Dean's Report: 2023 Year in Review

Paulette Palomares ’24 and Fiana Herscovici ’24 both work as Career Peers for the Chase Career Center, assisting less experienced Isenberg students with resumes, cover letters, and career planning. The program—which this fall includes 15 Career Peers who each see multiple students per week—has become an important part of the Office of Career Success. 

More than 800 students enrolled in Senior Lecturer Kerri Bohonowicz’s Accounting 221 course had the opportunity to learn about life as accounting professionals from a panel of 14 UMass Amherst alumni.

Juliano Wahab ’23, a marketing and computer science major, won $41,000 in equity-free funding for the venture he founded with computer science major Alex Rohrberg at the annual Innovation Challenge, hosted by the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship.

The annual ranking of online MBA programs by the Financial Times put Isenberg's Online MBA at number 2 in the nation and number 5 in the world for 2023.

Interest in Isenberg's one-year MS in Business Analytics program has increased since the degree was launched in fall 2017. The new MBA/MS in Business Analytics dual degree, offered on-campus and online, welcomed more than 25 students this fall.

Isenberg’s PhD program was thrilled to welcome a group of 15 incoming students to Amherst for the fall semester. The group originates from around the world and brings a diverse and interesting skillset to the UMass academic community.

Monideepa Tarafdar, Charles J. Dockendorff endowed professor and PhD coordinator in information systems, examined this question in research published recently in The Journal of Strategic Information Systems. She and her team studied diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at a recruiting firm in the United Kingdom, and found that technology could enhance their effects.

As a member of the International Academic Board at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), Isenberg Professor Anna Nagurney was inspired to support her fellow scholars during the war following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She helped spearhead the creation of a multilevel partnership between UMass Amherst and KSE, which has allowed Ukrainian scholars to continue their research.

Javier Reyes, who joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst as chancellor this past summer, was also named a professor of finance at the Isenberg School of Management.

Over the four decades that Todd Barry and his wife Mignon have owned Moby Dick’s restaurant on Cape Cod, they have utilized the knowledge he gained through UMass Amherst’s Hospitality and Tourism Management department at Isenberg.

Sandy Barbour has established an endowed fund with a $500,000 gift that will provide financial support for the Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management’s ongoing initiative to prepare women for careers in the sport and entertainment industry.

When Peter Resnick began working in forensic accounting, the field was up and coming, with a small number of firms working in the discipline of investigating financial fraud.