To read the complete article in the Idaho Statesman go to: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/04/01/1588004/boisean-wins-top-nationalsmall.html

Eide Bailly student mentees

The Department of Accountancy recently started a mentoring program to help students develop, learn about accounting careers, and grow their network. Before the start of spring semester, 50 undergraduate accountancy students were assigned to mentors in twelve different local organizations. Students were assigned to companies based upon their interests after hearing the mentoring companies’ presentations.

The feedback from the students has been impressive. Alex Williamson, who will graduate in May with a bachelor of arts in Accounting/Finance, explains her interest in the program:

“I was excited to be a part of this new program because it sounded like a great opportunity to learn something new and to meet influential people in our community. So far this has been a rewarding experience. I was one of the lucky individuals to get paired with a mentor from Boise Inc. The first meeting exceeded my expectations. Everyone involved in the event was courteous and attentive. The highlight of the afternoon was being able to listen to the CEOs from Boise Inc. and Boise Cascade speak to us about their experiences and insights they’ve gained from their careers. I particularly appreciated what Mr. Rancourt said about the need to be flexible with our plans for life. His comments about finding success by working for something greater than you also impressed me. The other guest speakers and mentors also provided many insights and pieces of advice on how to be successful as a soon-to-be graduate. The whole afternoon was a positive experience and I look forward to future mentoring opportunities.”

John Wheeler, an accountancy student paired up with Cooper Norman, raves about the program, “This has been a great experience, to gain an inside view into a local firm, as well as to get “face time” and coaching from them. And I am even more interested in Public Accounting than I was before. I know Spring is a very busy time of year for them, so the fact that they have invested so much of their time in teaching and giving us a peek into what they do really speaks to their willingness to give back and to invest in the community.”

Denise English, Chair of the Department of Accountancy, also is impressed with the success of this new program. “I am very pleased with the level of participation from both the students and the mentoring companies. It will be exciting to see how this program grows and continues to add to the exceptional educational experience we strive to provide for all of our students.”

Mentoring organizations and the number of students participating include:

• Ada County – 3 students
• Boise Inc. – 11 students
• Cooper Norman – 3 students
• Deloitte & Touche LLP – 4 students
• Eide Bailly LLP – 6 students
• Harris & Co. PLLC – 2 students
• J.R. Simplot – 3 students
• KPMG – 6 students
• LeMaster Daniels – 3 students
• Little Morris LLP – 4 students
• Office of the Idaho State Controller – 3 students
• Syringa Networks – 2 students

Examples of planned activities at Boise Inc. include:

• Lunch with Boise Inc. mentors followed by brief meetings with key business leaders in Internal Audit, Tax, Accounting, Financial Reporting, and Financial Planning.
• Tour of the Boise, Inc Nampa Container Plant
• Boise IIA (Institute of Internal Auditors) monthly chapter luncheon. Mark Pearson, Director of Internal Audit Services and Security for Boise Inc., will discuss “The Audit Committee and the C-Suite: How to meet their expectations.”
• Listen in on the 4th Quarter Earnings Release for Boise Inc.

The College of Business and Economics (COBE) just completed two innovative new projects — a “design thinking” session and an international export program — aimed at forming a strong network among academic experts and business leaders and giving students valuable experiences.

Design thinking

The college received $70,000 in start-up funds from 2007 Fiesta Bowl proceeds for the design thinking project. Modeled after a program at Stanford, it matched teams of leaders from participating companies — Biomark, Intermountain Gas Company, Preco Electronics and St. Luke’s Health System — with business faculty members and a student. The teams met several times this semester to learn the design thinking process and tackle a looming but ill-defined problem within each company.

Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process that encourages the building up of new ideas and out-of-the box thinking.

“Creative problem-solving and critical thinking about unstructured questions is ultimately what will make us competitive,” said Kirk Smith, director for executive education. “Our idea is to infuse innovation into local organizations and allow it to spread.”

St. Luke’s Health System came to the program looking to redesign its primary care clinics to become patient-centered medical homes, according to Matt Bell, vice president of strategic planning. “We all tend to think we know what’s best for our customers but we learned an outside perspective from the Boise State students and professors. There really is value in a divergence of thinking and a convergence of ideas for a solution.”

For Boise-based Biomark, the program was a great way to test the waters on a new product line — tag readers for fish identification.

