Greetings!
The past several months have brought challenges and changes to all of our lives and have permanently altered the higher education landscape. In times like these, maintaining communication and building community are more important than ever. It is therefore my pleasure to bring you this edition of the SCMA Department newsletter. In the stories below, we will share with you the exciting changes and events taking place within the department. It is my hope that this newsletter will promote ongoing communication between the SCMA department and our many stakeholders. We welcome feedback of all kinds, including personal and professional updates from our alumni, and curriculum and placement advice from our industrial partners.
The supply chain management major continues to produce students with the skills needed to be successful in an ever-changing business environment. In May 2020, we graduated 18 supply chain management majors, with another 12 majors graduating in December 2019. Our student organization, the Nebraska Supply Chain Club, has been active in organizing panel discussions and guest speakers. Our graduating students continue to achieve excellent job placements and have embarked on exciting and diverse careers despite the challenging economic environment. You can learn more about our programs and students in the stories contained in this newsletter. Here, I will highlight just a few of our ongoing activities.
Like many of you, the faculty, staff and students within the SCMA Department pivoted to remote teaching and working in March of this year, with all courses finishing the year in an online format. We continued that shift for the three summer terms, while also expanding our course offerings to provide opportunities for our students to continue to make progress towards their degrees after seeing many summer opportunities, such as study abroad and internship programs, cancelled. Notably, we introduced a new special topics course developed and taught by new SCMA faculty member Shawntell Kroese (you can learn more about Shawntell below). This course was designed to leverage the current increased interest in supply chain management among students in all majors, and uses current events to demonstrate the vital importance of resilient supply chains to corporations, public health and the world economy.
The SCMA Department and College of Business have also been working to provide educational opportunities to 2020 graduates from across the UNL campus. Within a matter of weeks, graduating UNL seniors saw a dramatic change in their post-graduation employment prospects, with many unemployed or employed in positions that do not make use of their education and degree. To address the needs of these graduates, we worked with UNL to offer both a tuition discount and an expedited admission process for our M.S. in Business Analytics program. This program will allow recent UNL graduates to spend the next year developing a set of highly marketable analytical skills. While it is still uncertain what the U.S. and Nebraska economies will look like post-recovery, we all understand that there will be a need for employees with experience in organizing, managing and analyzing data. Our Grad2Grad M.S. in Business Analytics program will help meet this need, while providing reasonably-priced educational opportunities for 2020 graduates. As of late-July, we have admitted more than 30 new business analytics students under this program.
As you can see, these are dynamic times for the SCMA Department. We are working hard to adapt to the new educational environment, and to provide continued opportunities for our students. I will conclude by noting that in August 2020, we will enter our fifth year as an official department within the College of Business. We could not have accomplished everything we have without the support of our alumni, advisory board and industrial partners.
As always, thanks for your support of our programs and students!
Jennifer
More details at: http://business.unl.edu/supplychain