S P R I N G 201 8 SEC HEARS FROM TEXAS ENTREPRENEURS The Securities and Exchange Commission visited campus on November 30. The Herb Kelleher Center hosted the SEC’s Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation. The forum examined the challenges facing small business attempts to raise money and considered policy changes to reduce or eliminate those impediments. SEC attendees included Chairman Jay Clayton and Commissioners Michael Piwowar and Kara Stein, who heard from Texas-based small businesses. The capital was an obvious location. “Austin is known as the ‘rock star’ of small-business cities,” Clayton said in his opening remarks.
ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS A recent gift ensures Texas McCombs students gain firsthand exposure to the business of Hollywood. The Cain Foundation, whose chairman is Wofford Denius, BBA ’74, invested in the establishment of the Wofford Denius UTLA Center for Entertainment and Media Studies. The center’s facility increases the capacity of the UTLA Program to accept McCombs students as participants in the UT Semester in Los Angeles program. “Twenty-eight years ago I moved to Los Angeles to pursue my dream to become a music attorney" Denius says. “I hope this program enables students to discover and pursue their passions and dreams by exposing them to the opportunities in the growing and evolving world of entertainment.”
BULLS, BEARS, AND LONGHORNS
McCombs is expanding its reach in the Big Apple. With more than 3,300 alums in the greater New York area, the recently rebranded New York for McCombs (previously Wall Street for McCombs) now offers networking and mentorship opportunities for New York City-based graduates and students working in industries beyond finance. “There’s also a lot of cross-pollination, meaning that if you’re in investment banking and you go to the meetings, you get to meet marketing and accounting folks,” says Xavier Sztejnberg, director of New York for McCombs.“Everybody is getting to mingle, both students as well as board members.”
Awarded Scholars Bettering the World Azja Stanton, BBA ’19, and Cheyenne Valdez, BBA ’20, earned IE Kuhn Awards for the fall 2017 semester. Stanton and Valdez were among 20 UT students who received $1,000 stipends from the university’s Intellectual Entrepreneurship Pre-Graduate Internship Program. The awards support academic pursuits and internships for first-generation as well as economically disadvantaged college students bound for grad school. Stanton is helping run free legal clinics for people seeking to expunge or seal their criminal records, while Valdez is studying the impact of gentrification on longtime East Austin residents. The awards will help pay for Stanton’s LSAT prep class and Valdez’s research project.
McCOMBS BY THE NUMBERS
No. 1
Texas McCombs tied with Wharton for the most number of undergraduate business specialties ranked in the top 10 by U.S. News & World Report.
No. 5
Texas McCombs BBA rank in the 2018 U.S. News & World Report's undergraduate business program rankings.
3
Positions that the Texas McCombs BBA climbed in the same ranking since 2015.
29.9%
of full-time MBA graduates who took a job in the technology sector in 2017.
No. 3
Rank for best campus environment, an indication of how happy students are, according to a 2017 Princeton Review survey.
No. 5
Rank for best MBA for nonprofits, a student assessment of how well the school is preparing them for a nonprofit career, according to a 2017 Princeton Review survey.
McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU
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