Spotlight On…

An occasional series highlighting a member of our alumni community, a current student, and a member of our faculty.

Alumnus Caleb Moore

Where are you working currently?
Tesla

What is your favorite part about working in the HR field?
Every important business decision revolves around people, and HR gets to be a reliable support system throughout the most rewarding and vulnerable times for a company and its people.

What was your favorite part of the MA-HRIR program?
Happy hour hands down! Outside of that I would say the group projects and simulations!

Do you think the program prepared you well for the ‘real world’?
I think the HR program prepared me in the sense that it gave me a platform to expand my network and knowledge around defining what HR is and could be in future. Due to the program providing me that I’m that much more prepared to face the “real world.”

What is a hobby or something fun you like to do when you’re not working?
Living in California has been a blessing so when it comes to hobbies I have a list now. A few are hiking, wine tasting, festivals / concerts, volunteerism, and cheering on Golden State Warriors. I’ll admit I’m a band wagon fan, but winning is winning!

Do you have any advice for current students?
Often times HR has a common perception that we are “policy police” or we can’t have fun and joke around with employees. So my advice is always be your authentic-self, have confidence in what you’re capable of, and have fun in the process of navigating your career in the “real world”

 

Student Haleigh DeRose

Why did you choose to attend the Carlson School’s MA-HRIR program?
I chose to attend the the MA-HRIR program at Carlson because of its great reputation and company relationships. The faculty is unmatched of any other program and Minneapolis is a great city. After attending Admitted Student Day, I knew this is where I was meant to be and moved to Minnesota from Michigan a few months after!

Where did you go for your undergraduate degree, and what was your major?
I attended Michigan State University and studied Organizational Communication and Spanish.

Do you have any work experience?
I worked in HR at Michigan State University as a student for four years and for one year post graduation. This summer I interned with Honeywell in Fort Mill, South Carolina in their Safety & Productivity Solutions business. After graduation in May, I will be returning to Honeywell to begin their HR Pathways Rotational Program.

What’s been your favorite part of the program so far?
My cohort. Moving away from home to attend this program was terrifying, but knowing that I have 58 friends to lean on and spend time with makes being far from family so much easier.

What do you like to do in your free time?
I love to travel with my fiancé, do yoga, cuddle my dog and spend time with my wonderful friends and family.

 

Faculty Alan Benson

Can you tell us about research that you’re excited about?
I’m excited about a project where my co-authors and I are using data on salespeople from hundreds of companies to test “the Peter Principle.” That’s the idea that companies promote people because they’re good at their current job, and not the job they’re being promoted into. We find that organizations tend to promote the best salespeople even though sales is a poor metric for performance as a manager.

What are you teaching this academic year?
This academic year I’m teaching MA-HRIR Compensation and Benefits, MBA negotiations, PhD labor economics. I’m also delighted to have former MA-HRIR students in both my negotiations and labor economics classes!

Do you have any advice for current students?
My advice for current students is to think about your graduate experience holistically. Go to parties, get involved in a club or case competition, get a potluck study group going, read business news and talk to other students and faculty about it. The master’s program is a great program housed in a great business school at a great university. Your experience is what you make of it!

What do you like to do in your free time?
In my free time I’m playing with my five month old! He was born the last week of spring semester, and my compensation and benefits class greeted him with a welcome wagon of baby stuff.

What are you currently reading?
I’m currently reading only two things: dense academic papers in my discipline and baby books. I’m looking forward to finding a middle ground.

Is there any little-known fact about you that people might be surprised about?
I’ve been playing ultimate frisbee competitively since college. When I first came to the U, I joined a random intramural team that needed players and we ended up winning the IM championship. I have the t-shirt to prove it!

