Message from the Dean
Welcome! At the Mendoza College of Business, the 2022-2023 academic year has been filled with exciting changes to our top-ranked Undergraduate Studies program. We’ve launched new minors, new double-major options and most significantly, an entirely redesigned Undergraduate Business Core curriculum, ushering in a new expanded vision as we prepare our students to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world.
In this presentation, we’ll share more about how we pursue this charge throughout the Undergraduate Studies program as well as provide a glimpse into life at Mendoza — the events, the accomplishments and the people whose stories are testimonies to the exciting things happening here as part of our commitment to Grow the Good in Business.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn Cremers, Martin J. Gillen Dean, Mendoza College of Business
MISSION
As a leading business school guided by the University’s Catholic identity, the Mendoza College of Business seeks to Grow the Good in Business to improve the human condition in an ever-changing society. Through impactful research and educational programs, we contribute to the formation of ethical business leaders who integrate the mind and the heart, and have the competence to see and the courage to act.
Dean's Report 2023: Undergraduate Studies Content
- Academic Excellence
- Engaged Learning
- Diversity and Inclusion
- Careers and Leadership
- Community
Mendoza has re-envisioned business education at Notre Dame to emphasize integration across disciplines; add opportunities for hands-on, real-world learning; and prepare students for a data-driven world.
The New Core
Starting in fall 2022, undergraduate students at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business have increased flexibility in choosing their plans of study.
The College introduced a major redesign of its Undergraduate Business Core that reduced the number of required business classes almost by half from 49.5 credit hours to 25.5. The changes provide students with more opportunities to specialize in a secondary discipline, both in other colleges and within the business school, while maintaining the overall balance between liberal arts and business coursework.
“A key objective has been to expand students’ academic opportunities by significantly increasing the flexibility of their plans of study, while still giving them a comprehensive grounding in all business disciplines.” – Martijn Cremers, Martin J. Gillen Dean
New Undergraduate Leadership
Andrew Wendelborn (MNA ‘12, ND ‘99) was appointed as the assistant dean for Undergraduate Studies, responsible for leading the Mendoza Office of Undergraduate Studies and serving as the dean’s designee for undergraduate student affairs. As a “Double Domer,” Wendelborn is committed to the Catholic mission of the University and Mendoza’s role as the Notre Dame business school.
Amanda McKendree, teaching professor of Management & Organization, was named as the academic director for Undergraduate Studies. Her role includes oversight of the undergraduate curriculum, especially in regard to the new Undergraduate Business Core. She also serves as the Arthur F. and Mary J. O’Neil Director of the Fanning Center for Business Communication.
Double Majors
Starting with the current Class of 2026, Mendoza students will have the option to double major in any business major except Business Analytics, including Accountancy, Finance, Strategic Management and Marketing. This is an expansion of the College’s earlier approval of two new double majors in Accountancy/Finance and Accountancy/Strategic Management in spring 2023.
Business Honors Program
Launched in 2021, the Business Honors Program led by director Jim Otteson was designed to be different from other honors programs. Instead of only considering academic achievement, the program also evaluates an applicant’s desire to apply business for the good of society.
Offering colloquia, a mentorship program, tutoring services, volunteer opportunities and more, the Business Honors Program creates a community of like-minded undergraduate students as they learn from courses such as Why Business? and the Noble Vocation of Business to apply Catholic social thought in today’s business world.
Integrated Analytics
The new undergraduate curriculum integrates analytics across the business disciplines and requires all business majors to take the new Coding Fundamentals with Python course by the end of their sophomore year.
Deloitte Scholars Program
The Deloitte Scholars Program, a sponsored program of the Notre Dame Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership, includes students who excel in their studies and wish to explore what it means to be an ethical business professional. Demand for the program has been so great that the Center added a second colloquium and developed an international version, bringing the total number of Deloitte Scholars to 50.
Impact Consulting Minor
The minor will be open to Mendoza students with the exception of those currently majoring in Management Consulting as of fall 2023. Students will work on a pressing societal problem through a multi-semester consulting engagement with domestic and international collaborators with the goal of making a transformative, positive impact.
