Looking Forward to the UMass and Isenberg School Graduations

Tomorrow and Saturday the town of Amherst will be buzzing with multiple graduation ceremonies, beginning with the graduate and undergraduate commencements at UMass Amherst tomorrow morning and afternoon, respectively.

On Saturday morning, the Isenberg School of Management will also be honoring its graduating undergraduates in a special ceremony.

The legendary journalist, Ted Koppel, will be receiving an honorary degree tomorrow. Also, Eugene Isenberg, after whom our School of Management is named, will be receiving a special award for his philanthropy.

I am very much looking forward to these events-- tomorrow morning one of my doctoral students, Min Yu, will be receiving her doctorate diploma and several of her family members have already arrived from China for this very special occasion. I also will be sending off the Isenberg School of Management undergraduates, especially our Operations Management majors.

There is a very nice writeup In the Loop on those being honored at commencement ceremonies.

Congratulations to all those receiving their diplomas as well as to their families!

Next month, I will be giving a commencement speech at Gothenburg University to those receiving Masters degrees from the School of Business, Economics and Law. I received an outline of the associated ceremonies, which include a lunch and end with strawberries and sparkling wine.

I have started working on my commencement speech. This will be a special experience.

I have given a commencement speech earlier, but it was to students graduating from the Isenberg School and their guests.

So Looking Forward to Graduations and Giving a Commencement Speech

May and June are the months for graduations (at least north of the equator) and with spring in full bloom the excitement surrounding the marking of such milestones is palpable.

Living and working in Amherst, Massachusetts with the 5 colleges (UMass, Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire) plus numerous colleges in our knowledge corridor and in Massachusetts and neighboring Connecticut, this marks a truly special time of the year.

I am very much looking forward to the UMass Amherst graduation, both the undergrad and grad ceremonies that will be taking place on May 11, 2012.

I am so proud of all that our undergraduate students at the Isenberg School of Management have accomplished as well as the graduate students. This year, my PhD student, Min Yu, will be receiving her PhD, and her family is traveling from China for the graduation ceremony and festivities.

The Isenberg School has been graduating 25% of the UMass Amherst graduates -- an amazing number and our students are outstanding with several Jack Welch Scholars and recipients of the Leaders for the 21st Century  Award.

The Isenberg School will be sending off its  graduates in an additional special ceremony on May 12 at the Mullins Center,

I am also looking forward to high school graduations and, especially this year, since my daughter, Alexandra, will be graduating from Deerfield Academy. You can view some photos of graduations that I have enjoyed at Deerfield Academy and UMass Amherst here and here.

As for commencement speeches, which are supposed to be inspiring, Ted Koppel, the renowned journalist, will be speaking at UMass Amherst.

This morning, I accepted an invitation to be a commencement speaker at graduate graduation ceremonies at the University of Gothenburg School of Business, Economics and Law in mid-June.

Having given a Isenberg School of Management undergraduate commencement speech  a few years ago, I am very much looking forward to inspiring graduating students in Gothenburg, Sweden!  I have become enchanted by that institution.

Congrats to all the graduates and their family members!

Choices and Decision-Making -- What I Decided to Do

For some reason, good news tends to arrive (at least for me) in bunches.

Today, I was faced with having three choices and having to decide among them.

They all fell on the same date, May 11, 2011, and each required my being in a different country -- in Sweden, in Russia, and in the US. One day this may be feasible, but not yet.

The first invitation, came from the Vice Chancellor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, requesting my presence at the Inauguration of New Professors at the University of Gothenburg, where I have been appointed a Visiting Professor. The invitation stated: Traditions are important in a time of rapid change. They create continuity and hopefully also fellowship within the University of Gothenburg. The Inauguration of New Professors, which takes place on 11 May at 14.00 in Gothenburg Concert Hall, is one of two important traditional ceremonies at our University. The other one is the Conferment of Doctoral Degrees that is held in the autumn. The Inauguration fulfils two functions. The first is to honour and welcome new professors. The second is to publicly display the University’s renewal and competence.

