Volume 13, Issue 1

Christi Branscom: Called to Serve

Serving her fellow Tennesseeans comes naturally for Christi Branscom (HCB, ’87). She answered the call to public service first at the City of Knoxville and then in the executive branch of the state government, bringing a wealth of experience from her background in real estate and law.

Leading Accounting in Medicine

“My accounting degree from Haslam has opened doors of opportunity in healthcare, allowing me to gain experience in many areas, from internal auditing to financial reporting and investor relations, at both small and large companies.” — MIKE COGGIN

A Passion for Community

Community made a tremendous difference in Clarence Vaughn’s life. As executive director of the Office of Access and Community Connections at the Haslam College of Business, he wants to pass on that blessing to others. Starting off on a rocky path, he was expelled from high school but with a supportive community of family and friends around him, he enrolled in junior college. After transferring to Florida A&M, he ultimately graduated with honors.

In This Issue

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Thought Leadership

Supply Chain Brain

“Demand for industrial CO2 continues to increase, causing producers to seek better ways of recapturing and recycling the gas. But smaller entities, in particular the growing number of craft brewers, can’t easily afford the technology and equipment needed to do that. Supplies of CO2 will continue to be tight over the next two to three years, and manufacturers should consider diversifying their sourcing to keep pace with demand.”

Wall Street Journal

"The first step in solving the problem is to appoint an executive responsible for the end-to-end returns process. And then a company needs to measure both customer satisfaction and the detailed cost of returns."

Salon

“While it is an unpopular strategy, it helps when retailers place purchase quantity limits on consumers at the store shelf. In the longer term, state and federal governments can choose to get involved, if they wish, by providing purchase commitments to manufacturers and distributors that would encourage suppliers to make the big investments required to up their capacity.”

Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog

“Our findings suggest that director-specific attributes are important drivers of value, are related to good decision-making, and should be considered when establishing and assessing policy.”

Harvard Business Review

“To increase trust with your trading partners, start by looking at cultural fit and selecting the appropriate sourcing business model. And don’t underestimate the power of making a strategic choice to consciously build trust.”

WalletHub

“Remember that credit cards are a package of several costs and benefits. The biggest is the convenience of making payments, but the fee structure and incentives can be important. Cards that have no late fees sound good, but if a cardholder usually pays on time, then he or she might prefer a card with bigger discounts…The important thing is to pick a card that matches your spending and paying patterns.”

The Hill

“There’s no excuse for demand variability, and yet there are shortages. There has been a significant increase in the demand for these feminine care products in the last several months.”

The Tennessean

“The country’s aging and the population is not renewing itself in ways it has in the past, and we’ve largely shut down our immigration system,” said Marianne Wanamaker, executive director of University of Tennessee at Knoxville’s Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy. "The labor shortage we're experiencing doesn't have any obvious solution other than a recession."

New Faculty

The Haslam College of Business continues to bolster its strong roster of diverse, elite faculty, welcoming 30 new members who bring decades of experience in industry as well as in the classroom. The faculty growth joins Haslam’s efforts to keep pace with record-setting enrollment.

Sources of Funds

Growth is the story in Haslam College of Business. We welcomed almost 2,000 freshman to our college in Fall of 2023. The largest freshman class in the history of the college. At the same time, 27 new faculty call the college home. Our faculty continued to make positive impacts on our community by offering many of the traditional face-to-face courses in an hybrid / online classroom, as well as, ramping up our face to face delivery. Revenues continued to grow and be reinvested into the infrastructure and support of our student experience. Private philanthropy remains an important funding source allowing the college to implement new programming, expand current offerings and support our students in their time here at the Haslam College of Business. Increasing private philanthropy, launching successful new programs that attract additional students and controlling our costs are always important, and particularly so as we strive to protect access given the economic realities facing our students and their families. — BETSY ADAMS, ASSISTANT DEAN OF FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION