MUMA
College of
BUSINESS Citi mentors FIRST-GENERATION STUDENTS face an added challenge of going through the college experience without the help of family members who have been there to guide them along. They miss valuable insights – voices of experience – about courses to take, how and when to decide on a major, which internships to seek and where to go for help to transition from student to young professional. For those students in the Muma College of Business, there is the Corporate Mentor Program, part of the Collier Student Success Center. The program enlists mentors from Tampa Bay area businesses and corporations to help steer these students on their journey to well-paying corporate jobs. And the biggest partner of the program: Citi. Citi currently has 64 – more than a third of the mentors enrolled in the program – mid- to senior-level executives volunteering as mentors. Citi also provides funding the program needs to fulfill its mission of student success. The number of corporate mentors from Citi has grown markedly over the past four years, getting first-generation juniors and seniors ready for their leap from the classroom into the boardroom. Mentors teach students how to ace an interview, how to compose an effective résumé, how to network and how to navigate the ins and outs of corporate culture. Students participate in workshops, seminars, dinners and other opportunities that help them develop professionally and build the underlying skills needed to become tomorrow’s leaders. “The partnership with Citi enhances students’ chances for success in the business world and beyond,” says Olivia Davis, director of the Corporate Mentor Program. Citi sponsors tours of its main campus and funds some large-scale events while also providing guest speakers who talk about professional development. Students are required to meet with their assigned mentors at least once a month. Overall, the program hosts more than 150 mentors matched with more than 161 students. “There are numerous mentorship programs available in the Tampa Bay area but Citi 34
UNIVERSITY of SOUTH FLORIDA
enthusiastically supports the USF Corporate Mentor Program because it is a direct tie to the highly sought-after business school students we want to hire,” says Craig McKenney, managing director of Citi’s Tampa campus and head of the bank’s enterprise supply chain. “The experience students receive in the program gives them the support and confidence they need in the workplace.” Citi employees in Tampa take pride in giving back, he says, and giving back to first-generation students aligns with the corporation’s community focus. The corporation strongly encourages its executives to serve as mentors. “We promote the opportunity, stay in contact with mentors throughout the year and support our employees who give back,” McKenney says, “because we know we are training the next generation of corporate leaders.”
Data citizens EVERY STUDENT AT THE MUMA COLLEGE of Business graduates with a Data Citizen Scientist certification, with an emphasis on analytics. And to present meaningful, impactful and relevant analytics, you’re going to need a bigger data base. Enter Nielsen, a world leader in collecting and measuring data. The company is best known for tracking home television ratings, which in turn set advertising rates, but it also collects information related to consumer behavior, what entertainment choices are trending and which products sell and which ones fall short. In a nutshell, the data gathered by Nielsen has impact across a wide range of commerce, not only in the realm of television advertising, but the marketing of all those advertised products as well. In the fall of 2012, after two years of negotiations, Nielsen agreed to open its treasure trove of data to the business college’s Information Systems and Decision Sciences department, ensuring a steady stream of real-time, real-life data for students to analyze, organize and categorize to come up with innovative conclusions that can have a real impact on
retailers and consumers. It was a groundbreaking partnership that has yielded impactful results over the years: • In 2015, using TV viewership data from Nielsen, researchers in the college built predictive models that held the potential to forecast election outcomes in swing states. • In 2016, the USF-Nielsen Sunshine State Survey was published, becoming a definitive survey on a wide range of economic, social and topical issues facing voters in one of the nation’s largest and most diverse states. USF and Nielsen administered the survey, analyzed the results and issued conclusions. Over the past eight years, data generated by Nielsen has been crunched by business students and professors researching consumer behavioral trends, often coming up with findings that alter the course of marketing. It’s an obvious benefit for the college, a recognized leader in infusing data analytics and creativity in its curriculum, but Nielsen also benefits from the collaboration. Brian Fuhrer, ’84, senior vice president and cross-platform product leader at Nielsen, says his company benefits in a number of ways from the partnership. “Globally, we have more employees who have graduated from USF than any other college in the world,” he says. The company has about 45,000 employees. Fuhrer works out of the Nielsen’s Global Technology and Innovation Center, located in a sprawling complex in Oldsmar. “But there are some intangibles here also,” says Fuhrer, who has more than 20 years’ experience in media research and product development. “The projects we do with USF are typically outside our sweet spot. When we work with USF, we are thinking about data in different ways and that gives us a real sense of accomplishment and that stimulates our employees to stretch their muscles a little bit.” Besides students and Nielsen, a third beneficiary of the partnership are the doctoral researchers who are able to use Nielsen data for their projects, research and publications that are relevant to the marketing industry. Nielsen also has the ISDS Department faculty to draw on as a resource.