“Learn by doing” is woven into the undergraduate curriculum, as Mendoza students are challenged to think about how they can contribute to human flourishing through business.
Innovation & Design Thinking
During halftime of the ND-Clemson football game in November, millions of viewers saw the impact of Management & Organization teaching professor Wendy Angst’s Innovation and Design Thinking course when it was featured in a “What Would You Fight For?” ad.
The class’ ongoing work with St. Bakhita Vocational Training Center in Kalongo, Uganda, has expanded to include the Innovation for Impact Club and dozens of Notre Dame alums, students, faculty and staff members committed to improving the outcomes for these women struggling with the legacy of the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army. Mendoza now offers three sections of Innovation & Design Thinking serving 100 students to teach them the fundamentals of design thinking while applying their business acumen, networks and skills to work on behalf of the Center.
Read about how ND and St. Bakhita students teamed up to open a pop-up shop on campus to support the training center.
Climate and Ethical Business
Students from all majors had the opportunity to examine climate change through the disciplines of business ethics and economics in the new course Climate, Economics, & Business Ethics. Instructors Jessica McManus Warnell, associate teaching professor of Management & Organization, and Eva Dziadula, associate teaching professor of Economics, led the integration course, which focused on environmental and social justice implications of climate change, public policy, and impacts on global economies and communities among other topics.
“Through teaching on sustainability, equity, and business ethics over the years, it has become increasingly clear that the grand challenges we face as a global community — particularly challenges to social and environmental sustainability — require multidisciplinary attention.” –Jessica McManus Warnell
A Community Built by Strangers
In August 2021, Christian McKernan (BBA ‘23) and Marko Gural (ND ’25) were randomly assigned to nearby rooms in Notre Dame’s Stanford Hall and formed a friendship based on their shared experience of growing up Ukrainian in the U.S. In the summer of 2022, McKernan and Gural found an opportunity to help refugees from the war in Ukraine. With the help of Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies, they undertook service learning at the Office for Refugee Support at University Ignatianum in Kraków, Poland and at a refugee center operated by Centrum Wielokulturowe w Krakowie.
Walk for Water Relay
During the 2022 ND Day, the Innovation for Impact Club hosted its first Walk for Water Relay to raise awareness and support tuition costs for the St. Bakhita Vocational Training Center in Kalongo, Uganda. The relay had students carrying five-gallon containers of water across the Hesburgh Library lawn to represent the twice-daily task young Ugandan girls experience to bring clean water to their families. The club is a spin-off from Wendy Angst’s undergraduate Innovation and Design Thinking course.
Business of Life
The Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing (NDIGI) gave a group of undergraduates the chance not just to hear from a world-famous author of a book on investing, but to actually travel to Peter Kaufman’s California-based company headquarters to better understand the lessons of leadership, alignment and values that are key to operating a successful business. Kaufman, chairman and CEO of Glenair, and author of Poor Charlie’s Almanack, led Business of Life, a three-part series designed to reinforce ND’s core values in the context of investing, business leadership and multidisciplinary thinking.
Virtual Reality in the Classroom
Tim Hubbard provided his strategic management students with a one-of-a-kind exercise: acting out life as a CEO via virtual reality. Students were strapped into high-quality, enterprise-grade virtual reality headsets to meet with a board of directors, make strategic decisions and explain their choices back to the board. The goal was to help students develop a foundation before they analyze different case studies throughout the rest of the course.
“Since most cases are written, students have to imagine the scenarios based on the text. With virtual reality, we can show them.” –Tim Hubbard
As a community that recognizes every person’s intrinsic human dignity, Mendoza is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion as an essential part of its mission.
New DEI Dean
Mendoza entered the new academic year with a purposeful focus on advancing the College as an inclusive and welcoming community. A significant move was the naming of Kristen Collett-Schmitt to the new position of associate dean for Innovation and Inclusion.
In this role, Collett-Schmitt is charged with advancing innovation across all programs — undergraduate and graduate. Responsibilities include the possible addition of new minors in Mendoza’s highly ranked undergraduate program.
Women in Finance
The annual Women’s Investing Summit hosted by the Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing features some of the top women executives in the investment industry today. Students, faculty and staff attendees from across the University also got to hear about investing from someone on the entrepreneurial side: Three-time Olympic gold medal skier Lindsey Vonn who served as the keynote speaker for the February 24 event.
