BELK COLLEGE
CONNECTS SPRING 2020 | No. 16
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POWERFUL NETWORK:
18,000+ ALUMNI live & work in Charlotte
RESEARCH
TO love about the belk college of business CUSTOMIZABLE MBA
DBA
SOARS IN NEW RANKINGS
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CEO SPEAKER SERIES FEATURES TRUIST EXECUTIVE, ALUMNUS Belk College alumnus Dontá Wilson (above) ‘97 shared his story of success and answered students’ questions about leadership and financial services as the featured speaker for the Spring 2020 CEO Speaker Series. Over 400 students and guests attended the event at the Popp Martin Student Union on Jan. 29. Wilson, Chief Digital and Client Experience Officer and member of the Executive Management Team for Charlotte-based Truist Financial Corp., oversees a number of key areas including: digital banking, client experience, marketing, corporate communications, and the Truist Foundation. Wilson, who earned his bachelor’s degree in management, began his career at Truist’s predecessor BB&T as a college student in 1995. UNC CHARLOT TE L AUNCHES FIRST SCHOOL OF DATA SCIENCE IN THE CAROLINAS
CONGRATUL ATIONS TO BELK COLLEGE’S DECEMBER 2019 GRADUATES!
The Belk College of Business is partnering to create the first School of Data Science (SDS) in the Carolinas.
In December, 550 undergraduate and 156 graduate Belk College of Business students received their degrees from UNC Charlotte, increasing the powerful alumni network to 32,741.
The interdisciplinary school will allow UNC Charlotte to expand its programs and open up the growing and diverse field of data science to students with varied career interests. The School of Data Science is a collaboration with the Belk College, the College of Computing and Informatics, the College of Health and Human Services and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. In 2018, there was a nationwide shortage of 151,000 data scientists. That gap is expected to increase to 250,000 jobs by 2025.
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The Belk College celebrated the graduates and their families at a special reception.
BELK COLLEGE IN THE NEWS
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
Buttimer interviewed about nationwide housing crisis
Dr. Richard Buttimer, interim associate dean and director of the Childress Klein Center for Real Estate (CKCRE), was interviewed by NBC about his research on affordable housing in Charlotte. “There’s a lot of things that are causing this,” Buttimer told NBC. “You can’t just point to one single thing and say this is the magic bullet. If we solve this, we solve the entire problem.” In Charlotte, research shows that the growth in the population has been larger than the growth in the number of housing units constructed, leading to an overall increase in the price of housing in the region. In early 2019, CKCRE released the State of Housing in Charlotte Report, a datadriven analysis of the housing markets in the Charlotte-metropolitan region. Subsequently, CKCRE launched the Housing Summit Series to present and analyze the report and research. Buttimer’s interview aired on more than 50 NBC affiliate stations across the country.
Book makes Forbes’ for 2020
top 10
Dr. Steven Rogelberg – Chancellor’s Professor and Professor of Organizational Science, Management, and Psychology – continues to receive accolades for his book The Surprising Science Of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team To Peak Performance. In January, Forbes named it “one of the top 20 books you need to crush 2020.” Learn more at belkcollege.uncc.edu/news
Dr. George Banks and Dr. Janaki Gooty recently presented their research as part of a half-day workshop offered by UNC Charlotte’s Executive Education.
DEMYSTIFYING CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP What do leaders like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk have in common? Many claim that it is charisma. Research from Dr. George Banks and Dr. Janaki Gooty, associate professors of management in the Belk College, is helping business leaders better understand the skills and behaviors of charismatic leaders. The faculty recently presented their research-based strategies as part of a half-day program through Executive Education. Banks’ work cuts across all domains of leadership and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio. He also has worked with diverse clients, including the Missile Defense Agency, the Patent and Trade Office, and Food Lion. Gooty’s work is in the area of relationships and managing emotions in the leadership space. She has worked with a variety of industries with a majority of her consulting work in law enforcement agencies.
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TOP 5 THINGS TO LOVE ABOUT THE BELK COLLEGE OF BUSINESS HERE’S A LIST OF OUR FIVE FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT THE BELK COLLEGE OF BUSINESS, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER.
A CHARLOTTE POWER PLAYER The Belk College alumni network of 32,000 is an economic power player in the city of Charlotte. Over 18,000 Belk College alumni live and work in the Charlotte region.
IMPACTFUL RESEARCH
POWERFUL NETWORK:
18,000+ ALUMNI live & work in Charlotte
As the only research business school based in Charlotte, Belk College faculty use their expertise to actively research and find solutions for some of the region’s biggest challenges. Recent topics include: • Data-driven analysis that examines the state of housing in the greater Charlotte area. • A look at the costs and impact of large-scale data breaches. • An analysis of the impact of women’s collegiate athletics on social mobility.
