Photos from the Isenberg Scholarship Celebration

This evening, we had the pleasure of attending the Isenberg Scholarship Celebration at the Marriott Center at UMass Amherst.  There was some competition this evening since Jack '56 and Suzy Welch were also on campus promoting their new book.

I was not going to miss the scholarship celebration since it was the second time that The Nagurney Scholarship was being given to a very deserving student and there were many other students recognized with scholarships and other awards.

This year's recipient of The Nagurney Scholarship, which my husband and I endowed,  is a double major in Computer Science plus Operations and Information Management!

I also got to see some faculty and several of our PhD students, including my doctoral student, Sara Saberi, who was again recognized with the Isenberg Scholar Award (which she received twice) and today we heard other great news that Sara is also a recipient of the 2014-2015 Outstanding Doctoral Researcher Award.  Now is certainly the time of the year in academia in which we recognize great students and what a pleasure this is!

It was terrific to see several award-winning Operations and Information Management majors at this event.

The food was delicious and the conversations lively.  Associate Dean Linda Shea did a great job as an announcer and moderator with each student being recognized individually.

 

 Two highlights were the speeches by Vinnie Daboul '87, who was the alumni speaker, and whose daughter is graduating this year from the Isenberg School, and by Marty Boyle '15, who spoke on his great 4 years at Isenberg.

Finally, it was wonderful to see Andrew Clendinneng, a fellow Canadian, who is our Executive Director of Development, and who  closed the lovely evening with his remarks.

Congratulations to all the remarkable students and thanks to the donors for their support. Mr. Daboul had several quotes from Kahlil Gibran on the importance of giving back - well said!

Isenberg School of Management Prominent in UMass Amherst Annual Report on Research

Today, I received the hardcopy of the UMass Amherst Annual Report on Research, which is an elegantly produced and very informative report, thanks to the Editor, Karen J. Hayes.

The report begins with a message from our Vice Chancellor for Research & Engagement (VCRE), Dr. Mike Malone, who also is the Ronnie & Eugene Isenberg Distinguished Professor of Engineering. Research awards topped $165.5 million this year, which is quite impressive.

In the report is a segment called Faculty Bookshelf, which I always enjoy browsing through, and this year, 5 out of the 20 books featured are by Isenberg School of Management faculty! We have certainly been busy. It was great to see our book, "Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products," written with two of my former doctoral students, Professor Min Yu of the University of Portland and Professor Amir H. Masoumi of Manhattan College, and with Professor Ladimer S, Nagurney (the other Professor Nagurney).

And, just below our book, is the new book by our great new Provost, Dr. Katherine S. Newman!

 

Somehow the report made it to my Isenberg School mailbox although it was addressed to my husband who seems to be in the UMass database as a faculty member in my department (not true)!

Also, in the Annual Report is a feature on Incubating Innovation, in which the Isenberg Scholar Award recipients for 2014 are noted with an interview with my doctoral student, Sara Saberi and photo included. The online version appeared earlier on the ResearchNext website - thanks!

Congrats to all thirteen 2014 Isenberg Scholar Award recipients, an award which comes with a $10,000 fellowship! In addition to Sara, two other recipients are from my department and are doctoral students in Management Science - quite exceptional - David Agogo and Yueran Zhuo. I also mention Michael Prokle, from Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, since although he is not one of our grad students, he is the President of our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, so he is definitely part of the Isenberg School "family."

Last, but not least, there is a stunning article (I am a bit biased), Internext, which highlights two of the five NSF Future Internet Architecture (FIA) projects that are based at UMass Amherst. The article discusses MobilityFirst and our ChoiceNet project (which Sara has been working on and also my doctoral student Dong "Michelle" Li). The article can be read online here. I love the quote from our VCRE in it:

“The fact that our campus was selected to take a leadership role on two of the five FIA projects speaks volumes about our faculty expertise,” says Mike Malone, Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement. “We take an interdisciplinary approach to science, which is critical to an initiative of this size.”

Isenberg Celebration of Scholarship Recipients and Their Benefactors

Last evening I had the pleasure of attending the 2014 Isenberg Scholarship Celebration, which took place off-campus at the Log Cabin.

The venue was beautifully decorated with flowers and balloons, in maroon and white, of course, the UMass Amherst colors.