Grow the Good Competition
For the first time, Mendoza undergraduate students were invited to participate in the College’s Grow the Good in Business DEI Case Competition. Competing in teams, the students were asked to apply their business knowledge to a case focused on financial inclusion and underserved markets.
50 Years of Women in Business at ND
The year 2022 marked 50 years since Notre Dame President Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., made the historic decision to admit women as undergraduates to the formerly all-male university. In the fall of 1972, the University admitted 125 female freshmen and more than 200 transfers. Today, women make up about 40% of the undergraduate class at Mendoza.
Coach Marcus Freeman: Faith and Leadership
Fighting Irish football coach Marcus Freeman shared his thoughts on faith, leadership and diversity during a fireside chat with the Mendoza community.
“I think there is power in young people seeing somebody maybe that they resemble in a position of leadership.” –Marcus Freeman
Broadening the Pipeline
In partnership with the Office of Pre-College Programs, Mendoza offered a leadership seminar to current high school students entitled, “The Power of Investing: Financial Literacy and the Miracle of Compound Interest.” Led by finance teaching professor Carl Ackermann, the 10-day seminar covering the fundamentals of finance was intended to help broaden the pipeline of women and underrepresented minorities interested in studying business.
Black Excellence Award
Daymine Snow (BBA ‘25) received the Notre Dame Black Excellence Award in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. The awards are part of the University’s Walk the Walk Week, a week-long series of University, department and student-sponsored events designed to help us consider how faculty, staff and students — both individually and collectively — can take an active role in making Notre Dame even more welcoming and inclusive.
For more than 100 years, Mendoza has challenged its students to contribute to human flourishing through business. Whether that means a career on Wall Street, in data analytics or even starting a new business, our students graduate with an inspired vision for having an impact for the better.
Hallow Be The Name
Alex Jones (ND ‘15) and classmates Alessandro DiSanto (BBA ’15) and Erich Kerekes (ND ’15) quit lucrative jobs to start Hallow, a prayer and meditation program that has quickly grown into the No. 1 Catholic app in the world. Downloaded 3.5 million times across the globe, Hallow users have prayed about 100 million prayers with the app since the company was founded at the end of 2018.
“Every day, we’re just blown away by what God has been able to do through this thing,” Jones said. “It’s infinitely beyond our wildest expectations.”
Accounting for Fashion
For nearly two hours, Thom Browne (BBA ‘88), one of America’s most successful designers of luxury fashion, talked to a packed Mendoza auditorium about how he built his now iconic brand. Browne, who’s internationally famous for “reinventing” the classic men’s gray suit, is the chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, former GQ Designer of the Year and three-time winner of the CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year Award.
His April 2023 talk, “By Design: Thom Browne on the Business of Fashion,” was co-sponsored by the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, where he served as the 2022-23 artist-in-residence.
Finance Alums Leverage Degree in Variety of Careers
Sam Squeri (BBA ’17) works as manager of production finance for Universal Theatrical Group, owned by NBC Universal. As a finance and a film, television, and theatre double major, corporate finance for the theater industry was the perfect blend of Squeri’s interests.
More than NIL
Ayden Syal (BBA ‘17) and Brandon Wimbush (BBA ‘19) got a jumpstart on creating NIL platform MOGL in 2020 before the NCAA had yet to impose regulations on what would become a feeding frenzy of companies eager to capitalize on the new industry. The co-founders have been able to create a business model that stands out in the quickly crowded field by focusing on empowering athletes who can pursue NIL opportunities for free.
Their MOGL platform operates as a matchmaker similar to LinkedIn, allowing athletes to share their interests and skills and businesses to list their campaigns and marketing opportunities. Today, the platform connects nearly 3,000 athletes with about 900 brands.
Building a Brand
From the day he stepped on the campus of the University of Notre Dame in 2012, Tommy Flaim (BBA ‘16) knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur. His dream was not to be a tech unicorn, find a cure for cancer or make piles of money. He wanted to start a fashion brand. But looking good wasn’t the driver of his dream. Doing good was.