“There are lots of options for where to take our products but we’re so busy dealing with the work coming through the door that we don’t have time to look 3 or 5 or 10 years down the road,” said company president Dean Park. “We needed a disciplined, repeatable process of thinking about how we move forward. This was motivating and engaging and will lead to a change in culture for our company.”

The program was led by emeritus faculty member and design thinking expert Roy Glen. Faculty participants included Kirk Smith, Nancy Napier, Patrick Delana, Tom Gattiker, Zeynep Hansen, Jason MacDonald, Christy Suciu and Courtney White. It also involved students Siddarth Dhanasekaran, Courtney Kirchner, Anne-Marie Kottenstette, Patrick Pulver, Eric Schuler and Carli Visser. Program manager was Stephanie Chism.

The faculty members are now trained in design thinking and the innovative principles are being implemented into a number of courses for students.

Export Excellence

Five international business students were key to the success of Idaho Export Excellence 2010, a partnership between TechHelp, the Idaho District Export Council and the U.S. Commercial Service. Interns were matched with five Idaho-based companies — Preco, Pure Light, Scentsy, PCS Edventures and Sloan Security — and worked alongside international business experts to help develop export plans for the companies’ products.

Senior international business major Paris Guadin worked with PCS Edventures to develop a plan for exporting its technologically advanced educational materials to Chile.

“I was surprised to learn how many local companies are exporting, internationally,” Gaudin said. “There is a wealth of practical applications for what we learned in class.”

According to PCS Edventures President Robert Grover, Gaudin’s work helped define obstacles to doing business in South America and a clear path forward.

“Exporting isn’t a decision that you make lightly and all of the research and planning that came from Paris and our team is very useful,” Grover said. “It will help us secure funding to expand and build the infrastructure we need to be successful in that market.”

Mentored by adjunct faculty member David Christensen, former administrator for the Division of International Business at the Idaho Department of Commerce and a member of the Idaho District Export Council (IDEC), Gaudin and fellow classmates Bruno Oliveira, Cecilia Jones, Austin Young and Snjezana Borak were able to play an integral role in Export Excellence.

A number of additional partnerships between COBE’s International Business program and Idaho companies are in the works.

“Having our students work on projects for companies gives them a chance to apply what they learn in the classroom, and contribute and be accountable to an organization,” said Meredith A. Taylor, newly appointed director for COBE’s International Business program and affiliated IDEC contributor who co-facilitated the intern component of the Export Excellence program. “At the same time, they gain a sense of accomplishment and prove their competence to firms — and themselves — before graduation. As an academic program, International Business is continuing to move in the direction of having experiences such as these become the norm, rather than the exception, for our majors.”

The event will kick off with a breakfast Tuesday morning featuring keynote speaker Bob Lokken, Whitecloud Analytics and a panel of industry experts that includes Mark Heil, Micron Technology; Valerie Dickerson, Synoptek; Ben Quintana, Boise Young Professionals; Shannon Stoeger, Bank of the Cascades; Joel Hickman, KeyBank; Debbie Westmoreland, Wells Fargo; and Clay Young, Inovus Solar. An hour of networking with students and employers will follow.

In-class sessions will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by workshops on Friday designed to offer students a competitive edge in career development. They focus on women in business, effective use of email, raising equity capital for high potential businesses, meal etiquette and more.

The events are co-sponsored by Wells Fargo (founding sponsor), Northwestern Mutual Financial Network (major sponsor), Boise Young Professionals, Cooper Norman, Eide Bailly, KeyBank, Moss Adams and URS.

For more information, contact Carlene Hansen at 426-1361 or carlenehansen@boisestate.edu, or visit http://cobe.boisestate.edu/lessonsfromalumni/

Hannah Vinson, a senior economics major, is a finalist in a national essay contest organized by Pearson Higher Education. Students were invited to submit essays or video presentations that addressed solutions to pressing economics issues. Vinson’s essay is titled “Powering America’s Economy.”

“One of our biggest problems is going to be the cost of energy,” Vinson said. “Building new forms of energy is expensive so that leaves us with controlling the demand side of the equation. Energy demand peaks during certain times of the day and the year, and my paper is about ways to erode those peaks.”

