Smeal Alumni Relations

The Smeal family has over 60,000+ alumni. Through the Alumni Relations Office, Smeal seeks to connect our alumni with each other and current students, faculty, and staff through a variety of initiatives, including on-campus and off-campus events. Some of our key events include Meet the Dean, Executive Insights, and lectures.

April Executive Insights

This spring's Executive Insights lecture series came to a close with two presentations in April. On April 1, Dennis Nally, chairman and senior partner of the PricewaterhouseCoopers US firm, met with accounting and information systems students and faculty. During his conversation with Dean Thomas, he discussed one of his biggest challenges from a leadership standpoint: making sure that PwC employees are aligned with the business and that they understand the challenges that PwC is facing. Nally explained that the firm has experienced many changes within the past several years. When asked about the current U.S. economy and its impact on the firm, he stated," change is good for us because we help clients deal with change." His final piece of advice to students was two-fold. You'll succeed if you have a mindset that you make a difference and can add value. Second, you need to have a desire to reinvent yourself, continue to learn, and develop your skill sets.

Jim Stengel, chief marketing officer for Procter & Gamble, visited Smeal on April 11. He started his presentation with a brief video clip that is shown internally to P&G employees. It also contained some of their new ad campaigns and initiatives. During his conversation with Dean Thomas, he discussed the five characteristics of a good leader: integrity, clear values that are conveyed to employees, inspiration, placing the right people in the right job, and the power of relentless innovation. His final piece of advice to students was, "follow your passion...money, success and fame follow passion." Learn more about these and previous Executive Insights speakers.

Washington, D.C. Alumni Event

On April 3, Smeal alumni in the Washington, D.C. area were able to connect with Dean Thomas and the Board of Visitors, the advisory group to the Dean. An alumni panel discussed the "Challenges and Opportunities in the Business Environment." Martha Jordan, '76, served as the moderator for the panel with panelists Matthew Schuyler, '87, James Clifton, and Richard Trumka.

Advance Realty Group Real Estate Lecture

Simon Ziff, '87, president of The Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group, returned to campus on April 8, as part of Smeal's Advance Realty Group Real Estate Lecture series. He discussed his career path and the challenges facing today's real estate market. The Advance Realty lectureship was established in 2004 to recognize the generosity of Peter, '73 and Sharon Cocoziello and to provide a platform at Smeal for leading real estate professionals to discuss the issues facing the field.

Scholarship Celebration

This year's Scholarship Celebration was held on April 25, in the Atrium of the Business Building. Nearly 200 donors, students, faculty, staff, and guests gathered to honor the generosity of our donors and the academic excellence of our students. During the celebration, twelve seniors were honored with Senior Awards and the Milton J. Bergstein Student Community Service Award was presented. Tom McNamara, who established the Zanzibar Scholarship for Business, and Cyndi Phillips, who established the Michael Ryan Phillips Memorial MBA Scholarship, spoke about why they established their scholarships, and Kevin Bowles and Chris Thomas, recipients of the respective awards, spoke about what it meant to receive their scholarship.