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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT meet a scholar "SOME STUDENTS MAY GO THROUGH THE PROGRAM AND SAY, 'THIS IS NOT FOR ME.' BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS, THEY'VE STILL GOT A BUSINESS DEGREE," SAYS WILLIAMS. and an innovator Richard McKenzie, the Walter B. Gerken Chair of Enterprise and Society and Professor of Economics DEVELOPED A NEW COURSE ENTITLED: THE ENRON CASE Unique in its structure, the multidisciplinary course taught by ten lecturers covered economics, journalism, accounting, finance, organizational strategy, business ethics and law. A featured speaker was the former Enron employee who "blew the whistle" on her company's financial and accounting dealings. The groundbreaking class gained international media attention including that from The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CNN and CNBC. The one-time course received an overwhelmingly positive response from MBA students who recognized the value of studying a "live", prominent and complex case in business history. A Community of scholars. Committed to innovation. Discover us. (949) UCI-4MBA www.gsm.uci.edu both the students and the corporations that hire them. "We feel that our students can handle significant projects that a sports executive doesn't have time to do. It might be a proj- ect for which he would like to hire an outside consultant, but he doesn't want to make the investment. Our students can help," says Mokwa. ASU also has sponsored projects that potentially can ben- efit both a sports team and a business organization. One such project was a sponsorship evaluation in which the team, a sponsor, and the students assessed "the clarity of the spon- sorship, the way it was being implemented, and its financial returns. Both sides worked together to understand the scope and nature of the sponsorship and figure out ways they could improve it," Mokwa says. The Rookie Season Students with concentrations in sports management have used their internships—and their degrees—to score an impressive variety of full-time jobs. "Two of our graduates have gone to work for the Yankees in the marketing spon- sorship and media relations areas. One student, who was an attorney before he came to Seton Hall, has become a direc- tor of team operations for NFL Europe. Other graduates have gone to the league offices of the NBA," says Mayo. "Our graduates have gone everywhere, all over the world," says Burton. "They've been hired by the NFL, the NBA, the WNBA, the United States Olympic Committee, Nike, Adidas, NBC Sports, and Disney." Mokwa, too, can tell of graduates who took jobs with sports teams to work on fan development, suite sales, and sta- dium marketing. But one of his favorite stories is of a student who joined the Arizona Diamondbacks to help run baseball camps for disadvantaged youths—a job that requires him to raise money from major sponsors and star players to build new playing fields and refurbish old ones. "He has to coordi- nate the entire project, working as a construction superin- tendent on one side and, on the other side, working with the players and the community to promote this endeavor," says Mokwa. "All these different groups are involved, from the players to the people who put up the fencing, and he helps negotiate all these deals. It's more than just Randy Johnson throwing out the first pitch to a young Hispanic batter." 48 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003