Congratulations to Our Three Faculty Award Winners

Work and Organizations Professor Mary Zellmer-Bruhn won the Carlson School’s Executive Education Faculty Award. Over the course of five years, she has taught over 30 Executive Education programs and has accumulated more than 200 hours teaching them. She has collaborated in both custom and open enrollment programs with a focus
on Leading Organizational Change and Influence through Social Networks.  Zellmer-Bruhn, at right below, is recognized by Executive Education as a key faculty member in both their long-standing partnerships with organizations such as Polaris, Andersen Corporation, and CHS, and their new programs with clients such as Donaldson and Heraeus. She prepares each program carefully to match her clients’ needs and the context of their organization. Those who attend her programs recognize her passion for her work and her relevant content. Congratulations!

Work and Organizations Professor and Vernon Heath Chair Michelle Duffy has received the Carlson School’s Faculty Service Award. Over the course of five years she served as Director of Graduate studies for the HRIR Ph.D. program, where she helped transition the program through a curriculum change and integrate it into the school’s Business Administration Ph.D. program. Her careful navigation through the changes and strong communications with students and other faculty helped guide a successful transition. Duffy, at left, has served on several committees at the Carlson School, such as the Salary and Equity Review committee and the online Industry MBA (IMBA) development committee, and was recently a member of the All-University Promotion and Tenure Committee. She also has been associate editor for the Journal of Management and is currently associate editor at the Journal of Applied Psychology. Congratulations!

Work and organizations Senior Lecturer Amy Simon has earned the Carlson School’s Faculty Teaching Award. Since the fall of 2012, she has worked as a full-time instructor of the HRIR 3021 course, “Personnel and Industrial Relations.”  During this time, she has made this prerequisite course relevant to all Bachelor of Science in Business majors. She is dedicated to continuing to improve the quality of the course. Simon also developed and launched a Human Resource Management MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) that has helped increase the school’s visibility. Furthermore, she is the faculty advisor for the undergraduate student HR club, (the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) student chapter) and she participates with Delta Sigma Pi. Undergraduate students have also recognized her with the Foundational Core Faculty of the Year Award. Congratulations!

Connections Across Campus

Work and Organizations Professor Avner Ben-Ner spends some of his time at the University of Minnesota Law School. As an adjunct professor there, he has lately been collaborating with a colleague, Professor Claire Hill, on their common interest in questions related to identity and ethnic, cultural, and other forms of diversity.

“Professor Hill has been working on legal angles, and I have researched organizational interactions,” he says. “We combined our specialized skills and started studying how to use law and public policies to ameliorate some of the undesirable effects of diversity and to enhance the beneficial ones.”

Hill says that law and business both need an understanding of personal and group dynamics as they affect what people do as well as how they perceive the world.

Currently, Ben-Ner and Hill are writing a paper for a law journal concerning the legal treatment of nonprofit organizations.

Through his collaboration, Ben-Ner has become involved in some activities at the Law School and has presented at conferences on corporate governance, how to increase trust in society, and more. “Through these interactions, I learn to look at various issues of research and teaching interests to me from additional perspectives, to which I am not exposed in my regular interactions with colleagues at the Carlson School,” he says. “I present in Law School classes and my law colleagues present in my classes.”

Ben-Ner adds that attending seminars and conferences at the Law School exposes him to other ways of thinking and broadens and enriches his understanding of business phenomena. “This influences my research and teaching,” he says. “Academics are specialized in narrow fields, but many questions cannot be answered from a narrow perspective. So, cross-disciplinary interactions benefit our research.”

Since the legal profession is at the intersection of many fields and disciplines, such as politics, economics, and history, the Law School encourages involvement by faculty members from other parts of the University.

“We tell our students that their clients will not present them with ‘a tort problem’ or ‘a contract problem,’—they will present them with ‘a problem,’” says Hill. “The same is true of the broader academic endeavor. We are all trying to understand what makes the world tick, and how it can work better. That requires skills from many disciplines.”

ARTICLE ADAPTED FROM THE CARLSON SCHOOL ALUMNI MAGAZINE.

