Alumni Club to Open in Downtown Chicago
Have you ever found yourself between appointments in downtown Chicago and in need of a convenient place to prepare for your next meeting? Ever wanted to participate in a videoconference but lacked the proper equipment and didn’t want to run the meeting out of a copy shop? Or perhaps you’ve sought an upscale, comfortable setting for entertaining clients and friends.

For these and many other business and social needs, alumni need look no farther than the new membership-based alumni club located on the fifth floor of Gleacher Center. Construction on the club began in January and is expected to be completed by October.

“The club was designed with the needs of our alumni in mind,” said Danielle Palmer, ’92, director of alumni affairs and major events. The 6,000-square-foot club will include a business center, conference rooms, videoconference facilities, dining rooms with catering services available, a bar, a media room, and a billiard room. The club will be open Monday through Saturday and will feature early morning and evening hours to accommodate breakfast meetings, client entertaining, or a quick drink at the end of the day. Located on the fifth floor of the GSB’s downtown center, the alumni club will offer these services in a comfortable setting with panoramic views of the city and Chicago River.

“It will be especially useful to alumni who work as independent contractors or consultants, own small businesses, or conduct business in downtown Chicago but have an office outside of the Loop,” Palmer added, noting that plans are in the works to secure special hotel rates and use of local health clubs for members.

Membership is open to all GSB alumni but will be limited to the first one thousand respondents. There will be a one-time entrance fee and an annual membership fee.

The alumni club is just one part of the fifth-floor construction at Gleacher Center. Also planned is an executive education suite that will feature classrooms and breakout rooms and will house the executive education offices. In addition, the conference center offices will be located on the fifth floor.

For club membership information, call the alumni office at (773) 702-7727.

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Bon Appetit: Wolfgang Puck Now Catering Gleacher Events
Conference food and fine dining are not usually synonymous, but conference cuisine entered a new realm this spring when Wolfgang Puck Catering signed its first corporate conference dining venture with the conference center at Gleacher Center. Restaurateur and chef Wolfgang Puck is perhaps best known for his upscale signature restaurant, Spago, which began in Los Angeles and has expanded to include a Chicago location.

“Catering is a very visible and very significant piece of the meeting experience here at Gleacher Center. We have found a strong partner in our alliance with Wolfgang Puck Catering. Their level of service, the
caliber of their food, and their reputation are distinctive elements that will contribute greatly to what is becoming a prestigious enterprise associated with an equally prestigious academic institution,” said Dan Joseph, director of the conference center at Gleacher.

As the exclusive caterer at Gleacher Center, Wolfgang Puck Catering will service groups ranging from 15 to 350 for breakfast, meeting breaks, luncheons, receptions, and dinners. Seasonal and custom menus will be available. For more information about holding an event at Gleacher Center, call (312) 464-8787 or email gleacherctr@gsb. uchicago.edu.


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Chevalier Receives First Bennett Research Prize
Associate professor of economics Judith Chevalier was awarded the first Elaine Bennett Research Prize in January.

The honor, which will be awarded every two years, is intended to recognize and encourage outstanding contributions by young women in economics. The prize is given by the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession and was endowed by UCLA economist William Zame in memory of his wife, Elaine Bennett, who made significant contributions in economic theory and experimental economics.

“It’s a very nice honor, and I’m very glad to have been chosen for it,” Chevalier said, “but if I were on the committee, there are other women I might have picked. There are really a lot of good young women [economists] out there right now.”

Catherine Eckel, economics professor at Virginia Tech and chair of the award selection committee, agreed that all the candidates were excellent but said that Chevalier “rose to the top.”

“Judy is really quite accomplished,” Eckel said. “She has published extremely well and has had a lot of impact. She is one of the most creative and energetic people in the field of industrial organization. She makes methodological innovations that are theoretically and empirically sound. She is good all the way around.”

