“If you don’t understand financial markets, you can have a great vision but get burned and not be able to follow through on it. All the hard work I am doing in my classes and in my internships is so that I can learn how to use finance really well, so that I can use it in the future to help people and organizations.” -Senior Edward Preuss has had internships with a commercial real estate broker, the Notre Dame Investment Office and the global investment banking group of Bank of America.

Field Projects Enhance Marketing Research Course

• Testing prospective brand names for a hotel
• Studying the feasibility of a new lunch delivery service
• Assessing what factors impact attendance at a minor league ballpark

These are just three of the 11 hands-on projects explored in Professor John Gaski’s (MBA ’73, ’71) marketing research course during fall 2006. Students utilized a variety of research tools including surveys, tests and experiments. Later, students presented their findings to area and campus business owners.

So, what brought more fans to the ballpark? Students found that fans value park cleanliness more than free ticket giveaways.

Accountancy Students Among Nation’s Best in CPA Pass Rates

Students with a bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame ranked first in the nation in pass rates in two areas of the CPA exam and finished second on the remaining two parts, according to the most recent “Candidate Performance on the Uniform CPA Examination” report. Professor Thomas Schaefer commented that while the Accountancy department focus is on career preparation, the exam results validate efforts to update the curriculum to keep current with industry practices.

xTax Competitors Finish in Top Five Nationally

In both 2005 and 2006, a team of Notre Dame accountancy students was awarded a top-five finish in the PricewaterhouseCoopers xTax Competition. In the competition, students critiqued and proposed tax policies to achieve specific objectives.

The winning teams, selected from more than 2,000 students and 65 schools participating during the two years, each earned $10,000 and a trip to Washington, D.C. to present their solutions to experts from PwC’s National Tax Services Group. Molly Eyerman (’07 ) and Chris Mueller (’08) participated both years.

Lecture Courses Explore Emerging Trends and Corporate Decision Making

Students learn from experience in Boardroom Insights, a new lecture series that brings prominent business leaders to campus each fall. Paul Charron (ND ’64), chairman and CEO, Liz Claiborne, Inc., and Daniel Hesse (ND ’75), chairman and CEO, Embarq, were among the featured speakers in 2007.

Experts in business, science and public service explored the critical emerging issues of our fast-changing world in the annual Ten Years Hence series. Among the featured speakers who addressed faculty and students in 2007 were David Walker, U.S. Controller General, who addressed the growing U.S. budget deficits; General Richard Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who assessed the future of global security; and former Congressman Romano Mazzoli (’54), who explored the immigration debate.

Undergraduate Research Projects

During the last academic year, undergraduate students worked with Mendoza professors from various disciplines in several research areas, including:

• developing mathematical models of the stock market
• analyzing public policy considerations in online marketing to children
• constructing an economic integration data set
• evaluating hedge funds
• researching intellectual property rights and digital rights management issues

Integrated Management Curriculum Debuts in Fall 2007

After a yearlong review of undergraduate management curricula and extensive interviews with corporate recruiters, the management department has rolled out a new integrated curriculum including six core courses for both its information technology management and consulting/entrepreneurship tracks.

“We’ve torn down the silos,” said Department Chair Robert Bretz. “It doesn’t matter whether you are in IT, consulting or starting a business, students will gain important tools in problem solving, innovative thinking, the strategic use of information technology and management communication.”

Next Steps: Notre Dame Grads Enter Favorable Employment Market
- Source: Notre Dame Institutional Research, 2007

Undergraduate Advising
	Students beat a steady path to the undergraduate advising office last school year. The advising team scheduled 5,520 appointments with individual students to assist them in reaching their academic goals.

“I’d be given reports to work on, and I wouldn’t know exactly what they were looking for. There wasn’t the one right answer—like to a math problem. I had to try my hardest and hope it was all right, then hand it in for feedback. It got easier. I learned something about taking chances.” -Senior Elizabeth Wagner had a summer internship in the commercial research division of the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, assisting medium and small U.S. firms interested in exporting to Argentina. Wagner, a finance and Latin American studies major, is the ninth recipient of Notre Dame’s scholarship from Beta Gamma Sigma, an international honor society serving business programs.