Our Big 3 with Dean H. Rao Unnava: April 2023

Welcome to the April 2023 edition of the Big 3 video newsletter.

This month, we celebrate two remarkable UC Davis Graduate School of Management faculty members who have made a global impact and earned the admiration of peers.

Professor Kimberly Elsbach Honored for Scholarship, Research and Mentorship

Consummate scholars are not made in a day or a year. There is passion and endless toil that builds scholars like Professor Emeritus Kimberly Elsbach.

We celebrate her latest honor as the 2023 JMI Scholar, sponsored by the Western Academy of Management and the Journal of Management Inquiry. The annual award recognizes outstanding scholarship, research and mentorship.

Professor Elsbach’s research on organizational behavior, emotions and identity has been recognized as some of the most influential in her field. Her contributions go beyond her research. As a mentor to countless students and colleagues, she has inspired and guided the next generation of scholars.

We congratulate Professor Elsbach on this well-deserved honor as the 2023 JMI Scholar.

Professor of Marketing Prasad Naik Receives Global Recognition

The Don Schultz Award is named after Professor Don Schultz, who played a pivotal role in creating the field of integrated marketing communications and establishing the IMC department at Northwestern University’s Medill School in the early 1990s.

Schultz is regarded internationally as the “father of IMC.” A committee of Medill’s faculty and industry experts have selected our own Professor Prasad Naik as the recipient of the 2023 Don Schultz Award for Innovation in Teaching, Theory and Practice of Integrated Marketing Communications.

Professor Naik is a leading scholar in the field of marketing and has been recognized for his groundbreaking research on integrated marketing communication strategies. Here at UC Davis, he builds models to help managers optimize spend across media and maximize profits. He told Medill’s award committee that it is a privilege and an honor to receive the award, and that it offers him an opportunity to endorse Professor Don Schultz's legacy to future generations of scholars and managers.

Congratulations to Professor Naik on this well-deserved global recognition.

2023 UC Davis Food & Ag Business Challenge

Just a few weeks ago, we brought together graduate business students from universities across California and the West to UC Davis to go head-to-head in our second annual Food & Ag Business Challenge.

Six teams, including a team of UC Davis MBAs, put their collective experience, knowledge and skills to work on a pressing supply chain issue facing Driscoll's. Headquartered in Watsonville, California, Driscoll's is the world's largest berry company and lead sponsor of this year's challenge.

Students had 15 hours to research, develop and present an action plan to executive judges from Coca-Cola Company, HM.CLAUSE, E.& J. Gallo Winery, ofi, BioConsortia and Driscoll’s. The judges awarded third place to our UC Davis team in a tie with a team from UC Berkeley. The University of California, Riverside, took second and the Colorado State University team won first place.

We congratulate all the teams that participated!

Our focus on the foods of the future distinguishes our MBA from other programs, and this case competition focused on food is one more thing we do to immerse our students in the food industry. We look forward to expanding the challenge with more schools next April.