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Recent classroom visitors and lecturers:

Forrest Nelson
Iowa Electronic Markets
The University of Iowa

Mark Kujawa
Vice President of International Business Development
Diamond V Mills, Inc.
Cedar Rapids

Dave Gatton '75
Director of the Council for the New American City within the
US Conference of Mayors
Washington, DC

Karen Mercer
Vice President for Business Affairs, Cornell College

Stephen Handler
Project Developer at ClearSky Climate Solutions
Missoula, Montana

David Korslund '76
Global Alliance for
Banking on Values
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Barry Boyer '84,
President
Van Meter Industrial
Cedar Rapids

Kimball Lewis '93
Senior Analyst at AEGON
Cedar Rapids

William Smith
Staff Accountant,
Bergen Paulsen
Cedar Rapids

 

 

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Contact the Berry Center


Faculty Director
A'amer Farooqi

Coordinator
Monica Lyons

Programs Assistant
Courtenay Baker-Olinger

Finance in Chicago
Academic Highlight
Students in Professor Chris Conrad’s financial management course spent four days in the Chicago financial district in February. They talked with traders and financial experts at the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). The students also met with business executives at the Bank of America and Contegra Health Care to learn about enterprise risk management. Due to the unique flexibility provided by the One-Course-At-A-Time calendar, a study tour of Chicago is now a regular feature of the financial management course. Click here to read more.

Extraordinary Internship
Student Highlight
 CJ Brooks '10 is no stranger to international business internships. Under the auspices of the Cornell Fellows program, he worked last year at Lanxess, a specialty chemicals firm located in Leverkusen, Germany. This spring, with Berry Center support, he journeyed to Montevideo, Uruguay to serve as a financial intern at the RenMax brokerage house. Brooks (farthest right in photo) assisted with the creation and marketing a new fund, prepared financial statements for clients, and took responsibility for daily market briefings used by the trading desk. The intercultural experience is an integral part of international internships. "Last week I realized that Uruguay is my temporary home and this past weekend I fell in love with it," Brooks wrote on his blog. (Click here to read more about Brooks' experience and perspectives). RenMax has hosted three Cornell interns in recent years, and its director, Pablo Sitjar, has given presentations at Cornell as a distinguished visitor.

Ringing the Bell for Entrepreneurship
Course Highlight
The Berry Center seeks to support the business curriculum by sponsoring enrichment courses taught by visiting faculty. In March, visiting instructor David Burgess taught a course in entrepreneurship that concluded with a celebration heard across the campus. Burgess, from the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, assigned projects in which students were asked to develop and implement business plans. Successful projects were given public recognition by a ringing of the bell atop College Hall. At the end of course, two students representing the class rang the bell 17 times. Click here to read more about the course or here to see the video of the bell ringing at College Hall.

In May the Berry Center is supporting a visit by presidential fellow Dr. Laurel Anderson, a marketing professor at Arizona State University, who is teaching an enrichment course in international marketing.

Congratulations, SIFE!
Student Groups in Action
Cornell College's newly-established chapter of Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) collected a handful of honors at its inaugural competition in Chicago, including the "Rookie of the Year" award. President Kait Wiszt '10 received a service leadership award, and sponsor Karen Mercer, the college’s chief financial officer, was also recognized. SIFE is an international organization whose members implement community service projects related to market economics, entrepreneurship, financial literacy and environmental sustainability. The SIFE team’s visit to Chicago was supported by the Berry Center. Click here to read about Cornell's SIFE team (Kait Wiszt and Francis Dixson in photo).
A Frank Discussion
Extraordinary Opportunity
Internationally renowned behavioral economist Robert Frank lectured on the economic role of the government during a visit to Cornell hosted by the Berry Center. His public talk was entitled "The Libertarian Welfare State: Governing with a Light Touch." Frank, an economics professor at Cornell University, is an expert on income inequality and contributes a monthly column to the New York Times. This spring a student group hosted by economics and business professors Jerry Savitsky and A’amer Farooqi, read Frank’s The Economic Naturalist, a quirky book on economic explanations for everyday phenomenon.

Frank met with the student reading group for a discussion and book signing. Frank also visited a combined class of economics and sociology students to talk about issues of income inequality. Click here to read more about Robert Frank's visit.

For more information about the Berry Center, please contact Monica Lyons at mlyons@cornellcollege.edu.