Chevalier received the prize at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in New York City at the beginning of the year. Her work has centered on competition and incentives, and she lectured on incentive contracts at the award presentation. Chevalier is currently a Sloan Research Fellow. She has been a member of the faculty since 1994 and serves as associate editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Industrial Economics, and Rand Journal of Economics. She is also a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research.


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Faculty Honored
Several faculty members received awards during the past year.

Jason Abrevaya received a $26,000 National Science Foundation grant, awarded jointly by the economics and statistics sections. Abrevaya is assistant professor of econometrics and statistics.

Daniel Adelman received the 1998 George B. Dantzig Prize for his dissertation, “Remnant Inventory Systems.” The award is granted by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences to recognize excellence in dissertations.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) selected Robert L. Ashenhurst for the 1998 Outstanding Contributor to ACM Award. The award is presented annually to recognize service to the organization. Ashenhurst is professor of applied mathematics.

Sally Blount-Lyon received a $50,000 Professional Opportunities for Women in Research and Education research grant from the National Science Foundation. Blount-Lyon is associate professor of behavioral science.

George Constantinides, Leo Melamed Professor of Finance, was named president-elect of the American Finance Association.

Sanjay Dhar, associate professor of marketing, received a $20,000 research grant from A.C. Nielsen. The company also granted Dhar access to information resources at the company.

Robert Fogel, Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of American Institutions, was named president of the American Economic Association. Fogel was also named codirector of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) program on life cycles and intergenerational processes in economics.

Steven N. Kaplan and Gregor Andrade of University of Virginia received the 1998 Smith Breeden Prize for their paper, “How Costly is Financial (Not Economic) Distress? Evidence from Highly Leveraged Transactions That Became Distressed.” The prize is awarded annually to the best paper published in the Journal of Finance and comes with an award of $10,000. Kaplan is Leon Carroll Marshall Professor of Finance.

Randall Kroszner, associate professor of economics, was awarded the Bertil Danielson Fellowship from the Stockholm School of Economics. The fellowship funds a visiting professorship in banking and finance. Kroszner was also named faculty research fellow at NBER.

Owen Lamont was named a faculty research fellow in the NBER Corporate Finance and Asset Pricing Programs. In September his paper “Economic Tracking Portfolios” won the $2,000 second prize at the fifth annual Academic Competition of the Chicago Quantitative Alliance. Lamont is associate professor of finance.

Fiona M. Scott Morton, assistant professor of economics and strategy, received a research grant from the National Science Foundation. The award covers summer salary and a research assistant for three years. Other faculty members awarded NSF research grants include Canice Prendergast, professor of economics, and Rob Vishny, Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance.

Kevin Murphy, George Pratt Shultz Professor of Economics and Industrial Relations, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Ruey Tsay was awarded a two-year research grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchanges. Tsay is professor of econometrics and statistics.

Damon Phillips, assistant professor of strategy, received a Kauffman Foundation research grant for his proposal, “A Genealogical Approach to the Study of Firm Entrepreneurship.”

Peter Rossi, Joseph T. Lewis Professor of Marketing, was named a fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Katherine Schipper received two awards for excellence in teaching, one from the Illinois CPA Society and one from the American Accounting Association. Schipper is Eli B. and Harriet B. Williams Professor of Accounting and KPMG Peat Marwick Faculty Research Scholar.

Per Strömberg received a research grant of $10,000 from the Kauffman Foundation for a research project on financial contracting in venture capital. He also was appointed research fellow in financial economics at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in December. In addition, he received a $1,000 research grant from Dimensional Fund Advisors. Strömberg is assistant professor of finance. Other recipients of Kauffman Foundation research grants are Steven N. Kaplan; Jesper Sørensen, assistant professor of strategy; and Olav Sorenson, assistant professor of strategy.


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Minority Recruitment Initiative Launched
In an effort to increase the number of minorities on business school faculties, the GSB has launched Chicago Faculty for the Future, a minority recruitment initiative for the Ph.D. program.

