The McIntire Women's Business Forum, in conjunction with the Commerce Student Affairs Office, held its annual fall workshop Saturday in Monroe Hall.
Sixty first and second-year women interested in applying to the Commerce School participated in the four-hour workshop, which also was attended by Commerce students and faculty members. The group discussed various topics, from gender-specific issues such as a woman's struggle to find an appropriate work and family balance, to general interest questions about Commerce School admissions, course selection, field concentrations and future job placement.
The first panel consisted of faculty members including Rebecca Leonard, assistant dean for student affairs; Denise Mills, career advisor in the Commerce Career Center; Brad Brown, management and international business professor; Finance Prof. Gayle Erwin; Accounting Prof. Susan Perry; Management Information Systmes Asst. Prof. Cathy Chudoba and Management Prof. Elizabeth Thurston.
The workshop attracted 60 participants, about three-fourths of which were first-year students.
"I thought the premise of women in business was an interesting one," said second-year College student Victoria Jong, who, like many of the second-year participants, learned of the program from her accounting teaching assistant.
"We have the program now because second years typically apply in the fall, and to give first years an early enough introduction to the Comm School," said Jaime Ranus, chairwoman of the Women's Business Forum.
During the forum, Leonard eased student concerns about the competitive admittance policies.
"We don't single out one factor. Each of the four faculty members [of the admissions panel] reads your application independently and chooses based on our different values of what makes a good student," she said. "When we deliberate, if only some of us believe you should be admitted, we essentially become advocates for you."
The student panel, which included female Commerce students in the various concentrations, discussed the pros and cons of the Commerce School. Panelists overwhelmingly agreed that friendship among fellow Commerce students was the best advantage, but said the work load was a major drawback.
"People are definitely driven and very ambitious, but not cutthroat or terribly competitive" fourth-year Commerce student April Clark said.
The panelists agreed the Commerce School was an "empowering" experience.
Brown was inspired to start the annual panelist conference in the early s, when nineties the percentage of women attending the Commerce School slipped from near 50 percent to 37 percent.
"My students and I were talking about this in class and thought maybe there was an image of the Commerce School that was too competitive and unfriendly to women. The idea came up to start a program which would counteract this image and would also reach out to first- and second-year women," he said.
He added that the Commerce School has no official target rate, but administrators hope to have a composition similar to the College of Arts & Sciences, which has had an even male-female split in the last decade.
To promote the Commerce School's reputation to women panelists, faculty and students discussed the Commerce School's elite ranking among undergraduate business programs. U.S. News & World Report ranks it as the fifth-best undergraduate business program. Leonard also spoke about the University's continuing goal of improving the Commerce School's curriculum.
The panelists described some of the more recent curriculum changes, including the most dramatic change: the Integrated Core Experience. Students participating in ICE will learn in blocks by taking only one class during each of the two semesters of their third year.
Leonard also spoke about plans to remodel the Monroe Hall basement into an authentic trading room, equipped with technology similar to that of the trading floor Wall Street.
In addition to the fall workshop, the forum chairs also plan a shorter Panelist Conference in the spring semester. Last spring, the chairs invited a group of female investment bankers to discuss their career experiences.
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