Vinson was sponsored by Boise State economics professor Samia Islam to participate in the essay contest. One June 12, the two will travel to the 2010 National Economics Insider Symposium (NEIS) in Washington, D.C., where Vinson will present her ideas to a panel of top-name economists. They include: Ben Bernanke, chairman and member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; Olivier Blanchard, economic counselor and director of the research department of the International Monetary Fund; 2008 Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman; and John List, senior economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers on Environmental and Resource Economics.

Vinson is originally from Afton, Wyo. She intends to pursue a Ph.D. in economics after earning her bachelor’s degree at Boise State.

(Updated post) A team of Boise State students, under adviser and adjunct marketing professor Jay Longwell, placed third in the Region XI National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) held recently in Boise. The team won the People’s Choice award for best presentation and took third place overall.

Students competed against teams from nine other universities, including the University of Oregon and Washington State University, which took first and second place respectively. This year’s corporate sponsor was State Farm.

NSAC is the American Advertising Federation’s premier college advertising competition, providing more than 3,000 college students with real-world experience by requiring a strategic advertising/marketing/media campaign for a corporate sponsor. Schools from each district are selected to present their campaigns to a panel of industry executives.

Photo: (Top, from left) Alexandria Bullock, Kelli Shears, adviser Jay Longwell, Carli Vissar and Andy Campbell. (Bottom, from left) Erika Longwell, Sara Byrne, Jessica Thomas and Niki Mathews

The student-client team projects are a large part of the Managing an Emerging Business course, one of the more recent additions to COBE’s growing list of entrepreneurial courses. The class is taught by John Glerum of the Boise State TECenter, the technology business incubator and accelerator located in Nampa. 

Each team of two or three students selected a company to work with at the beginning of the semester. Two of the client businesses this semester, Built-in Bike Light and Latitude Zero, are ventures founded by students within the class. The six other companies — AeroLEDs, eTripTrader, Extravagonzo Gourmet Foods, Recall InfoLink, Snapshot Postcard and Verdelight — are TECenter clients.

Throughout the semester, the students learned about tools and strategies for emerging businesses that they could apply to their real-world projects. The students were encouraged to apply knowledge gained from their other business courses to provide meaningful feedback to their client company.

“Our student team provided great value to eTripTrader by helping kick-start our marketing for our new SkedFlex product,” said Tom LaJoie of eTripTrader. “SWOT analysis, industry comparison, marketing strategy, expected ROI … the team did a great job of teeing it up for us.”

The next Entrepreneurial Management class is slated for spring 2011. For more information on the TECenter’s emerging companies, visit www.bsutecenter.com.

The Boise State student team includes James Bird, Glenda Smith, Macey Crow, Noah Lull, Heather Newell, and Christina Kang. The students worked with Ada County government on a budgeting project and were supported by two Accountancy Department faculty members, Dan Fox and Frank Ilett. The students have over 250 hours on this project, which will continue for at least the next year.

Kent Neupert, Marcel Wermeckes, Alex Livingston, Thomas Schoeck

R2EV, Boise State University’s business plan team, finished strong in a competitive field of 20 international universities at the New Venture Championship hosted the University of Oregon’s Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship. Boise State’s R2EV team took 2nd Place overall for the “best elevator pitch” and Division Winner for the “best presentation” on Saturday April 10.

The competition, which played out over three days, required teams to present their ideas for new business start-ups to panels of investors and entrepreneurs acting as judges. For the competition, each team was required to prepare a written business plan for review and present their ideas to three different sets of judges. With a total prize package of over $60,000, awards were given for categories such as “best elevator pitch” (a 60 second summary presentation of the business opportunity), “best written business plan” and “best presentation” in several divisions.

R2EV’s Fuel 2.0 product is a portable energy storage solution with applications in several industry setting. The technology for the product was developed by Boise State student Alex Livingston and the team includes MBA candidates Marcel Wermeckes and Thomas Schoeck.

The top prize went to the University of Louisville’s NanoMark Therapeutics for the treatment of ovarian cancer.

Other universities participating in the competition included:

• Brigham Young University
• Cornell University
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (China)
• Johns Hopkins University
• Purdue University
• San Diego State University
• Chulongkorn University (Thailand)
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Thammasat University (Thailand)
• University of Arkansas
• University of British Columbia (Canada)
• University of Illinois at Chicago
• University of Louisville
• University of Manitoba (Canada)
• University of Oregon
• University of Texas at Austin

For inquiries, please contact Professor Kent Neupert, Director of the Boise State University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, at 208-426-2397 or kneupert@boisestate.edu