Events – College of Business

June 20, 2017June 23, 2017

SOLVE: Take your business to the next level

Your business is constantly growing and evolving, aiming to get to the next level of success. As it changes, it will move through various stages of the business life cycle. In this OSU College of Business SOLVE panel, we explore how businesses adapt, evolve and shift. A panel of experts will discuss roadblocks, challenges and successes you will have to navigate as your business grows.

Date: July 18, 2017
Time: 5-7 pm
Location: Moss Adams
805 SW Broadway, Suite 1100
Portland, OR 97205

Our panel of Oregon companies will explore how to take a business to the next level, whether that is launching a startup, developing a strategic growth plan for an established business, or how companies adapt to market and technology shifts.

Don’t miss this event where we bring leaders in our business community and higher education together to SOLVE business challenges and address critical issues. Light hors d’oeuvres and drinks will be served.

Meet the panel

Julie Desimone, CPA, Partner, Moss Adams
Amol Joshi, Assistant Professor, College of Business, OSU
Jim Fagan, CEO Malarkey Roofing Products
Jill Nelson, CEO Ruby Receptionists

Your response is requested by Tuesday, July 11, 2017.

We look forward to seeing you there.

With thanks to our host:

Moss Adans logo SOLVE: Take your business to the next level

April 17, 2017April 17, 2017

Spring Term Week 3 Highlights: Networking and Finance

A quick thanks to all of you and to the Austin Family Business Program for making our first Fridays in Austin of the term a powerful success. Now we look forward to this week’s highlights:

With the university’s Spring 2017 Career Expo just ten days away – and more than one hundred employers attending – you have plenty more opportunities to continue to use the professional development platforms and services here in Austin Hall to get ready for that big day, too.

For starters, there’s Friday’s morning networking coffee with the finance industry leaders who will speak for Fridays in Austin events. The event also features the Oregon State Investment Group, a student-led organization that actively manages a $1.8 million equity portfolio for the OSU Foundation.

This kicks off the Finance-themed Fridays in Austin lineup, which includes discussion panels on asset management, financial institutions, student-led discussions of their internship experience, and expert tips to “network your way” to an internship.

Goldman Sachs will have an informational session covering their employment and internship opportunities, while KPMG experts will help you polish up your resume.

Not to be missed are the team-building sessions in the HWeekend. This Friday evening event will help match participants to projects in advance of the weekend’s build session.

This week’s Impact Oregon innovation workshop will be a hands-on session on conceptualization and “crummy” prototyping. Drop by the DAMLab Makerspace on Friday from 2 – 3:30 pm. All these Impact Oregon workshops will help build your concepts and ideas and prepare you for the statewide competition – but you will also learn some cool things along the way.

Also, be sure to visit the Family Business Boardroom: Making it to the C-Suite in Privately-Held Enterprises event featuring Lisa Weiglin, head of talent development for Endeavour Capital, a leading private equity investment firm with offices in Seattle, Portland, Denver and Los Angeles.

April 10, 2017April 12, 2017

Spring Term Week 2 Highlights: Dean’s Distinguished Lecture

Certainly, this week’s “don’t miss” event is the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture with alumnus Trey Winthrop, the chief financial officer from Bob’s Red Mill. The Milwaukie, Oregon company is an employee-owned operation that places high value on people and relationships. Winthrop will discuss how the company balances growth, strategy and processes in such an environment. RSVP and reserve your place for the Fri., April 14, 10 am event in Stirek Auditorium (Austin 183).

Oregon State College of Business In conjunction with the Austin Family Business Program, Fridays in Austin events will center on the workings of successful family businesses. You can hear from Travis Boersma, president & co-founder of Dutch Bros. Coffee (and runner-up for “don’t miss” event of the week!), who started the company with his brother. RSVP for his talk here. Other events include a discussion panel of financial advisors focused on positioning family businesses to succeed for future generations. Review the Family Business Day page for more details. It’s an all-star lineup!

Also, design students, today is the last day to sign up for the Senior Mentoring Event. This Portland event pairs seniors in apparel design, interior design, graphic design, or merchandising management with a professional in the student’s field. Apply with your resume.

We’d like to say congratulations to Steven Miller and Moriah Shay! They are among the honorees receiving the Outreach and Engagement Vice Provost Award of Excellence for their “Thinker Tinker Trailer, The College of Business Mobile Makerspace.” In addition to the accolades associated with recognition as one of 10 outstanding examples of outreach and engagement work at Oregon State, they have won $1,000.

As well, let’s congratulate Nathan Braaten, who won the InnovationX PitchFest for his work creating wearable jewelry embedded with a safety alert system.

