CommonWealth Magazine - Summer 2004
Letter from the Dean
Dear Alumni and Friends,
There’s music coming from the second floor of the original building: hammering, drilling, pounding, and all sorts of engine noise. The old reading room and several adjacent spaces are being reconstructed, air conditioned, and furnished to welcome the folks from Sport Management from their current home in Skinner Hall. The Flavin family has given us another wonderful gift to name two of the new rooms. Other naming opportunities abound. Don’t miss out!
Among the many wonderful things proven by the Harold Alfond Management Center and the Flavin Family Auditorium is that the physical condition of the School makes an enormous difference in morale and attraction. Applications to the University were up 10% this year. They were up 25% at the Isenberg School. We have a great bunch of students en route to UMass this fall!
Meanwhile, the Chancellor has approved the renovation of the top floor of the Campus Center for the use of Hospitality and Tourism Management as teaching labs, and for a first-class restaurant/ function facility with that beautiful view many of you remember of the campus and surrounding hills. The old restaurant was closed two years ago. Students will also be learning the hotel business from the Campus Center Hotel. The university is spending more than $7 million on the building and we will spend $3.7 million on the top floor. The Marriott family has already donated $1 million for the restaurant/function space. Want your name up in lights? What an opportunity to do something for students.
The last project on the horizon is a new classroom wing. That awaits a lead donor, but it will complete what will be a total renovation of the School’s physical facilities and mark a milestone in our goal to make the student experience at the Isenberg School as good as the students themselves.
This issue celebrates some talented alumni who have made great names in their corporations and industries as CFOs and baseball executives. There are brief reviews of two important new faculty books. We also report on the excitement that great visitors engender when they come to campus, and two of this year’s Commencement honorees.
Perhaps you were around Amherst from 1975-1980. You might have bought a pot with a plant in it from the Plant and Pot right in the center of town. The potter was Michael Philipp, who stopped throwing pots to get his MBA. Graduating in 1982, Michael went to work for Goldman Sachs, then Merrill Lynch, and then Deutsche Bank, where he served as Vice Chairman and head of Global Asset Strategy. Michael and his wife, Cheryl, graduated first from the university as Fine Arts majors in 1975. Their support for the Center for International Securities and Derivative Markets directed by Tom Schneeweis, the Michael and Cheryl Philipp Professor of Finance, has made CISDM possible.
The second honoree was Harold Grinspoon, a real estate entrepreneur and philanthropist from Springfield. Harold has made many gifts to the School in support of the new wing and the work of our Flavin Professor of Entrepreneurship, Jim Theroux. Harold and his wife, Diane Troderman, also are responsible for the construction of Hillel House and many other programs that support Jewish family education, entrepreneurship, and public education.
We have wonderful friends. It’s an honor to be able to display their generosity to a broader audience. Please join with them and all of us to keep the promise of UMass Amherst. There are so many great students to serve.
Please come back and visit. You make it all possible.
Sincerely,
Thomas O’Brien