Walker College of Business

The Risk Management and Insurance (RMI) Career Fair will be held Thursday, February 18, 2016 in Peacock Hall on the campus of Appalachian State University.  The event, which will take place from 1:00pm-4:00pm, will continue the next day with selected candidates participating in interviews the following on Friday, February 19 . 

Every fall and spring semester, the Brantley Center hosts this well-attended career fair to serve students at Appalachian and the insurance industry. Members of the AppState Gamma Iota Sigma chapter work the career fair, gaining valuable networking interaction with top insurance industry representatives.

The AppState RMI Career Fair educates students about careers in the industry and facilitates recruiting for both professional positions and summer internships. There are approximately 180 RMI majors at Appalachian, and a large percentage of the students will have successfully completed a summer internship in the insurance industry prior to graduation.

Partcipating organziations include Auto Owners Insurance, Eastern Alliance Insurance Group, Wells Fargo Insurance Services, Liberty Mutual and several more. 

For a complete list of registered companies or more information on the RMI Career Fair, visit http://insurance.appstate.edu/recruiters

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• Centers - Brantley Risk and Insurance
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The Working Professionals MBA program at Appalachian State University in Hickory will be hosting an MBA Information Session on February 3rd from 12:00 - 1:30 PM. The event will take place at the Appalachian State University Hickory Campus (2760 Hwy 70 NE, Hickory NC; Room 1122). A light lunch will be provided for those in attendance.  

Ready for that promotion? Thinking about pursuing your MBA? The time is now. Candidates can start in May, August, or January and applicants from all majors and backgrounds are welcome.

Any questions? Contact Kim Kirby at 828-262-2092 or mba@appstate.edu.

 

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Appalachian State University Brantley Risk & Insurance Center Director Karen Epermanis is profiled in the December 2015 "Appalachian Magazine" Faculty Of Distinction section on page 33.  View the online version of the magazine here

or click here to view Dr. E's profile as a PDF.

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• Centers - Brantley Risk and Insurance

ASU NEWS—Appalachian State University has entered a partnership with Wenzhou University in Wenzhou, China, that will facilitate collaborative activities, including student and faculty exchanges, joint academic programming and research collaboration. The partnership paves the way for a joint entrepreneurship course to be offered to Appalachian and Wenzhou students.

Also possible is the creation of an Appalachian-Wenzhou Confucius Institute at Appalachian that would promote teaching the Chinese language and promote a cultural understanding of China. Such institutes exist in North Carolina at N.C. State University and Pfeiffer University.

Appalachian State University and Wenzhou University in China have signed an agreement that will facilitate future faculty and student exchanges and establish a joint entrepreneurship program that will be directed by the Walker College of Business. Pictured from left are Wenzhou University representatives Professor Ye Miao, director of the foreign affairs office, and Vice President Shaoming Huang, and Appalachian representatives Dr. Martin Meznar, Dr. Dan Hsu, Jesse Pipes and Dr. Jesse Lutabingwa. Photo submitted.

In December 2015, Dr. Jesse Lutabingwa, associate vice chancellor for international education and development at Appalachian, led a delegation of faculty from the Walker College of Business to Wenzhou University comprised of Dr. Martin Meznar, associate dean of international programs; Jesse Pipes, director of the Holland Fellows Program and lecturer in entrepreneurship; and Dr. Dan Hsu, assistant professor of entrepreneurship in the Department of Management.

They met with the president, vice president, deans, program directors and faculty at Wenzhou University to sign the agreement, discuss areas of collaboration, and agree on specific programmatic activities that will be undertaken in the first two years of the partnership.

Entrepreneurship is one of Wenzhou University's strengths and this was one of the key elements that attracted Appalachian to the Chinese university.

According to Pipes, the university has a School of Entrepreneurship with many student-owned companies that are being incubated within the school's facilities. Appalachian's Walker College of Business is interested in connecting its entrepreneurship program with the program at Wenzhou University through a joint entrepreneurship course.

Under Hsu's leadership, students from both universities would be prepared to develop international entrepreneurial ventures that embrace and foster global engagement through international student and faculty exchange activities.

Each university will select 15 students to collaborate via the Internet on entrepreneurship-based projects. Reciprocal student visits to the U.S. and China from both universities would begin in 2017 and held in subsequent years.

According to Pipes, the program will serve as an applied international business experience in Asia, with an emphasis on producing tangible outcomes and products. The course will start as a pilot in May.