The program, established with a grant from the GE Fund, focuses on recruiting and retaining at least one minority candidate a year for the next three years. “If we get more than one minority Ph.D. candidate per year, that would be great. The program provides support for one person per year, but we would happily support more candidates on our own,” said Milton Harris, Chicago Board of Trade Professor of Finance and Business Economics and associate dean for Ph.D. studies. Harris leads the program with Monique Bernoudy, director of diversity affairs, and Roberta Bernstein, associate dean of students in the Ph.D. program.

Qualified candidates will receive full tuition throughout the program and increased stipend support (relative to normal levels of support) for five years. A mentoring system has been established, and a partnership with Northwestern University is being developed to allow students to expand their networks. The grant also funds minority recruiting efforts and marketing initiatives.

Through its Faculty for the Future program, the GE Fund makes grants to business schools throughout the country to increase the number of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans on business school faculties.


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Phan Named Director of External Relations in Europe
Quynh Phan has been named to the newly created position of director of external relations for the International Executive M.B.A. Program (IXP) in Barcelona.

“We have a lot of things that go on in Europe but a relatively small staff there, and we needed someone to devote themselves full time to marketing the program and promoting the entire GSB throughout Europe,” said Bill Kooser, associate dean of executive M.B.A. programs.

Phan, who is based in Barcelona, joined the GSB in January. She reports to Kooser and Bernard Angénieux, director of the Barcelona program, and will work closely with chief marketing officer Tessa Burton to develop and implement a European marketing plan.

“My long-term vision is to make the school recognized as one of the leading graduate business schools in Europe,” Phan said. Her main goals for the next year include increasing awareness of the IXP Barcelona program and the prestige of the GSB in key European cities and to strengthen the alumni network in Europe.

“Promoting this program in Europe has its challenges because we have to cover so many different countries where the educational sectors vary tremendously,” she said. “It will take some time to understand these variances and implement adequate marketing activities.”

Phan comes to the school with experience in the profit and not-for-profit sectors in Asia and Europe. For the last five years she worked as a worldwide product manager for Hewlett-Packard in Spain and Germany. Her previous experience includes positions as a program manager at the Asia Foundation in Thailand and a junior diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Laos. Born in Vietnam, she lived there for eight years before moving to the United States. She received a bachelor’s degree in sociology from UCLA and a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University. She has lived and traveled extensively throughout western Europe and Southeast Asia and speaks several languages, including English, Vietnamese, Spanish, German, and French.

More than 250 people have graduated from the IXP Barcelona since its inception in 1994. The current class of nearly eighty students represents more than twenty-nine countries including, Argentina, Brazil, China, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Zambia.


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Weiss Named Director of Human Resources
Carol Weiss was named the school’s first director of human resources and organizational development in October. Weiss reports to Dean Robert S. Hamada.

The creation of her position, Weiss said, sends a clear message: Staff members are important to
the GSB.

“Staff members play a major role in the success of the GSB, and developing staff is an important function of a human resources department,” she said. Part of Weiss’s job is to hire and retain the best staff members and reduce turnover by creating opportunities for career development and advancement.

“Our department provides consultation to senior staff and departments on how to manage their human resources and plan for upcoming organizational needs. This is particularly important amidst times of continual change and organizational challenges that we face,” she said.

Weiss has three initial priorities: to strengthen the performance management and performance appraisal process “so that staff know how they are doing and what’s expected of them,” she said; to develop a program to orient new employees to the GSB; and to build better information systems for human resources, giving managers more flexibility and ultimately making personnel information more accessible to employees.

Weiss comes to the school with nearly twenty years experience in training, organizational development, and quality management, most recently as vice president for quality services at First Card. She previously held numerous positions related to quality improvement and to management and organizational development at Fidelity Investments and at Harvard Community Health Plan. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1977 and a master’s degree in social science administration from Case Western Reserve University in 1979.

As director of human resources and organizational development, Weiss said her overall charge is to help the school remain a competitive employer by fostering an excellent working environment. “We want staff to be aware that they make a valuable contribution by providing quality service to our students, faculty, alumni, and corporations. Our people will thrive in an environment that fosters growth and values individual contributions,” she said.

