News from Beth Fitz Gibbon, DM ’09
Alumni Council President and Joann Farrell Quinn, PhD ’13 Alumni Council Vice
President.
November 2018 Alumni Weekend
The first weekend
in November was a wonderful time to visit Cleveland! We had a chance to connect and reconnect with
DM alum, while remembering what it was like to have some great discussions and
feel like students again. We had a
packed two-day schedule, hearing about AI and AI (appreciative inquiry and
artificial intelligence), ethics and social justice, life in academia, new
directions in quantitative methods, and civic responsibility. We also had a chance to explore some of our
colleagues’ research at a poster session during a reception with current
students, faculty and alumni.
Our Keynote
Speaker was Philip L. Schwartz, Chief Data Officer and Senior Technical Staff
Member at IBM. His presentation was titled, The
Impact of Digital Technologies on Global Industries. The video is available
here.
If you were
unable to attend this reunion, put the next one on your calendar, as it is sure
to be a fun and informative weekend!
What’s in a Name?
The DM program
faculty and DM Alumni Council have started an initiative to examine
possibilities to change the degree name of the Doctor of Management (DM) to
Doctor of Business Administration (DBA). Many alumni have expressed interest in
a degree name change over the years.
We have created a
separate task force within the DM Alumni Community co-chaired by Beth Fitz
Gibbon and Joann Farrell Quinn. The task force has 4 DM and 2 PhD alumni
representing both degrees in the alumni community proportional to the total
number of alumni. The member’s graduation dates range from 1999 to 2015
and include the following alumni:
1) Ron Fountain, DM 1999
2) Randy Bambrough, DM 2008
3) Bruce Gockerman, DM 2008
4) Beth Fitz Gibbon, DM 2009 (DM Alumni Council
President)
5) Joann Farrell Quinn, PhD 2013 (DM Alumni Council Vice
President)
6) Phil Cola, PhD 2015
This group
created a very brief Qualtrics survey to gather data on alumni preferences and
perspectives regarding a potential degree name change.
As we look ahead
to our 25th Anniversary let us ensure that your degree is one of
your most valuable and treasured assets.
25th Anniversary in 2020…A
Celebration of You!
In the spring of
2020, alumni of CWRU’s Weatherhead DM/PhD program will commemorate 25 years of
producing the finest practitioner-scholars in the world. It is the goal of your
Alumni Council, the faculty and the administration to make this our best
attended, best received event ever. To that end, we would love you to share
your wishes for making this a celebration you don’t want to miss.
To enable greater
participation in planning and communications, your Alumni Council will soon
announce the formation of a team of Class Representatives – one person from
each cohort who is willing to gather news and desires from their class
throughout the year, to be shared with all alumni via this newsletter, and to
incorporate into Anniversary planning.
Your Alumni
Advisory Council, as your personal representatives to Weatherhead and CWRU,
want you to know we are doing everything we can to sustain a
return-on-investment for your degree. We
are hoping 2019 will be the year all alumni can come together to benefit from,
participate in and support alumni activities. To do that, we need to hear from
you. How can we make your investment in your degree more beneficial and
valuable?
If you would like
to volunteer to be your cohort’s Representative, or if you have requests and
recommendations for Anniversary speakers, topics of interest and social
gatherings, please send them to Beth Fitz Gibbon, DM ’09 (pathfox820@gmail.com)
or to Joann Farrell Quinn, PhD’13 (jfquinn@jfqconsulting.com).
Of course, if you prefer, you may always send suggestions directly to Sue at san2@case.edu or
Marilyn at mac29@case.edu.