At the ceremony we also welcome visiting professors and adjunct professors in order to show our appreciation of being able to associate ourselves with your expertise. I hope that you feel welcome as colleagues among the other professors at the University of Gothenburg.

The second invitation was to give a plenary talk at the 2nd International Conference on Network Analysis, which takes place on May 7 – 9, 2012 in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. I have been to St. Petersburg, Russia, but never as far east as exotic Nizhny Novgorod. The flights to/from this location do not operate on a regular, even, daily, basis, making travel to and from, a time-consuming process.

Plus, the UMass Amherst undergraduate AND graduate graduations are on May 11, 2012! I have a doctoral student that I expect to be receiving her PhD in Management Science that day and many undergraduates majoring in Operations Management that I would love to send off appropriately. The students I have been with for several years as their professor and mentor.

Given the above choices, I proceeded to ask students, faculty, as well as, family members and staff as to what I should do.

There was no consensus and the responses were quite interesting -- and, in a sense, the utility maximizing solution (at least for someone) may actually be to try to attend 2 out of the 3 events (perhaps Russia followed by Sweden, for example, or maybe even videotaping my plenary for Russia and then going to Sweden or staying back in Amherst).

A few minutes ago I made my decision.

I plan on being at the UMass Amherst graduations, which, this year, because of our readjusted academic year calendar, fall earlier than in previous years.

I have notified both my Russian and Swedish contacts (I will be in the Swedish inauguration brochure although not physically there). As for going back to Russia, my hosts hope that there will be another opportunity -- as do I! I am on the Advisory Council of the Laboratory of Algorithms and Technologies for Network Analysis at the Higher School of Economics in Nizhny Novgorod, which is directed by Professor Panos Pardalos through a major award that he received. I am sure that their Network Analysis conference will be a great success -- sorry to have to miss it!

Graduation Time -- Let Them Fly on Their Own Wings

This time of year is when many college graduations and associated events and festivities take place.

Yesterday, UMass Amherst awarded graduate degrees at the Mullins Center and we had a nice group from the Isenberg School officially receiving their PhD degrees.

Today, on a simply gorgeous spring day, undergraduate degrees will be awarded at a joint campus event, which will be followed by individual school events, including one at the Isenberg School of Management. I am looking forward to seeing my Operations Management students graduate! They have all worked very hard and have had the advantage of a challenging curriculum with great professors. Our students are a delight to teach.

The undergraduate commencement speaker will be Sheila Bair, the Chairwoman of the FDIC, who is officially on leave from my department (Finance and Operations Management at the Isenberg School of Management), where she had a faculty appointment for a few years. UMass Amherst issued a nice press release on her being back to speak at commencement.

She, along with Mary Schapiro and Elizabeth Warren, are featured on the latest cover of Time Magazine, with an accompanying article, The New Sheriffs of Wall Street. In the article, former Senator Bob Dole, who was her mentor, is quoted as saying that Sheila "was available 24/7." In addition, he is quoted as saying: As my wife will tell you, more is expected of women. Dole, in 1990, encouraged Sheila to run for an open House seat in Kansas. She ran as a pro-choice Republican and lost narrowly. Senator Dole told me the reason I lost was because I was a woman and I was unmarried, Bair recalled last year, on accepting the Profiles in Courage Award at Harvard University. That made me all the more determined to take on new challenges. Sheila is now married and has two children, including an adopted daughter. She still very much enjoys coming back to Amherst (which, I must say is primarily Democratic).

I agree with Dole's statement that, more is expected of women; nevertheless, we can still be major instruments of change, whether through government, scientific research and discoveries, business, engineering, medicine and healthcare, creative arts, media, and/or education, or, however, we and our family members and students, decide to fly on our own wings.

So, congratulations to all of this year's college graduates!