We had been attending this special spring recognition ceremony, which for many years had taken place at the UMass Campus Center.

Yesterday's event was extra special because my family and I had been giving over quite a few years towards an endowment established to create a scholarship for a student and, yesterday, we had the joy of seeing the first Nagurney Scholarship awarded to an undergraduate Operations & Information Management student, who is both a scholar and a true gentleman.

The hor d'oeuvres were elegant and the desserts sumptious but the best part was seeing the student scholarship recipients and their many benefactors, who include alums, members of the community, as well as faculty.

Education, as was emphasized yesterday, especially by our Dean, Mark Fuller, is the greatest gift that one can get and receive. Our Associate Dean Dr. Linda Shea further emphasized that scholarships enable our students to realize their dreams.

All the presentations were wonderful, including the student and alum ones, and I enjoyed hearing our Development Officer, Andrew Clendinneng, who is Canadian (I was born up north there, too), speak of the friendships he has made with our great alums.

It was also terrific to have one of my doctoral students, Sara Saberi, present. She was there because she is one of the ten recipients of the 2014 Isenberg Scholar Award. Her concentration is in Management Science and she is working on our NSF-funded multiuniversity project on Network Innovation Through Choice.

 

Gene Isenberg, after whom our School of Management is named, would have been so proud to see the students, family members, faculty, benefactors, and staff present yesterday evening. Sadly, he passed away on March 16, 2014 but left a tremendous legacy.

The Isenberg School is truly on the rise and, best of all, we have tremendous students that we have the privilege to teach and to conduct research with.

Congratulations to all of the scholarship recipients - you make the donors and faculty proud!

Thanks also to our wonderful Isenberg Editor, Lou Wigdor and former Dean Dr. Tom O'Brien for all that they have done to get us to this point.

A Thank You to a Great Philanthropist After Whom Our Isenberg School of Management is Named

Now is the time of the year when many are solicited to give what they can to various good causes. I am sure that you have your favorite organizations that you regularly donate to and truly believe in. It may be charity organizations, your alma mater, the place where you work, among others.

This post is to thank one of our greatest benefactors and by "our" I mean the Isenberg School of Management and the benefactor -- Mr. Eugene "Gene" Isenberg, after whom our business school is named.

Gene Isenberg is a great philanthropist and I especially enjoyed the definition of philanthropy in Wikipedia: Philanthropy etymologically means "love of humanity" in the sense of caring for, nourishing, developing, and enhancing "what it is to be human" on both the benefactors' (by identifying and exercising their values in giving and volunteering) and beneficiaries' (by benefiting) parts.  As for the more modern or conventional definition:  philanthrophy is private initiatives, for public good, focusing on quality of life. 

Mr. Gene Isenberg was recognized as a philanthropist, with many other household name executives, back in 1998 in The New York Times in a feature Business Day article, which noted that:  Mr. Isenberg's prime cause is education, and the major beneficiary has been his alma mater, the University of Massachusetts. Last year, he pledged $6 million over five years, giving $2 million of that sum in 1997. Separately, he gives $90,000 annually for scholarships at the university in mathematics, engineering, computer science and business.

''It was time to give something back to education,'' Mr. Isenberg said. ''I could afford to do it, and I did it.''

And because of Mr. Isenberg, we have our beautiful atrium, high technology classrooms, and much, much  more. 

Today, we received more good news because of the benevolence of Mr. Isenberg.

One of my PhD students, Sara Saberi, who is also a Doctoral Student Center Associate at the Virtual Center of Supernetworks that I founded in 2001,  was selected to be an Isenberg Scholar Award recipient for 2014 which comes with a wonderful stipend. Sara's PhD concentration is in Management Science. She is also working with me and several collaborators on our NSF project: Network Innovation Through Choice.

In the letter to Sara from the Director of the Isenberg Program for the Integration of Management, Engineering and Science,  it was stated that: This prestigious award is a tremendous honor and its recipients reflect the highest academic standards of the university. As you may recall, this fund was created in 1994 by Mr. and Mrs. Eugene M. Isenberg to encourage students whose study and plans demonstrate a commitment to the integration of science and/or engineering with management.

I have met the Isenbergs on many occasions and we thank them for their support of education of our students! This is philanthropy at its best.