General Information

Schedule Changes & Course Information

Financial Aid Information

Meetings & Events

Student Clubs

Career Services Office

Library

Technology

SOM in the News

General Information

NOTE FROM MARY D
Last year I found a quote that I really liked for this time of the year. It is by Hsun Tzu and it might summarize parts of your semester: "Achievement consists of never giving up. If there is no dogged will, there will be no shining accomplishment. If there is no determined effort, there will be no brilliant achievement". One more week, and you will celebrate the accomplishment of your first semester or your ninth semester. I know you have all worked very hard and each of you will have much to show for it in both accomplishments and achievements.

Next week is the final push of the fall semester. Many of you can't believe how fast it has gone, many of you can't wait for it to be over! In the middle of things, particularly with the economy and the holiday season festivities, it is difficult to maintain any sort of balance. But, look at the newspaper, or Business Week, or other business publications and then think back to September of your first semester, whether it was this September or three years ago. All of you tell me that you know so much more than you did before, that you think about things differently and that you understand what the articles are talking about! One more week!! If you are struggling, please remember that the MBA office and the faculty are happy to help in any way they can. Please pick up the phone or stop by.

Bookstore Hours At the SOM
The bookstore will be selling books for the spring semester in the SOM 419 building from January 5th-23rd, Monday through Friday from 3pm to 8pm. Spring semester material will also be available at the main campus bookstore prior to January 5th and following January 23rd. If you have any questions call the bookstore at 617-521-2054. If you have questions about course material call Christina at 617-521-3812.

SEPTEMBER TWO YEAR TRACK FOLLOWUP
The faculty who are teaching the two year track have all met to coordinate deliverables and changes have been made to syllabi for Spring 04. September 2 yr night students who are taking Markstrat during the day will have the Accounting B midterm that week and should plan well in advance.

WEBCT
Webct for spring '04 courses will go live on Friday, December 19.

SPRING REGISTRATION UPDATES
Marketing A has closed. No students other than one year or 18 month students scheduled to graduate in August 2004 will be allowed into the day section.

All electives other than Sales Management will run as scheduled. Sales Management was canceled last week. All students planning to take Sales Management have been notified and offered space in other electives.

No summer section of Sales Management will be offered.

There have been some questions about the spring break dates and running of the Integrated Analysis and Decision Making course. Here are the dates again for those of you trying to make travel arrangements in advance.

DAY TRACK-February 16-20 is spring break and February 23-27 is Integrated Analysis and Decision Making A
EVENING TRACK-February 16 and 17 is spring break. Wed, Thursday and Saturday classes run as scheduled.

LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!
There will be an informational meeting for SOM students interested in volunteering for the 2004 Leadership Conference. This mandatory meeting will be held on Wednesday, January 21st from 5:00 - 5:45 pm in Case Room 2 in the Mockler Building.

Volunteers are essential to our success. In exchange for your help, you will attend the Conference FREE. (Conference fees are normally $420.00 for SOM students). This will allow you to:
*Attend Whoopi Goldberg's keynote address.
* Work directly with 2,000+ attendees from the Nation's major corporations.

Volunteering for the Conference will require the following mandatory minimum commitment:
* Attendance at the Wednesday, January 21st meeting
* One additional pre-Conference instructional meeting to be held in April at the World Trade Center
* Half-day of work at the Leadership Conference.

Leadership Conference Date: Saturday, May 1, 2004

We appreciate your support of this program. Your time and effort directly supports the SOM. Money raised by the Leadership Conference is used to fund SOM MBA scholarships.

Questions welcome:
Judy Benjamin
Conference Manager
judith.benjamin@simmons.edu

Ali Corvino
Student Volunteer Liasion
alicia.corvino@simmons.edu

Emily Gibbons
Student Volunteer Liasion
emily.gibbons@simmons.edu

BGGE FIRST CLASS
Barbara Sawtelle will run the first BGGE class to help transition students from Economics to BGGE on January 7 from 1-3pm. If you have your case packet bring it, if not, Barbara will have copies of the exhibits you will need!

Snow, storm or emergency closing at the SOM
Please contact the MBA hotline before 6am for day classes and after 3pm for evening classes. The number is 521-3810 and a message will inform you if classes are running, delayed or cancelled. If a class is going to be rescheduled, it will be held on a Friday night or Saturday day.