Remember, all of our news and events information highlights are in The Works, so don’t miss it!

April 3, 2017April 26, 2017

Spring Term Week 1 Highlights

Welcome back, students! We hope you are rested and refreshed from your spring break adventures, and ready to get back to business. Here are a few highlights of this week’s important happenings that you don’t want to miss.

— The Career Success Center has a few more openings to join the multi-day Travel Friday road trip to Seattle. View more information here.

Don’t miss this opportunity! The Senior Mentoring Event will pair a senior in Apparel Design, Interior Design, Graphic Design, and/or Merchandising Management with a professional in the student’s field for a morning of conversation, input, and professional networking advice. Apply with your resume by April 10.

— The official application deadline for HWeekend is April 5 — but it fills up quickly (like, really quickly) so do not delay, and apply today.

— Impact Oregon, the statewide invention challenge, will have a kickoff meeting on Thurs., April 6. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn you through the process of getting an idea out of your head and into a product cycle.

— Advising has opened the spring pro-school application process. Here is the link.

— Our Fridays in Austin platform will begin its run for spring term next week.

— Our full lineup is in The Works (as usual) so don’t miss it!

July 19, 2016July 19, 2016

Women in leadership conversation continues

The Center for American Progress estimates that, at the current rate of change, it will take until 2085 for women to reach parity with men in leadership roles in our country.

In May, members of the Portland business community came together to share ideas about how to address the challenge of advancing women in business leadership and to press the discussion forward. For our next conversation, second in the series, we’ll welcome Gayle Fitzpatrick, vice president at New Relic, from 5 to 7 p.m. Aug. 10 at the WeWork Custom House, 220 N.W. Eighth Ave., Portland, as we again bring together business professionals to drive action for advancing women in leadership.

Research shows that diverse business teams promote creativity, foster critical thinking, and tend to make better, more thoughtful decisions because they consider a wider range of perspectives. Join us for short discussions around ideas and strategies to advance women in business.

Mitzi Montoya, Sara Hart Kimball Dean of the College of Business, will provide opening remarks. Audrey Iffert-Saleem, the college’s executive director of strategic initiatives, will give a summary of the college’s efforts so far.

We’ll close out the evening with networking and semi-structured opportunities to exchange thoughts and explore collaboration on this topic.

Light hors d’oeuvres and drinks will be served. RSVP requested, but not required. Please RSVP by Friday, Aug. 8.

For more information, please call 541-737-2551.

May 3, 2016

Impact at Work highlights student success

Oregon State University President Ed Ray and Sara Hart Kimball Dean Mitzi Montoya both noted the challenges and importance of accessing higher education May 2 during the College of Business’ Impact at Work event at the Portland Hilton and Executive Tower.

The reception and dinner, attended by 150, were aimed at honoring scholarship recipients and the donors who help fund their education.

Student success is a top initiative of both the college and the university. Ray pointed out that young people who grow up in families in the lowest quartile of income distribution have just a 9 percent chance of accessing higher education — that’s a better chance than 40 years ago, but only 3 percent better, and he and Montoya are determined to speed up the rate of improvement.

Montoya, who was a second-generation college student in her family, noted that when someone can break through and become the first person in his or her family to graduate from college, it changes the family for the better for generations.

Other speakers included Presidential Scholar Annemarie Lewandowski, a senior in management who will go to work for Boeing as a project manager following graduation, and Dean’s Council of Excellence member Ken Thrasher, former chief executive officer of Fred Meyer.

Lewandowski expressed gratitude for being able to graduate debt free, and Thrasher noted how he hadn’t planned on going to college until his mentor, legendary Portland businessman Bill Naito, helped make it possible — with the proviso that he work hard, do well and then similarly help others someday.

The evening also included recognition for six high school juniors selected for the College of Business’ Future Business Leader Scholarship.

April 15, 2016

Irrigation software team leads the way

The winning team makes its pitch to the sharks.

A team proposing a business built around software for maximizing irrigation efficiency was the overall winner April 8 at the College of Business’ 14^th annual MBA Business Plan Competition in Stirek Auditorium.

Developing the plan for the company, called Irrigation for the Future, were Andy Roberts, Yang Wang, Vincent Dijoe and Easton Henrikson.

Placing second was the h2know team of Keith Robertson, Ying Pan, Christina Kreps and Abdulsalam Alhawsawi, and third was X-Bubble: eXtreme heat eXchange, featuring Robert Shattuck, Qi Liu, Jingjing Jia and Chao Feng. H2know’s product was a wearable hydration assessment tool, while X-Bubble deals in nano surface structures for advanced heat transfer.

