Junior finance major Dan Blanchard helped the Texas A&M men’s 400-meter freestyle relay team bring home top finishes at the 2004 ConocoPhillips Summer National Championships held at the Avery Aquatic Center in Stanford, Calif.
The men’s relay team grabbed the bronze medal after finishing third in a time of 3:27.15. Blanchard holds Texas A&M’s all-time top 10 records in the 100-yard backstroke, the 200-yard backstroke and the 100-yard freestyle.
Two recent marketing graduates have been selected from more than 13,300 applicants nationwide to participate in the Teach For America program. Carrie Darrah ’04 will teach in North Carolina, while Lindsay Waller ’04 will teach in Houston.
Teach For America is an education program that places recently graduated students from all majors and disciplines in low-income rural and urban communities across the country in an effort to eliminate educational inequality. The graduates, though not education majors, pledge to spend two years teaching in one of 22 such communities across the United States. Program directors say during those two years, the Aggies will work to help ensure that students growing up in low-income districts are afforded the educational opportunities they deserve.
Mays’ Financial Management Association (FMA) chapter earned the Superior Chapter Award for the 2003-2004 academic year. This highly coveted award is given to less than 8 percent of FMA chapters.
Achieving this honor requires a high level of effort and commitment from both students and faculty. In order to receive this prestigious designation, the FMA chapters had to meet several criteria, demonstrate exemplary chapter management, and excel in providing members program activities.
Mays’ chapter will be recognized on FMA International’s Web site and in FMA International’s publications.
The U.S. health care system not only faces scrutiny for citizens’ lack of coverage, but it has also become a business crisis, contends recent research by Distinguished Professor of Marketing Leonard Berry.
Along with colleagues Ann M. Mirabito and Donald M. Berwick, Berry interviewed more than 100 leading thinkers in business, health care and related sectors. His findings, which appeared in an MIT Sloan Management Review article, “A Health Care Agenda for Business,” indicate some companies are taking more active control over the issue and seeing positive results. This is largely due to innovative partnerships with their employees and actual health care suppliers.
“The overriding lesson from our research is the need for partnerships,” says Berry, who recently accepted a joint appointment with the Texas A&M University System College of Medicine as a professor of humanities in medicine. “Companies must build bridges to other players in the system to address the complex, systemic problems that transcend even the most powerful corporations.”
An important aspect of such a partnership is integrating health into the company culture, Berry notes. Progressive companies, he says, encourage healthier lifestyles and discourage wasteful health-related spending by freely sharing health and cost information with employees. They also use financial incentives to encourage desired behaviors.
“Everyone shares the rewards when the whole system improves,” Berry says. “The corporate culture thrives because employee satisfaction, productivity and retention rates increase. Employees benefit because health care quality, efficiency and value get better. The community prospers because wellness promotes a higher quality of life for all. The truly healthy company is sound not only financially but also in the physical and mental well-being of those who make up the organization.”
Dr. Kerry Cooper, executive director of the Center for International Business Studies and Cullen Trust Professor of Business Administration, was recently named to the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program Commission.
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Dennis Hastert appointed Cooper to the Congressionally authorized task force. The goal of the commission is to recommend a national federally funded study abroad fellowship program that will improve the international education of U.S. university students. Congress appropriated $500,000 for the commission of the study, which will be completed by 2005.
In naming Cooper to the commission, Speaker Hastert praised the commission’s mission and asserted that Cooper’s “expertise in this area will surely benefit the efforts of the commission.” At Texas A&M, Cooper has overseen the creation of numerous study abroad and international exchange programs for Mays Business School students.
Mays’ undergraduate business program moved up in the 2005 edition of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings. This year, Mays tied for 19th among public schools and nationally tied for 29th with Wake Forest, Georgetown University, Babson College and the University of Georgia. In last year’s ranking the undergraduate program tied for 20th among public schools and tied for 32nd among national ones.
Mays was also recognized in the specialty program rankings. This year, the undergraduate management program tied for 21st overall and tied for 15th among public schools.
The U.S. News ranking is based on surveys from deans and senior faculty at undergraduate programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Survey participants were asked to rate the quality of all programs they are familiar with.
Mays Business School will honor three former students at its 2004 Outstanding Alumni Awards program Thursday, Sept. 16. Each year, Mays recognizes graduates who not only contribute significantly to their industries and communities but also exhibit the Aggie values of character, leadership and an unyielding work ethic.
Earning the honors this year are:
Clifton J. Bolner ’49, BBA
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bolner’s Fiesta Products
Barnett L. Gershen ’69, BBA
Vice President of Organizational Development, Keystone Automotive Industries Inc.
John Speer ’71, BBA and MBA ’73, Chief Executive Officer, Royce Family of Builders, Park Lake Communities and Hammersmith Financial
The U.S. health care system not only faces scrutiny for citizens’ lack of coverage, but it has also become a business crisis, contends recent research by Distinguished Professor of Marketing Leonard Berry.