Students Around the World Study “Living Cases” at UAlbany
By Carol Olechowski
Business owners and senior managers often face information systems, marketing, finance, or human resources problems that impact their firms’ growth and survival. Some attempt to devise their own solutions. Others call upon UAlbany School of Business faculty and students for help in the form of a Living Case.

The Living Case, explains Associate Professor of Management Science and Information Systems Salvatore Belardo, is a critical component of an intensive, “results-oriented” joint program conducted twice a year by UAlbany and Zurich’s Graduate School of Business Administration. It brings together participants from the United States, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, and several other countries. The students, whose professional backgrounds are as diverse as their national origins, organize themselves into six groups to study a particular company’s problems and propose solutions. In the process, they earn six credits toward the MBA at Albany and the GSBA graduate degree.

Belardo, one of several school faculty who oversee the Living Case, worked with 36 students last fall on a case for CommerceHub, which was founded as Commerce Technologies, Inc., at the Center for Environmental Sciences and Technology Management (CESTM). Now located in Clifton Park, the firm provides technology infrastructure and applications that facilitate real-time electronic communication between merchants and suppliers. Its clients include JC Penney, Kmart, Sears, and Wal-Mart.

CommerceHub was seeking input on strategy related to information systems, “but also to marketing, financial, operational, and HR (human resources) issues,” recalls Lester Mills, a Cambridge University graduate and a global purchasing manager for Roche Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland. “Our task was to analyze CommerceHub’s situation and develop a strategy to secure the company’s future success.”

A written summary about CommerceHub and three two-hour presentations and question-and-answer sessions with the firm’s founder and CEO, UAlbany alumnus Frank Poore, MBA ’97; Vice President for Technology Richard Jones, M.S. ’98; and consultant Peter Otto convinced Mills and his group that the company needed to build its client base. The students proposed a strategy “involving the acquisition of customers that included health, fitness, and sports equipment suppliers and a home grocery-delivery service.” They also suggested that CommerceHub “develop a data warehouse, data mining, and knowledge management for its existing and new clients; and form partnerships with appropriate consultants to help sell its special drop-ship software solution and network to find new customers.”

Mills, who also has a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, found the Living Case “fascinating” because “I am responsible for developing an e-commerce (procurement) solution for Hoffmann-LaRoche. I was aware of recent developments in this extremely dynamic and competitive market of application solution providers.” The case, he adds, “was very much at the forefront of information technology (IT) developments. It was challenging, as well, because business models for companies [like CommerceHub] have no historical reference, and future scenarios are difficult to project with any certainty.”

For Sharon Hover, a State University Construction Fund associate financial analyst, the Living Case was also “a challenging, very exciting, and unique learning experience.” Her six-person team included two Germans and three Swiss who brought to the table experience in such fields as IT, Internet banking, management training, and re-insurance underwriting.

Hover and her colleagues “used information from our classes, written material, and the Internet to assess and formulate our proposal. With our various backgrounds, it was interesting to work as a team and to try to put together a written proposal and a Power Point presentation in a relatively short time frame.”

The Empire State College graduate and her team “proposed that CommerceHub become more focused. The company has no sales force, and we felt that Frank Poore was stretched too thin in trying to be part of so many aspects of the business. We recommended also that CommerceHub try to raise venture capital.”

Hover, who is in the process of earning a master’s in business and policy studies at ESC, found the team presentations particularly interesting. “Each was different not only in the perception of the problem, but in the solution,” she observes.

“I learned from the lectures, and also from my team and my other classmates. I would recommend that any student wishing to complete a Living Case do so. It is a very enriching experience.”

Poore was not available for comment for this story.

Larry Davis Honored at Internet Symposium
By Lisa James Goldsberry
Larry A. Davis, founder, president and chairman of Tech Valley Communications (TVC), is this year’s recipient of the University at Albany’s Entrepreneurship Award. Established in 1998, the award honors a Capital Region business person with an exemplary entrepreneurial spirit and strong commitment to the University. The Entrepreneurship Award salutes the innovation, motivation, and creativity of an entrepreneur.

The award was presented by University President Karen R. Hitchcock at the fourth annual Building Brands and Business on the Web Internet Symposium, a one-day conference highlighting the latest topics in Internet marketing. The symposium, which was co-sponsored by the University’s School of Business, the University at Albany Foundation’s Council for Economic Outreach and the Capital Region chapter of the American Marketing Association, attracted about 220 participants, mostly marketers and business officials from the Capital Region.

TVC is the first locally owned and operated competitive local exchange carrier, and Davis has more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications and software industries. Formed in 1999, TVC’s services include a digital subscriber line, which allows access to voice, data, and Internet simultaneously.

Prior to forming TVC, Davis was founder and president of Communi-cation Software Consultants Inc. (CommSoft), a $20 million local company that provides software to telecommunications companies. In 1999, he sold Commsoft to Billing Concepts, where he also served as senior vice president and director. Before founding CommSoft, he taught college-level courses in computer programming and worked as a consultant in the health care and communications industries.

Among the featured speakers at the symposium were three University alumni: Arthur Coles, B.S.’65, president of Healthcare Research Group, Harris Interactive; Michael Alfano, B.S.’82, vice president of performance consulting, Oracle Corp.; and Bernard Bernstein, B.S.’86, vice president and chief scientist, Talk City Marketing Group.