Prior to visiting Wenzhou University, Lutabingwa visited other Chinese partner institutions to discuss opportunities for further deepening the relationship with them. The institutions visited included, Beijing International Studies University, Northeastern University, Shaanxi Normal University and Fudan University.

He said there are several new programs in progress or being developed at the partner institutions that will help deepen the institutional relationships beyond the regular student exchanges. These include regular and ongoing faculty exchanges, academic programs, especially at the graduate level, and library-to-library exchanges.

Located in the Zhejiang Province south of Shanghai in eastern China, Wenzhou University enrolls more than 25,000 students. The university offers degrees at the undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels.

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Research by Professor of Finance, Banking and Insurance Chris McNeil was quoted in an article in The Atlantic about the value of sponsoring a college bowl game.

According to his findings, the impact is minimal.

A study published last year by Penn State’s John Fizel and Appalachian State’s Chris McNeil in the Journal of Sports Economics casts some doubt on companies’ faith in corporate sponsorships, at least when it comes to college football. It’s hard to isolate the payoffs of sponsoring a bowl game, but Fizel and McNeil, as many sports economists have done before them, looked at what happened to companies’ stock prices right after their sponsorships were announced, and compared those prices to how those stocks were expected to perform. (This isn’t a perfect method, but it at least captures what investors think about the value of a sponsorship.)

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Brantley Risk & Insurance Center-- The Carolinas RIMS chapter recently presented Dr. Karen Epermanis, director of the Brantley Risk and Insurance Center at Appalachian State University, a $15,000 check in support of the University’s Risk Management and Insurance (RMI) students. The funds will be used for student travel to the annual RIMS Charlotte Shadow Day, and will help send student representatives to the national RIMS convention in San Diego.

“All of us in the RMI program at AppState and the Brantley Risk and Insurance Center greatly appreciate the annual support, both financial, and in many other ways, that the RIMS community expends on our students for their insurance education," said Epermanis.

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See highlights from luncheon speaker Donald Thompson's keynote talk during the November 2015 McLeod Entrepreneur Summit.

Thompson's talk Break Down Barriers and Reach New Heights in Business offered students and community members real-world insight lessons from an entrepreneur.

Donald Thompson is an author, advisor and serial entrepreneur. Donald served as CEO of I-Cubed, a leader in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software & consulting and supply chain analytics. Donald grew the organization from 16 to 130 employees until it was purchased in 2014 by global technology enterprise, KPIT. Governor McCrory recently appointed Donald to the NC Board of Science, Technology and Innovation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeMEaJQyvbU

The entrepreneur summit is named for Carole Moore McLeod in recognition of a gift that provides ongoing support of the entrepreneurship program. McLeod is a 1981 business graduate of the Walker College of Business and owner of Advantage Waste Recycling & Disposal Inc.

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• Centers - Center for Entrepreneurship

Appalachian State University and the Walker College of Business announces an international partnership with Wenzhou University in Wenzhou, China. Representatives from the two universities recently signed a memorandum of understanding establishing an Agreement that will set in motion various collaborative activities including student and faculty exchanges, joint academic programming, and possible research collaboration, according to Jesse Pipes, an entrepreneurship lecturer in the Walker College of Business.

Pipes states that the Wenzhou University leadership, including the University's President, College Deans, and faculty members, were eager and very interested to see various initiatives developed. Appalachian's delegation met with representatives from Wenzhou's International Relations Office, College of International Collaboration, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, and the School of Entrepreneurship.

The partnership opens the door for collaboration to implement a joint entrepreneurship course, according to Pipes. Pipes traveled to China in December 2015 along with professor of management Dan Hsu, Walker College Associate Dean for International Programs Martin Meznar, and Appalachian State University Associate Vice Chancellor of International Education and Development Jesse Lutabingwa to sign the agreement.

Under the leadership of Dr. Dan Hsu, this new partnership will bring together entrepreneurship students from both universities, equipping them to develop international, entrepreneurial ventures which embrace innovation and foster global engagement through international student and faculty exchange activities.

Wenzhou University is touted as a flagship for entrepreneurial exploration and practice.

Dr. Hsu plans to select the first cohort of Appalachian students to partner with Wenzhou students by Fall 2016. According to Pipes, this pilot program will serve as an applied international business experience in Asia, with an emphasis on producing tangible outcomes.

Each university will select 15 students to collaborate remotely on entrepreneurship-based projects and will include reciprocal visits between the students from both universities in 2017.

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• Centers - Center for Entrepreneurship