Terry College of Business - Fall 2008 - (Page 12) quickbites giFts & grants Tom Golub (BBA ’80) of atlanta has pledged $500,000 to establish a faculty support fund for the risk management and insurance program. the fund is named in honor of his father, Joseph M. Golub. “this fund will help us fill an important void in the resources that we have to support the research and scholarship of our junior faculty,” says rob Hoyt, head of the Department of insurance, legal Studies and real estate. joseph Golub, who’s 86 years old, is retired and lives in athens with his wife, maryann. He had returned to school in the middle of his career at Westinghouse to complete his college degree and graduated with a bachelor’s from terry in 1963. Faculty support fund in insurance honors ’63 grad Joseph M. Golub O China teaches MBAs the art of negotiation ne after another, 29 Terry MBA students presented their pre-trip research on China — and the news was anything but sunny. Pollution. An energy crisis. Censorship. Human rights issues. By the end of class, the idea of traveling to China for an eight-day study abroad program was enough to depress finance department head Annette Poulsen. But upon their arrival, it wasn’t difficult for the Terry contingent to see beyond the grim headlines and enjoy a trip that gave them a far more humanistic and invaluable perspective of modern-day China, and of business in the Far East. Poulsen, who, with legal studies professor Peter Shedd, accompanied the 18 evening and 11 full-time MBA students to Beijing and Shanghai for an on-site tour of six companies last spring, says the experience was eye-opening. “When you get over there, you see that those problems are there, but it’s not like they are ignoring them,” says Poulsen, explaining that the Terry group couldn’t visit Tiananmen Square because the People’s Congress was in session discussing the same issues and concerns that her students presented in class prior to the trip. “There are real issues that we also struggle with in the United States. We came in ready to condemn a lot of what was going on, but instead we recognized the problems as Legal studies professor Peter Shedd, who teaches negotiations class- something that this vibrant and es, saw value in the everyday buying and selling that Terry students growing economy is dealing engaged in with street vendors in China. with as part of its growth.” The Terry contingent coupled an ambitious itinerary of business presentations and on-site tours with sightseeing trips to Beijing and Shanghai, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Shanghai Circus. The Terry team visited multinational corporations PricewaterhouseCoopers, Cisco Systems, and Phillips Investment Resources; learned about the Chinese legal system at the British law firm of Allen & Overy; and toured the Chineseowned, New Summit Biopharma. “It was great to hear about [what] took place in order to do business in China. The multinational corporations that we visited seemed like your normal company that you would find anywhere else,” says Adrienne Hudson (MBA ’08), a consultant for Capgemini’s BIM group in Atlanta. According to Peter Shedd, on-site visits weren’t the only learning experience students received on conducting business abroad. “I teach negotiation classes and every time we walked outside the building students were having negotiation experiences,” says Shedd, who shared examples ranging from students buying goods from street vendors to a few students traveling to Beijing two days early at the arrangement of a friend to have custom suits made. “To watch them negotiate with the tailor about the fabric and the cut was a fascinating process.” Poulsen and Shedd explained that even a simple ride on a Beijing subway or city bus in Shanghai underscored the important differences between the two cultures. These intangible lessons will aid students in understanding how to succeed in today’s global economy. “The students were taking full advantage of the wide breadth of experiences. We were learning every moment — and it’s something you cannot teach in a classroom,” says Shedd. “You don’t get the sense of it without going. The educational value of it, in my opinion, is beyond question.” ■ — Matt Waldman (AB ’96) oF Dallas executive Peter Vig (BBA ’62, MBA ’64) has committed $500,000 toward the proposed multi-building terry college learning community near the corner of lumpkin and Broad streets. vig founded roundrock capital Partners in 2001 as an energy sector hedge fund. Prior to roundrock, he was a portfolio manager at Barrow, Hanley, mewhinney & Strauss inc. in the late 1990s, he was a managing director of tiger management, then the world’s largest hedge fund. Before joining tiger management, vig served as chairman and ceO of toreador royalty corp., a publicly traded mineral company owning oil and gas rights to 500,000 acres in West texas. Peter Vig of Dallas donates $500K to proposed learning community Hotel Indigo project team donates $100K to Music Business Program the project team developing Hotel indigo in downtown athens will donate $100,000 to the UGa music Business Program when the hotel opens next august. in a unique arrangement, the project team members — consisting of the hotel’s developers, investors, general contractor, architects, engineers, interior designers, attorneys, consultants and others — have agreed to donate a portion of their fees generated by the hotel’s development to music Business. Barry S. Rutherford (BBA ’79), the project’s co-developer at rialto Property Partners in atlanta, says it’s one of Hotel indigo’s tenets “to demonstrate not only our commitment to environmentally sustainable goals, but also in ways that will enhance the quality of life for the people of the local communities in which we develop.” ■ SPecial 12 • Fall 2008 Terry College Business
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