Coles, who served as executive vice president of marketing during the transition of Harris Interactive, a full-service research firm, to the Internet, shared his experience in his talk, “Transitioning a Company and Brand to the Internet with Research.”

“Transforming to an e-business and CRM (customer relationship management)” was the topic of Alfano’s presentation. The Oracle group headed by Alfano focuses on the delivery of learning and change management services through the use of e-business software solutions.

At Talk City Marketing Group, Bernstein, who was a computer science major at UAlbany, has helped develop the software infrastructure that sustains traffic for hundreds of corporate clients. In his presentation, “Building Brands by Building Community,” Bernstein discussed the ways in which the interactive capabilities of the Internet can be harnessed through discussion boards, chat rooms, online events and clubs to build and strengthen customer relationships.

UAlbany Wins Grant for Korean Studies
By Vinny Reda
Building on its formidable academic strength in the study of the culture and language of East Asia, the University has been awarded a $135,000 grant from the Korea Foundation to establish a new, tenure-track assistant professorship in Korean studies in the Department of East Asian Studies.

“This grant will make Korean studies an integral part of the University’s undergraduate curriculum,” said V. Mark Durand, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “The large Korean-American student population at UAlbany has for many years supported courses in beginning Korean, and now this generous grant from the Korea Foundation will strengthen and expand this foundation.”

Susanna Fessler, associate professor and chair of the Department of East Asian Studies, noted that the timing of the Korea Foundation grant for UAlbany is ideal. “For one thing, Korea is becoming an economic world presence,” said Fessler. “Consequently, more and more students are becoming interested in Korean studies. It will give them a competitive advantage in a specialty that is growing in importance.

“Korea itself over the past 100 years has been considered by Western scholars as ‘the third nation’ in East Asian studies. The focus was overwhelmingly on China and Japan. But that is changing, and people are becoming more culturally aware of Korea’s distinctiveness and value. It is now getting much more attention as a culture, and that will be reflected here.

“I also believe that there is a particular relevance to expanding this program at the University at Albany. Not only are we the flagship campus in the SUNY system in East Asian studies for China and Japan, but if you look at the two largest groups of international students on our campus, the first is Chinese and the second is Korean. And there are a lot of UAlbany students of Korean descent. So, in many ways, this is the perfect time for this expansion.”

The Korean studies program at UAlbany began in 1994-95, but until last year had only a first-year Korean language course - always filled to capacity; the second-year language course was added in 2000-01.

“This will allow us to add the third-year language course,” said Fessler. “Plus, it will add classes taught in the cultural specialty of the professor eventually hired - whether that be in Korean economics, history, literature, or society.”

The additional language courses will also increase the annual study abroad pool of UAlbany students who travel to Yonsei University in Korea as part of a long-standing exchange agreement, said Durand. “Enrolling more students in study-abroad programs in East Asia is one of the department’s major goals,” he added.

The Korea Foundation grant marks the third successful major faculty expansion application in the history of the Department of East Asian Studies, now in its 10th year. In 1992, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation awarded the department a three-year grant to establish a faculty position in Chinese, and in 1994 a similar award was received from the Japan Foundation. Both positions are now fully funded by the University and staffed by tenured or tenure-track faculty.

“Over the last 10 years, the Department of East Asian Studies has expanded considerably,” said Carlos Santiago, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs. “While we are the oldest and largest department devoted to teaching the languages and cultures of East Asia in the SUNY system, our significant strengths have been in the areas of China and Japan.

“We see all around us the reasons for bringing Korean studies up to this high level. Our international student population at UAlbany is at an all-time high, and 65 percent of these students are from Asia, and a full 20 percent of those from Korean. Our agreements of exchange and collaboration with Korean universities and fruitful and expanding. In addition, we have many alumni residing in Korea.”

Lecture Series Addresses Conflicts in Democracies
By Vinny Reda
The Cultures of Conflict and Reconciliation lecture series, sponsored by the Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, continues Tuesday, March 6, from 7 to 9 p.m. in Chapel House on Perimeter Road.

Martha Ojeda, a labor organizer who led a wildcat strike of 5,000 workers at SONY in 1994 and is now executive director of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, will discuss “Health and Safety Are Not a Request, They Are A Right! Workers Speak Back to NAFTA.”

Cultures of Conflict and Reconciliation speaks to the interdisciplinary work of the New Humanities, according to Rosemary Hennessy, professor of English and coordinator of the series. “The series will focus on cultural forms that are interlaced with these social crises within democracies and the practices of reconciliation that have been devised to redress them.”

The series continues March 20, when the topic will be “ ‘Reconciliation’ and ‘Impunity’ in Post-Pinochet Chile: The Struggle for Justice and Collective Memory after the Celebrated ‘Neoliberal Revolution.’ ” Fernando Leiva, a Chilean political economist and a new member of UAlbany’s Department of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, will be the speaker. His research focuses on how particular economic ideas and policies transform class and gender relations in economies undergoing sustained processes of internationalization.

On April 17 the topic will be “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.” Peter Kornbluh, director of the National Security Archive’s Chile Documentation Project, will speak. Kornbluh led the campaign to declassify official documentation of U.S. government support for the Pinochet regime. He is the editor of Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba and author of the forthcoming book, The Pinochet File.

The series, which was made possible by a grant from the Dibner Fund, concludes May 1 with “Prison Intellectuals and the Limits of U.S. Democracy.” Joy James, professor of African-American studies at Brown University, is the speaker.

The talks are free and open to the public.

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