 

Assistant Professor Abdifatah Ali Joins Faculty

Assistant Professor Abdifatah Ali joins the faculty of the Department of Work and Organizations this fall. We asked him to share a little bit about himself.

“I am a psychologist by training. I received my BA in psychology from San Diego State University, and my MA and PhD in organizational psychology from Michigan State University. My research interests comprise three main areas: (1) understanding how individuals with stigmatized identities make sense of and communicate about those identities across different stages of the employee-organization relationship, (2) workplace diversity and inclusion with an emphasis on establishing equitable employment opportunity practices and cultivating inclusive workplaces that facilitate learning and integration of differences, and (3) how motivation and emotions shape behavior in organizations.

“In the Spring semester, I will be teaching Organizational Behavior Foundations of High-Impact HRIR, and Diversity Management in the HRIR program, and Leading Others in the MBA program.

“My advice for students is to get to know the faculty members. I enjoy meeting students one-on-one and learning more about their backgrounds. Doing so helps with them feeling integrated into the program and can be useful professionally by building their network.”

Welcome, Professor Ali!

Welcome, New Students!

Fall typically brings cooler temperatures, shorter days, and students back to campus. This year, we are pleased to welcome 60 new full-time MA-HRIR students, seven new part-time MA-HRIR students, and one new PhD student to the Carlson School. From attending orientations, to meeting their professors and getting immersed in their course syllabi, to brushing up on interview skills and perfecting their resumes, our students are already fully engaged with their pursuit of a graduate degree.

The incoming full-time class hails from nine different countries (China, Korea, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Gambia, Ethiopia and the United States), and nine states within the U.S. (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Virginia.)  Our part-time students are all working HR professionals expanding their careers through a graduate degree, and our new PhD student joins us from New York University.

Welcome to all! See photos of the first few weeks of orientation, classes, and other activities here.

Professor Morris Kleiner Receives LERA Lifetime Achievement Award

Humphrey School of Public Affairs Professor Morris Kleiner, center, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from LERA (Labor and Employment Relations Association) at their annual meeting this summer. Kleiner is an affiliate faculty member in the CHRLS. The Lifetime Achievement Award is a capstone achievement for lifelong contributors to the field of Industrial Relations and Human Resources, from all perspectives. This award was established in 2000. Pictured at left is Assistant Professor Alan Benson, and at right, Professor John Budd. Benson was also recognized at the LERA annual meeting as a recipient of the John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award; Budd serves on the LERA Board, and received the inaugural Dunlop Award in 1998.

Minnesota-Korea Connections

There was a great Minnesota connection when alumni of the Carlson School’s MA and PhD programs in HRIR gathered to meet with Professor John Budd while he was in Seoul, South Korea over the summer.

Back row: Jae Hang Noh, MA ’10, Won Jun Kwak, MA ’07, Young Jin Nho, PhD ’98, Jun Hyuk Park, MA ’05, Jonathan Booth, PhD ’09, Amit Kramer, PhD ’09, and Do Yeon Kim, MA ’07. Middle row: Joo Bok Lee, MA ’11, Byung Chul Kim, MA ’05, and John Budd; Front Row: Chin Suk Lee, MA ’09, Whan Woo Lee, MA ’09, Ki Soo Kim, MA ’06, and Young-Myon Lee, PhD ’92. 

A forthcoming book, “The Evolution of Korean Industrial and Employment Relations” has significant University of Minnesota connections: the co-editor (Young-Myon Lee, ‘92) and authors of chapter 4 (Yongjin Nho, ‘98) and chapter 13 (Kyoung Won Park, ‘10) are all PhD-HRIR alumni. The release of the book was timed to coincide with the World Congress of the International Labor and Employment Relations Association (ILERA), held in Seoul in July. PhD alums Tae-Youn Park, ’12, Ting Reng, ’09, Jonathan Booth, ‘09, and Professor John Budd all made presentations.