The Dean’s Advisory Board dabs to celebrate 2018’s successes
Dean Hamid Akbari
I have been the Dean of Winona State University College of Business for nearly five years now. Over these years, I have only grown in my admiration for our dedicated faculty, students, staff, alumni, community friends and business leaders who support our College so greatly. In 2018, this support resulted in several Milestones.
We reached our first milestone by institutionalizing our distinct Create Your More® brand and culture. In short, Create Your More® is about providing students with engaged learning opportunities to aid in realizing their “more” in a meaningful, purposeful and experiential way. A myriad of learning opportunities given to students include, company days, internships, speaker series, conferences, international travel study, competitions, and networking events.
Your support is vital to reaching our goal and our continued success.
To reinforce our brand, we undertook many initiatives, including installing branded signage, new major induction into the College ceremony, dedication of our Beta Gamma Sigma Key, and holding our first annual Create Your More Banquet. Of course, our faculty continue to bring us success and a quality education through their engaged teaching, research and publications as well as new academic initiatives like developing our first fully online business administration degree completion program.
Sugarloaf “Photo by Cynthya Porter courtesy of Visit Winona”
Another milestone for us in 2018 was the start of our Engaged Learning Endowment Fund campaign to establish a sustaining fund to support the Create Your More® brand. The goal is to raise $1 Million. Many alumni, businesses and friends of the College of Business provided generous donations in the silent phase of the Campaign. This endowment will allow us to use the earnings to continue offering extraordinary opportunities to our students and faculty. I am pleased to share with you that we have raised more than $700,000.00 thus far and now need every alumni and friends’ help to realize our goal by July 1, 2019. You can learn more about the endowment and thank you for your consideration of your generous support.
Winona is endowed with many natural beauties. One of those is Sugarloaf, which has historically served as an iconic landmark. Every time I look at Sugarloaf I get inspiration and energy to serve our wonderful students, faculty, staff, alumni and community even more than before. I am confident with everyone’s help and participation we will reach even more milestones for the College in 2019.
Hakbari@winona.edu