OPERATIONS UPDATES
All student refrigerators will be cleaned out at the end of the semester. Please remove anything you want to keep by December 18. White boards in CR1 are scheduled for replacement the second or third week of December. We appreciate your patience as we have had this in process for a while.

REMINDERS ABOUT STUDY AREAS AS WE ENTER THE LAST TWO WEEKS OF THE SEMESTER
As we head into finals at the SOM, we would like to remind students that all of you are on differing final exam and deliverable schedules. Many of our areas serve as joint study and informal social space, and while one group may be finishing up and ready to celebrate, others will be going into an exam that same night or the next. Please try and be aware of other students around you as we head towards the end of the fall term. Thanks!

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Career Services Office

CSO /Career Connect Raffle... And the Winners are: Alice Bronnert & Dianne Silva - Congratulations!!!

As a reminder, please keep your Career Connect profile up to date.
A complete profile consists of the following:
* Upload a resume to Career Connect (does not have to be a final draft).
* Under Personal Information: Please have your correct contact information including your phone number, email and local address
* Under Demographic Information, please indicate your expected year of graduation.
* Under Job Search Criteria: Please select whether or not you authorize the CSO to send your resume to employers. Also, select your target industries and functions.
* Under additional Information, choose your preferred geographic location(s). * Under Mischellenious Information: Indicate your years of work experience, and previous industry and function.

Don't forget to check Career Connect on a regular basis for various positions and internships.externships. Just added this week:
PR Intern - Duende Communications
Marketing and Sales Intern - State Street Corporation

If you forgot your username and password, please contact diana.cook@simmons.edu or (617) 521-3857 Please do not re- register yourself as past information about you will be lost. Any questions about Career Connect? Please do not hesitate to contact Diana.

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Library

Students - Good luck on your final exams and deliverables.

Morningstar Mutual Funds - We have converted our Morningstar Mutual Funds subscription from CD to online. The online version can be accessed from the Business E-Resources Quicklist on the SOM Library web page.

AskNow - Simmons College Libraries' version of live reference assistance from your own computer is available once again, Sundays - Thursdays, 1:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m., Fridays, 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. and Saturdays, 12:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Visit this portion of the library web site to learn more.
http://www.simmons.edu/resources/libraries/asknow/

Suggestions/Need help? We want your suggestions. Please share them with any member of the Library team. And if you need help just ask!

Have you seen?

Harvard Business Review - December 2003, Developing Your Leadership Pipeline by Jay A. Conger and Robert M. Fulmer (Hard copy available in the library)

Business 2.0 - December 2003, Cover story: How to Succeed in 2004 - 18 Leaders Reveal What Works Now (Hard copy available in the library)

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TECHNOLOGY

Media Services

CLASS TAPES
All of the class tapes are stored in the Computer Lab. We now have a do-it-yourself method of getting copies of these tapes. Instructions are posted on how to make copies and lab assistants can help you with any questions you may have. You can bring your own tapes or copy to our used tapes free of charge. If you have further questions contact Bill Porter @ porterw@simmons.edu

Computer Lab

Problems?
If you experience any problems with the computers please record it in the Problems Notation Log located in each study room or tell the lab staff.

LAB HOURS
The lab will not be staffed between 12/22/03 - 1/2/04 for the holiday break.

The lab is open:
Monday - Saturday 7am-11pm
Sunday 7am-7pm

SOM Lab (staffed) Hours:
Monday - Thursday 4pm-7:30pm
Friday 2 - 5pm
Sat. & Sun 12 - 4pm
Bill Porter is also available for assistance Monday - Friday 9am - 4:30pm If the lab is not staffed and you need assistance call the Main Campus Lab @ x2769

PRINTING
Please note that PDF files and other documents that contain graphics or are memory hungry take longer to print than your common Word document. We have also noticed that some PDF's cannot print successfully in WebCT. If you experience this issue, try emailing the PDF file to yourself and then try printing from your webmail account. Also, printing from the color ink-jet printer takes longer than the laser-jet. Please be patient and refrain from sending multiple print jobs of the same document to the printer.