WHY DO YOU LOVE THE BELK COLLEGE? “I chose the Belk College of Business for the vast number of opportunities it offers. Charlotte is a major banking city and the Belk College of Business sets its students up with a tremendous number of opportunities within the Charlotte community and beyond.” Vidhya Balasubramanian ’19 Economics
“People from all over the world go to school here. It’s simply a humbling experience to interact with someone from across the world.” Selim Ayyildiz ’18 Marketing
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LOCATION LOCATION The Belk College is situated in Charlotte, which continues to rank as one of the best places to live in the nation, according to move.org. As the second largest banking hub in the nation, Charlotte also recently ranked as the best city in the Southeast to move to for business majors.
DEPTH OF PROGRAMS As one of the largest business schools in the Carolinas, the Belk College offers students a large variety of high-demand programs. This includes: nine undergraduate programs, a customizable nationally-ranked MBA; a master of Math Finance program that ranks No. 13 in the nation; award-winning Executive Education; and more. The Belk College continues to expand its programs, adding the only AACSB-accredited Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) program in the Carolinas in 2017, and the only M.S. in Management (MSM) in Charlotte in 2018.
CUSTOMIZABLE MBA
DBA MSM
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“The Belk College of Business combines the right mix of academic and industry exposure that is vital for success in today’s competitive work environment.” Imon Banerjee ’17 M.S. in Mathematical Finance
OPPORTUNITY Since it was established nearly 50 years ago, the Belk College of Business has been committed to advancing the lives of all students. Today, the Belk College reflects this through its diverse student body. The Belk College is one of the top producers of minority bachelor’s degrees in the nation, ranking in the top 100 in 21 categories, according to the magazine Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.
STUDENTS TAKE LEAD IN COMMUNITY FOOD ENTREPRENEUR FINDS RIGHT MIX IN BELK COLLEGE’S MBA PROGRAM
Jamie Rivenbark ‘05, ‘20, says he’s applying the skills he’s learning in the MBA program each day at The Office, a sports bar he has owned since 2018 in Indian Land, South Carolina. Watch more of his journey: mba.uncc.edu/TheOffice
“Every class I go into, I look for ways to get better at work.”
JAMIE RIVENBARK ‘20 MBA OWNER OF THE OFFICE INDIAN LAND, SOUTH CAROLINA
KEEPING FATHER’S AMERICAN DREAM ALIVE
GRADUATE STUDENTS HELP STAMP OUT HUNGER Belk College graduate students did their part to help stamp out hunger by volunteering at Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina, located just a few miles from campus in Uptown Charlotte. Second Harvest serves 19 counties in North and South Carolina, providing meals, advocacy, hunger education, and community partnerships to help eliminate hunger and serve people in need. In response to the positive feedback from the event, a group volunteer event for students is also planned during the spring semester.
Shortly after moving to the United States from Cuba in 2015, Manny Pérez Ochoa faced tragedy when his father, Idael Pérez Maldonado, was killed in a fatal car crash. Pérez Ochoa, a finance major, says his father had a dream of owning a restaurant and keeping his family close together. Just one month before his passing, the family had purchased Havana Carolina in downtown Concord, NC. Now, the Belk College junior along with his sister, also a UNC Charlotte student, and his mother, manage the restaurant. “I promised my dad that I was going to finish my college career, and that’s what I’m doing now,” he says. “Managing a business and going to school at the same time is difficult and requires a lot of effort and desire.” With his mother and sister by his side and his father’s words with him, Pérez Ochoa is on the path to his dreams. “Anything is possible,” he says. “Even when life becomes really hard, you have to keep moving.”
BELK COLLEGE EARNS NATIONAL RECOGNITION MBA OFFERS BEST VALUE IN CAROLINAS The Triangle Business Journal analyzed MBA programs based on new U.S. departments of Treasury and Education data for first-year earnings. They noted the strong value of the Belk College MBA program through the high first-year median earnings and low median student debt.
BELK COLLEGE SOARS IN
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BELK COLLEGE NAMED A TOP UNDERGRAD BUSINESS SCHOOL
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BELK COLLEGE AMONG TOP DEGREE BELK COLLEGE FOR MBAMINORITY STUDENTS PRODUCERS New rankings show the Belk College’s commitment to helping minority students succeed. Two of the college’s largest undergraduate degree programs – finance and marketing – both rank in the top 10 in the nation for the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded to African Americans, according to Diverse: Issues in Higher Education’s Top 100 Degree Producers 2019 rankings, which were released in December. Other highlights of the rankings, which are based on U.S. Department of Education 2017-18 graduation data: n Belk College undergraduate programs rank in the top • 100 in 21 categories. n Belk College’s graduate programs also ranked in the top • 100 in four categories and No. 1 among North Carolinabased universities for management degrees awarded to African Americans, Hispanics and all minorities.
• n UNC Charlotte ranks No. 2 in North Carolina – and No. 24 in the nation – as the largest producer of bachelor’s degrees for African American students; this is up from No. 30 in 2018.
The Belk College is No. 8 among public universities in the Southeast in Poets & Quants’ “Best Undergraduate B-Schools of 2020” rankings. This is the first time the Belk College has participated in the rankings, which are based on a survey of business school alumni regarding their college’s admission standards, their academic experiences, and their employment outcomes, as well as data surveys completed by members of the academic institutions.
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UPCOMING EVENTS FOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS
ALUMNI AND GROWING
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