“This is a great business school and it is an honor to work here. It’s my goal to help staff feel they are a vital part of the GSB community.”


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Notebaert Says Telecom Mergers Key to Competition
While deregulation may be a slow process, Ameritech chairman and CEO Richard C. Notebaert said that the telecommunications sector has “left the age of monopoly behind.”

“We’re not yet where we need to be–competition is still young and, in some cases, only present in theory or in business plans. But, without a doubt, we have embraced the age of competition,” Notebaert said when he spoke on campus in February as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series.

Notebaert’s visit to the GSB came just before the third anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Since then, he said, business customers have experienced a fall in prices, and residential rates have not skyrocketed as many feared. However, he warned that these prices cannot be sustained for the long run. “In a free market, prices will seek market levels,” he said, “but in the short run, we have
accommodated customers.”

The solution, according to Notebaert, is to create companies that are large enough and broad-based enough to compete aggressively. These firms put pressure on one another to maintain competitive prices and improve customer service; they also have the economy of scale to offer a broad range of consumer services, he said.

“Regionalism is dead,” Notebaert proclaimed, noting that as competition increases, communications providers must have a national and even international presence. “That’s why mergers are such a logical next step for our industry,” he concluded.

Citing a string of industry mergers–Bell Atlantic and Nynex; WorldCom, MFS, and MCI–Notebaert also alluded to a merger in the works between Ameritech and SBC Communications, a company that recently acquired Pacific Telesis and Southern New England Telephone.

“The Justice Department and the regulators already have approved many [mergers],” Notebaert said. “Their endorsements have empowered AT&T and MCI WorldCom with the kind of scope and scale to be true national and global competitors. Now the commission is deliberating over additional merger proposals that could take that number of competitors to four. I choose to see this as a positive indication that regulators understand that companies with a strong national footprint are critical to the creation of a fully competitive marketplace.”


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Gifts Support Entrepreneurship Program
The GSB’s program in entrepreneurship received several major gifts in the past year. Support from Aramark; the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation; Tracy Gardner, ’90; Frederick Krehbiel; Robert MacCormack, ’68; and Joseph Neubauer, ’65; will strengthen the program and help the school realize its goal of becoming a center for entrepreneurship research and study.

“We’re thrilled that these great alumni and organizations have decided to support this program, and we’re excited about our future prospects,” said Steven N. Kaplan, Leon Carroll Marshall Professor of Finance and faculty director of the entrepreneurship program.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation donated $1 million to help establish the school’s proposed center for entrepreneurship. In addition, the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, an arm of the foundation, sponsored entrepreneurial internships for select first-year GSB students in 1998 and again this year.

Joseph Neubauer, ’65, and Aramark each made gifts that will result in an annual scholarship of $25,000 for a first- or second-year student focusing on entrepreneurship.

Neubauer and Robert MacCormack, ’68, pledged $1.5 million each to support two professorships in entrepreneurship.

Tracy Gardner, ’90, gave $100,000 to be used for the proposed center for entrepreneurship’s programmatic needs, such as purchasing materials, hiring assistants, and creating new courses.

GSB council member Frederick Krehbiel gave $100,000 to support entrepreneurship at Chicago.

In addition to the entrepreneurship program, the GSB offers students several other opportunities for entrepreneurial experience. The school recently created a New Venture Laboratory course designed to give students an opportunity to gain experience within existing entrepreneurial ventures. The GSB also sponsors a New Venture Challenge. Founded in 1997 by Edward L. Kaplan, ’70, and sponsored by Bain & Company, the challenge is a student team competition to create a feasible new venture plan and is open to the entire university community. The final phase of the competition is judged by a panel of entrepreneurial alumni volunteers. Past judges include Robert V. Adams, ’61; Katherine Gould, ’78; Larry Kane, XP-47 (’81); and Joe Mansueto, ’80.


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