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As the year 2023 closes, I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on the busy, but exciting year that was at the Pamplin School of Business. I will resist the temptation to list all of the wonderful activities and events that we engaged in this past year and instead call out just a handful of the main highlights.
Curricular Innovation
On the curricular innovation front, there are two programs that I would like to underscore. The first is our new business ethics curriculum, EthicsGameTM.
Last fall, we began integrating EthicsGameTM and its accompanying Ethical Lens InventoryTM tool into our required freshman level business course. There, our students learned to use a common framework and language to consider the ethical components of decision making.
This academic year, this same business ethics framework followed them into their required sophomore level business course, as our students wrestled with more complicated ethical business scenarios.
Finally, our students will continue to use the EthicsGameTM framework as a touchstone in both their required junior level business course and their senior capstone business course, so that by graduation, they will be able to recognize and handle ethical dilemmas that might confront them in the workplace. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to share our unique approach with the Portland Business Journal via their Thought Leadership Podcast. You can link to that interview here.
Our second curricular highlight, “Business UPskill,” is a program that we stood up in record time for the benefit of our alumni. The program was conceived as a response to the wave of corporate downsizing that impacted the technology industry.
With UPskill, we offered UP alumni the opportunity to join specially curated sets of classes in a select number of our MBA graduate business courses as a means of upskilling. Alumni joined our current graduate students in courses such as Economics and Metrics for Sustainability, Applied Marketing Strategies, and Strategy and Competition in the Experiential Economy, among others. We received excellent feedback from our alumni participants who took part in this program.
New Partnerships
On another front, we partnered with the Portland Trail Blazers and their new NBA G-League affiliate, the Rip City Remix. By now, you are likely aware that the Chiles Center, our on-campus basketball arena, is the new home of the Rip City Remix.
Concurrent with this announcement, the Blazers reached out to the business school for assistance in finding student interns to support the Remix’s launch on campus. Following a highly competitive interview process, we learned that Pamplin School of Business students successfully claimed 3 of the 5 initial internships associated with the Remix. We are extremely proud of our students and believe that their success represents a strong endorsement of our business program.
In addition, with the support of the Remix’s community partnership team, we recently hosted a successful event, dubbed Beer, Business, and Basketball. With 134 official registrants, this was easily one of the most popular events that the business school has hosted since the pandemic.
At the event we celebrated Pamplin School of Business alum Steve Waters ’10, co-founder and CEO of Backwoods Brewing, as he unveiled his new Rip City Remix IPA beer. You can link to more details about this event in this issue.
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Michael L. DeVaughn, Ph.D.
Dean, Pamplin School of Business