News

The Business & Information Technology (BIT) Club is having its Fall Welcome Meeting and Kick-Off on Thursday, September 21^st.  The event, which will be held in the College of Business Auditorium (Rooms 107/208) during X-period (1:40 – 2:30 p.m.), is open to all majors on campus.  Paul Bradley, a UCA alum who is the Conway Market Leader for Edafio Technology Partners, will be the featured speaker.  Paul is both an MIS and MBA graduate and we are delighted to welcome him back to campus.  Refreshments will be served and door prizes will be awarded.  All students, faculty, and staff are invited to attend.

The University of Central Arkansas College of Business is excited to announce a challenge match gift to the Excellence in Insurance Fund for students in the Insurance & Risk Management program. For every $1 given, an anonymous donor will triple its value for a maximum donation of $60,000 from the donor.

We are encouraging all program alumni and friends of the program to consider making a gift to help us meet this goal and receive a possible total of $80,000 for the Excellence in Insurance Fund.

The College of Business educates students to make positive contributions to the business community and society by maintaining a relevant and innovative curriculum, enhancing the learning experience and promoting life-long learning, all of which are only possible with your support.

Donations can be made online or by calling the UCA Foundation at (501) 852-2743. Checks can be made payable to the UCA Foundation, Inc. and mailed to or dropped off at Buffalo Alumni Hall, UCA Box 4986, Conway, AR 72035.

We hope you will consider making a gift today.

Mr. Isanhart was recently featured in 501 Life Magazine for his involvement with Winrock International’s Farmer-to-Farmer program in efforts to help address training/education needs worldwide.  Mr. Isanhart is heading out on his 11th trip as part of this program this summer.

To read the article, click on this link: Life’s Purpose: UCA Instructor Provides Help Worldwide

Dr. Doug Voss was recently featured in Arkansas Business. The article is entitled “Customer Demands Drives Final Mile Industry.” pg. 10 of the May 15th edition.

In addition, his contribution was also included in Lance Turner’s KTHV report. Follow this link to see the report: KTHV News Report.

The Arkansas Insurance Hall of Fame was created to recognize leaders of the insurance industry in Arkansas. The goals are to remind the public of the important role the insurance industry plays in securing the well-being of both individuals and businesses, to inspire the next generation of leadership to reach these high levels of accomplishment, and to encourage young Arkansans to consider careers in the insurance industry.

The Hall is housed in the College of Business at the University of Central Arkansas, which has the only program offering a major in insurance and risk management in the state of Arkansas. Approved in 2000, this baccalaureate degree program serves as a valuable resource for the insurance and financial services industry throughout the region. For the 2016-17 academic year, the Arkansas Insurance Hall of Fame awarded five scholarships to UCA students who are studying Insurance and Risk Management.

On April 11, 2017 the Arkansas Insurance Hall of Fame hosted a ceremony in the lobby of the UCA College of Business. The ceremony unveiled the wall honoring the inductees from the inaugural 2015 class as well as the 2016 class of inductees for the Arkansas Insurance Hall of Fame. The ceremony was a huge success with over 100 individuals there to honor the inductees. The Arkansas Insurance Hall of Fame Board is accepting nominations for the 2017 Inductee Class, who will be honored on Thursday, October 5, 2017 at the Farris Center at 6:30pm. More information on the Arkansas Insurance Hall of Fame, the Board of Directors and the 2017 Induction Banquet can be found at http://www.arinsurancehof.org/.

MIS and College of Business students tackled the biggest real-world project in memory in creating a sophisticated application for use by UCA’s Political Science Department to manage their Arkansas Model United Nations (AMUN), which UCA hosts annually for high school students across several states.  The current process is all paper and spreadsheet based, making updating and maintenance extremely time consuming.  The new process is completely streamlined, using database technology with a front-end Java application.

The new application was carried out by three separate teams, from semester-long projects in three separate courses.  The project was managed by a team of four from MIS 4355 (Project Management), who coordinated the entire process and effort; this included one MBA student.  All of the data for the Model UN (students, schools, meetings, awards, invoices, etc.) are now stored and managed using database technology.  A team of four from MIS 4329 (Database Management Systems) developed and implemented the database using two systems for versatility, Oracle and Microsoft Access.  An application manages the entire system, providing student and management access, with a convenient interface that users find easy.  This application was designed and coded by a team of four from MIS 4339 Programming in Java II.  The project consisted of over twenty thousand lines of code.

The entire project was supervised by Dr. Jeff Hill, the instructor for the advanced database course and Java II, as well as Dr. Kaye McKinzie, who is the instructor in Project Management.  Dr. Mark Mullenbach, the AMUN coordinator, provided the requirements and specifications.  The only student who was a member of all three of the student teams was Adam Davis, who described the entire effort as the “hardest project of my academic career”.  Two other students were members of two teams; Brian Wan was on the database and Java team, while Bobby Yost was a part of the Project Management and database team.

This project won first place for team projects in the first annual College of Business Research Days, held March 28, 2017.  The application was delivered to Dr. Mullenbach on April 19.

The students in Joe McGarrity’s Intermediate Microeconomics class competed in an Opinion / Editorial (Op-Ed) contest as part of their assignments for this class. The students generated their own ideas and each wrote a 500 – 800 word editorial. Dr. McGarrity structured the assignment so that students got feedback from each other and the UCA Writing Center, as well as receiving several rounds of feedback from Dr. McGarrity.

