile, we are poised to begin a new partnership in Southeast Asia, where high-growth economies are fueling demand for graduate business education. We recently signed a memorandum of agreement with an education partner in the Philippines to offer an MBA program in Manila. The proposal is currently being evaluated by the Council on Higher Education in the Philippines, with a target date to open in 2016-2017.

Such partnerships abroad bolster our business education programs at home by opening the door to more student exchange programs and faculty research and development opportunities around the world.

Ray Whittington

Dean, Driehaus College of Business

The close relationship between the Driehaus College of Business and the business community began more than a century ago, when DePaul became the first university to locate its business college in Chicago’s Loop. The move downtown fostered collaboration between professors and business leaders to bring real-world knowledge from the city’s center for commerce into our classrooms.

Over the years, the college’s relationship with the business community has grown, strengthening our academic programs and centers, enriching faculty teaching and research, and broadening career and networking opportunities for students and alumni. Generations of alumni have gained practical knowledge and connections for professional advancement through the college’s links to top companies. In return, the corporate community has profited from the professional contributions of our alumni, who have assumed leadership roles across Chicago’s business landscape and beyond.

In this spring/summer 2015 Business Exchange, we focus on our distinctive bond with the business community and how it benefits alumni, students, the college and the business community itself.

Our main feature story explores four examples of the power of these connections: our Sales Leadership Program’s success at preparing students for roles at Fortune 500 companies, bolstered by its corporate partners; our new Marriott Scholars program, which is exposing students to the real world of hospitality leadership; and our educational collaborations with McGladrey and, through the CEO Initiative, Medline, which are preparing professionals to be leaders within these firms. The theme continues in our coverage of Corporate Connectors, a successful DePaul program that links alumni and students to career leads at companies nationwide through a network of alumni professionals at these organizations.

Our college is always seeking new ways to expand professional relationships among students, alumni and the business community. One of our newest initiatives is a mentorship program that is being developed with the help of alumni and executives on the Dean’s Advisory Council. The pilot program will provide a more structured, ongoing mentoring network for our full-time MBA class and undergraduate transfer students involving fellow students and recent alumni. It will be supported by technology that will help match participants, facilitate training and track outcomes. I look forward to sharing more about this program as it comes to fruition, adding one more link between the college and the business community.

Ray Whittington
Dean, Driehaus College of Business

Alan Kay, the pioneering computer scientist, once said that “the best way to predict the future is to create it.”

This advice is being embraced by a growing number of business school alumni worldwide. More than one in ten graduates from the classes of 1959 through 2013 are creating their own futures through entrepreneurship, according to a recent global survey of 21,000 business school alumni by the Graduate Management Admission Council. In addition, the longer they’ve been out of business school, the more likely they are to pursue this path. More than 23 percent of business school graduates who earned diplomas before 1990 are now business owners.

This trend applies to the Driehaus College of Business, where our robust and well-ranked entrepreneurship program has a rich history of preparing students for entrepreneurial opportunities. In our most recent career outcomes report, 11 percent of the Class of 2013 chose entrepreneurship/self-employment as their career path, up from 8 percent for the previous class. What’s more, an increasing number of DePaul alumni who don’t choose to start their own businesses are being recruited by startups.

In our Business Exchange Fall/Winter 2014 feature story, we explore these phenomena through the stories of DePaul business alumni who have used their entrepreneurship education to forge different paths to success. The coverage continues in our Connections section, where you’ll read about new initiatives at DePaul’s Coleman Entrepreneurship Center designed to help strengthen the links between students, alumni and the entrepreneur community in Chicago and beyond.

Our plans for new academic programs at the college embody the entrepreneurial spirit as well. This fall, we launched an Evening Cohort MBA program that develops individuals for senior positions in business, consulting and nonprofits through a curriculum that focuses on strategy, leadership and change management. This innovative program combines the best features of full-time and part-time MBA programs by allowing working professionals to experience the camaraderie and network-building benefits of taking all of their MBA classes together as a group, but in a convenient, accelerated after-work schedule.

As part of the Evening Cohort MBA program, we plan to launch a new biannual Charles H. Kellstadt Forum. This series of one-day events will bring together students, alumni and distinguished executives to discuss trends in leadership and management. At the forums, we will showcase current faculty research in conjunction with practical views on leadership and management from executives in Chicago and abroad. We look forward to sharing more about these plans as they unfold and hope you’ll gather ideas for your own future entrepreneurial endeavors at one of the forums.

Ray Whittington

Dean, Driehaus College of Business