Elevating Snack Industry Standards
John Ghingo (BBA ‘94) developed a passion for clean label foods after spending a large portion of his career in the snack food industry. He gained valuable experience working for leading brands such as Oreo, Planters and Sour Patch Kids. But it was his move into the natural and organic segment of the food industry that brought sustainability to the fore. As CEO of Whisps, he enjoys challenging industry conventions and supporting sustainable and transparent supply chains.
Many of a Mendoza student’s story about why he or she came to Notre Dame starts with the words, “I’ve always.” “I’ve always wanted to come to Notre Dame since I was a little kid.” “I’ve always dreamed of becoming one of the Fighting Irish.” “I’ve always wanted to make a difference in the world.” “Always” describes the deep connection that students feel during their time on campus and for the rest of their lives. They come here to join a family and become part of the legacy.
Remarkable Recovery
The last thing Andrew Daigneau (BBA ‘24) remembers on that warm June night was giving his dad a fist bump as they went their separate ways on their motorcycles. Minutes later, a car swerved in front of Andrew. He braked and tried to turn, but it was too late.
His bike hit the car and propelled him forward. His chin may have smashed into the roof, just below his full-face helmet. His injuries, almost too numerous to list, were catastrophic. His heart stopped for about 10 minutes. Even though the human body only holds five liters of blood, Andrew required 19 liters to save his life that night. Ultimately, the decision was made to amputate his right leg.
Since early on in his remarkable recovery, Andrew has had one driving goal: to return to Notre Dame so he could graduate on time and walk the commencement stage with his class.
‘Always Be Ready’
His grandfather’s golden rule — “Don’t do anything stupid” — seems to be working well for Jack Kiser (MSA ‘23, BBA ‘22). The Fighting Irish linebacker has built a solid reputation as a “Swiss Army knife” type of player on the football field — adaptive, upbeat and ready for anything.
It’s an attitude that’s been an asset in negotiating challenges off the field, as Kiser, like his classmates, faced trying to attend school and carry on with life during the upheaval of the COVID pandemic. After earning his BBA in business analytics in just three-and-a-half years, and with extra eligibility as an Irish football player, Kiser enrolled in the Notre Dame Master of Science in Accountancy program to be prepared for whatever the future might bring.
The Bus is Back
Thirty years after leaving Notre Dame to pursue an extremely successful football career, Jerome “The Bus” Bettis (BBA ‘22) returned to Mendoza to complete his undergraduate degree. His reason? To set an example for his kids and fulfill a promise to his mother made a long time ago.
For the Love of Finance
It’s a 30-hour journey from Aray Beisenbayeva’s (BBA ‘26) home in Kazakhstan to the Mendoza College of Business where she is grateful to be studying finance, all thanks to the Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing. She previously attended NDIGI’s virtual leadership seminar and took to the College’s community and teaching atmosphere. Her love of finance developed during the COVID-19 pandemic and she even represented her country at the International Economics Olympiad, placing in the top 20 competitors in the world. Now, she’s proud to sit in Carl Ackermann’s Foundations of Finance class, whom she originally met during NDIGI’s summer program.
Healing Smiles: Fighting Pediatric Cancer With a Team Spirit
Lacrosse student-athlete Maxim Manyak (BBA ‘23), a finance and pre-professional health dual major from Sherman Oaks, California, plans to go to medical school and become an orthopedic surgeon. But a meeting with a young cancer patient inspired him to found the nonprofit Pediatric Pep Talk, “where a smile a day keeps the doctor away.”
The app-based platform virtually connects children’s hospitals, their critically ill patients (mostly children fighting cancer) and their families with athletes across the country, allowing the young patients to “join” a team. The players send the young patients encouraging video messages to bring them joy and make them smile.
“The reality is that we now work with four other universities, four hospitals, 72 teams and more than 2,300 athletes committed to providing at least 2,400 video smiles by May of 2024,” Manyak said. “This will set us up for our goal to expand to 35 Power 5 conference schools, which means we should be able to deliver 21,000 smiles per year by May of 2025.”
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Mendoza College of Business
Undergraduate Studies
101 Mendoza College of Business
Notre Dame, IN 46556