In the Elevator Pitch and Shark Tank portion of the competition, the order of finish was X-Bubble, Irrigation for the Future, and h2Know. Shattuck, of X-Bubble, was the top Elevator Pitch presenter.

The College of Business extends a big thank you to the judges and sponsors.

April 14, 2016

Ethics: Strive to be perfect

Aaron Beam, former CFO of HealthSouth, speaks to students over lunch.

Former Fortune 500 chief financial officer Aaron Beam told College of Business students on April 13 that there’s only one way to maintain business ethics: Strive to be perfect at them.

“If you set the bar lower than that, you’re on a slippery slope,” Beam said. “What’s an acceptable moderate amount to cheat on your taxes? Zero. What’s an acceptable amount to cook the books? Zero.”

Beam, who gave both a lunch-hour and evening presentation in Austin Hall, learned that lesson the hard way: He served three months in federal prison for his role in inflating earnings reports while CFO of outpatient-care giant HealthSouth. He said he lacked the courage to say no when the company’s CEO told to him to make up numbers so the company could dupe investors and tell Wall Street what it wanted to hear.

Twelve months after failing to say no, a guilt-ridden Beam left the company, and four years later, in 2004, he was one of five former HealthSouth CFOs to plead guilty when the Securities and Exchange Commission accused the company of overstating earnings by $2.5 billion dollars dating to 1999.

Financially ruined by the restitution that was ordered, Beam went to work mowing lawns following his release from prison and now gives presentations such as the ones at Austin Hall to university and corporate groups around the country.

His main messages: Maintain a rigid commitment to the highest personal ethics, and investigate any company you might want to work for to make sure it has a similar commitment regarding its corporate culture.

Raised in Shreveport, La., Beam holds an economics degree from LSU and is the author of two books: “Ethics Playbook: Winning Ethically in Business” and “HealthSouth, the Wagon to Disaster.”

January 29, 2016

Quilt raffle highlights Food Drive

A raffle for a 90-by-80-inch quilt is one of the highlights of the College of Business’ efforts for the annual OSU Food Drive, which benefits Linn-Benton Food Share.

Raffle tickets ($5 each or three for $10) go on sale Monday, Feb. 8, in the Faculty Services office, Austin Hall 302. They’ll be on sale through noon Feb. 12, and the quilt, donated by the Marys River Quilt Guild in Philomath, will be on display in the Faculty Services office all week as well. The drawing will be held at noon; the winner will be notified by email.

On Tuesday, Feb. 2, the college will kick off its food drive efforts with a coffee, tea and pastry event from 10 a.m. to noon in the Masterson Family Marketplace. During the event, Faculty Services will accept donations of money and nonperishable food items and sell tickets for a 50-50 raffle. Tickets for the 50-50 raffle are also $5 apiece or three for $10.

On Friday, Feb. 5, donuts and drinks will be sold door-to-door in Austin Hall. As with every promotion, all proceeds go to Linn-Benton Food Share.

Donations of food and money will be accepted at the Faculty Services office throughout February, and college employees can also donate via payroll deduction. Deduction forms will be available at the kickoff event.

For more information about the college’s Food Drive efforts, email Noelle Cummings at Noelle.cummings@oregonstate.edu.

November 25, 2015

Thirty years of family business education, excellence

Andrew Crouse and Mary Sutherland Crouse.

The spotlight shone on three decades of brilliance Nov. 19, including this year’s award winners, at the 2015 Excellence in Family Business Awards ceremony at the Sentinel Hotel in Portland.

The event celebrated the Austin Family Business Program’s 30 years of family business education, as well as conferred recognition on eight Oregon companies – winners and finalists in the categories of Business Renewal, Family Harmony and Generational Development – plus saw a special award given to Oregon’s oldest family business.

Nik Blosser, chairman of Sokol Blosser Winery and CEO of Celilo Media Group, emceed the event, which included remarks by Dave’s Killer Bread co-founder Shobi Dahl.

Winners and finalists were as follows:

Business Renewal: Rose City Label Company (winner), Hillsboro Implants & Periodontics (finalist).

Generational Development: David H. Sutherland & Co., Inc. (winner), Newberg Steel & Fabrication, Inc. (finalist), Hagan Hamilton Insurance (finalist).

Family Harmony: Roe Motors (winner), Lee Farms (finalist), Nicholas Restaurant (finalist).

Student Award: Mackenzie Day.

Dean’s Family Business Leadership Award: The Thomas Moisan Farm, established 1842, recognized as Oregon’s oldest family business.

Stories on the winners and finalists appeared in the event’s program.

There are also videos that honor the 2015 winners.