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SOM in the News

SOM Professors Jill Kickul, Deborah Marlino, and Fiona Wilson have won the best paper award at the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference. Their paper, “Our Entrepreneurial Future: Examining the Diverse Attitudes and Motivations of Teens Across Gender and Ethnic Identity,” drew on the findings of the SOM/The Committee of 200 national study “Teen Girls on Business: Are They Being Empowered?.” The paper will also be published in the Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship.

Other recent publications by Dr. Jill Kickul include:
* “Measure for Measure: Modeling Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy onto Instrumental Tasks Within the New Venture Creation Process,” with Pennsylvania State University professor Robert D’Intino. This won the Coleman Foundation best empirical paper award at the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference.
* “Making Sense of the Meaning Behind the Message: Climate Perceptions and the Psychological Contract,” co-authored with colleague Matthew Liao-Troth and published in the Mid-American Journal of Business.
* “E-Commerce Entrepreneurship: Emerging Practices, Key Challenges, and Future Directions,” a chapter in the book Entrepreneurship: The Way Ahead (Routledge Press, 2003).

On November 20, Dr. Jill Kickul, the Elizabeth J. McCandless Professor of Entrepreneurship, was interviewed on WBIX Business Radio 1060AM. This interview was part of their continuing series, “Small Business Survival.”

SOM Professor Mary Shapiro was interviewed on WBIX Business Radio 1060AM on November 17. The topic of her interview was her new book, Your Job Interview: An Easy, Smart Guide to Interview Success, co-authored with colleague and SOM Professor Cynthia Ingols.

The Center for Gender in Organizations is proud to announce the publication of CGO Insights #19, “Enhancing Working Across Differences with the Problematic Moment Approach,” by James A. Cumming, Director of Chaos Management, and Evangelina Holvino, CGO Director and Senior Research Faculty. In this Insights, Cumming and Holvino describe an approach that can be used to change established patterns of group conversations in order to attend to unacknowledged differences that constrain the attainment of organizational goals. CGO Insights #19 is part of CGO’s ongoing theme of Working Across Differences.

Simmons School of Management and its annual Leadership Conference appeared in the October 13 online edition of KGPE-TV Channel 47, Fresno, CA. The article “Mentors for Women Growing in Importance, National Survey Indicates” shares the results of the survey taken at the annual women’s conference held in spring in Boston. Key results include 82% of businesswomen have an informal mentor, with 60% of those having a female mentor, up from 16% in the mid-1980s. This news story also appeared on the Web site of WKRC-TV, Channel 12, Cincinnati, OH.

EVENTS

Gender at Work: A Bold New Perspective
As they mark their fifth anniversary, the Center for Gender in Organizations (CGO) at the Simmons School of Management continues to garner international recognition as a source of innovative ideas, research, and practice on cultural dynamics in organizations. We invite you to join us for an important series of events highlighting CGO’s unique contributions and featuring influential thinkers on gender, work, and organizations.

From Talk to Walk: Gender Equity & Gender Mainstreaming
February 10, 2004, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Struggling with how to move gender equity from idea to reality? Presenters will discuss gender equity in organizations by exploring efforts to effectively incorporate women into defense policymaking, and the United Nations institutional commitment to “mainstream gender” into peace and security policy.
Carol Cohn, Joint Senior Fellow, CGO and Wellesley College
Laura Roskos, Former CGO Postdoctoral Fellow

New Leadership Models: Are They Really Helping Women?
March 25, 2004, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Does the “female advantage” exist or is it a myth? Join us to explore new leadership models and why they aren’t delivering the expected results for women. Stacy Blake-Beard, Associate Professor, Simmons School of Management and CGO Research Faculty Joyce K. Fletcher, Professor, Simmons School of Management and CGO Faculty Affiliate Deborah Merrill-Sands, Associate Dean, Simmons School of Management and CGO Faculty Affiliate
Karen Proudford, Associate Professor, Morgan State University and CGO Faculty Affiliate

All CGO events will be held at Simmons SOM, 409 Commonwealth Avenue. Schedule subject to change. To reserve space or for more information please email cgo@simmons.edu or call 617-521-3824. www.simmons.edu/som/cgo

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