This writing program proved to be a huge success. The students competed for a study abroad scholarship funded by a grant. Three retired faculty members from UCA’s College of Business picked the winner. Eric Selvidge won the contest and the prize enabled him to study the Economics of Art in Florence, Italy this summer. The contest made Eric realize that international experiences could be a part of his education and he has decided to study for a semester in Thailand. Eric says that he never would have considered studying abroad if the contest had not confronted him with this possibility.

The competition for the study abroad scholarship encouraged the students to put a tremendous amount of effort into writing the Op-Eds. Thirteen students in this class of 26 wrote articles that were so good that they were published in the Log Cabin Democrat newspaper. These students, while not winning the contest, have an impressive addition to their resumes. While the Op-Ed contest has only been held once, Joe McGarrity hopes to secure permanent funding for the study abroad scholarship prize that may even one day make second and third prize study abroad scholarships available.

At our annual College of Business Scholarship and Awards Banquet, C.H. Robinson Worldwide awarded their inaugural scholarship to one of our Logistics and Supply Chain students, Sammy Jolly. Sammy is currently an intern at the Little Rock office of C.H. Robinson. Sammy and Phil Cognito (General Manager, C.H. Robinson Little Rock office) are pictured above.

C.H. Robinson established the first endowed scholarship for Logistics and Supply Chain Management students with a gift of $25,000. The LSCM program begins its full launch of a four-year degree program in Fall 2017. This program has established strong partnerships with a broad network of logistics and supply chain companies, which has resulted in support for the program, internships and full-time jobs for students, and research opportunities for faculty. However, C.H. Robinson is the first to establish an endowed scholarship for students. “We have a great working relationship with Dr. Voss and the program as it stands now, but this opportunity was a way to get even more involved in the LSCM program. This shows our commitment to the program as well as our appreciation for the current students and future employees that the UCA College of Business provides our Little Rock office and company,” Cognito added. Dean of the College of Business, Dr. Michael Hargis added, “We are very appreciative of C.H. Robinson’s financial support of our students as well as their active involvement in the LSCM program and the College of Business.” Dr. Doug Voss, Scott E. Bennett Arkansas Highway Commission Endowed Chair also added, “C.H. Robinson has allowed us to shadow their day-to-day operations in Little Rock so our students can have the experiential learning experience and they have brought it to the classroom. That’s something unique that our students get here and not at other places.”

Eryka Williams is a senior Management Information Systems student at UCA. She most recently has been honored as the National Intern of the Year through the Cooperative Education and Internship Association. This very prestigious and distinguished award speaks volumes to both Eryka and our College of Business.

She grew up in Cabot and chose UCA due to its proximately to home. “I wanted to be close to home and UCA was the closest school to Cabot,” she said. The rest is history.

Outside of juggling working full-time and being a full-time student, Eryka has an interest in robotics. She actually leads a group teaching high school students about robotics and design as a part of the FIRST Robotics Competition. She enjoys giving back and investing in younger students who are interested in the Information Technology and Systems field.

She attributes part of her success as a student to one her classes instructed by Parker Woodroof. This class in particular was a marketing class in which she was prompted to think outside the box. “He taught in a way that no other teacher presented the material. He really challenged me personally as a student, as well as the class. His course impacted my thinking and provided me with concepts that I still use today,” Williams said. She also credited Dr. Bartczak and her Systems Analysis and Design course for preparing her to excel in her job each day. “It was great to get to see things in the classroom that I could apply to my everyday work,” she said.

She began interning at Ingen Software in Cabot, and later ended up at then Hewlett Packard Enterprises via a connection at the UCA Career Fair. “UCA does a great job of promoting internship opportunities and programming in the Career Services office. We have a lot of companies that are on our campus very frequently which is great for networking for future positions,” Williams said. “Without the Career Fair, this connection would have been significantly more difficult to make. The internship I received at HPE has now developed into a full-time position that I have accepted and plan to begin, at now DXC Technology, immediately following graduation.”

With Eryka’s honor as National Intern of the Year, she recently attended the Cooperative Education and Internship Association conference in Denver, Colorado. During this experience, Eryka got to serve on panels with fellow students as well as career service professionals from all across the nation. She admittedly received her highest compliment at the conference following one of her panels. “I had an individual come up to me and compliment me on my poise and participation in the previous panel and informed me that I am future CEO material. My career goal is to serve in leadership in a company and that was a very encouraging moment for me,” she said.

 

Eight students from Phi Beta Lambda (PBL) recently competed in business-related events at the PBL Spring Leadership Conference in Little Rock and proudly represented the UCA College of Business with all eight winning awards. They competed against college/university students from all over Arkansas. The winners and awards are:

Jessica Slay: 1st Place — Organizational Behavior (objective test)

Jordan Rivera: 2nd Place — Organizational Behavior and 4th Place — Management Concepts (both objective tests)

Madeline West: 4th Place — Retail Management (objective test)

Team: Glen Stambaugh, Caleb Glann & Miranda Wilson: 2nd Place — Business Decision Making (objective test and team performance presentation)

Team: Asher Emmanuel & Abigail Bormann: 2nd Place — Hospitality Management and 5th Place — Human Resource Management (objective tests and team performance presentations)

Six of the winners are eligible to compete against students from across the nation at the PBL National Leadership Conference in June in Anaheim, California.

PBL is the collegiate extension of Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) which was chartered in 1942. FLBA-PBL is a global organization and the largest business career student organization in the world with a quarter million students preparing for careers in business and business-related fields.