Category: OBS News

The Manhattan New York Olivet Business School campus will be introducing two courses, MG610 Operations Management and HR650 Human Resource Management, for the Winter 2020 quarter. Operations Management will be taught by Professor Sebastian Keita and Human Resources by Professor Jacob Chatterjee.

The two courses are some of the most specialized in the MBA Program. Operations Management centers around the administration of business practices to achieve the highest efficiency possible within an organization in order to maximize the profit of an organization. Human Resource Management correlates with the development of recognized systems planned for the management of people within an organization so that they become more valuable to the organization.

“The OBS team is planning on how to offer an engaging and exciting new experience while keeping its core values intact. This balance must be always renewed. While offering traditionally inspired courses in the curriculum of the MBA, we as OBS faculty have given ourselves the mission to make our students dynamically implicated in the learning process. This proactive approach blends traditional and modern,” Professor Keita commented.

For this upcoming 2020 academic year, OBS hopes to better serve their students and to make them more complete and proactive partners to the challenges facing them in their spiritual journey, their academic path, their professional aspirations, the greater New York City community as well as their worldview.

Olivet Business School students started to learn marketing management and macroeconomics in Fall quarter.

Marketing management is a course that explores marketing opportunities through product development, pricing strategies, customer communications and channel management. The course is taught by instructor Benjamin Kim.

“I am very excited to teach marketing management this quarter. We have had a very good start. During the first few classes we got to know one another through a self-introduction session. I also had a chance to assess the familiarity of the students with marketing,” said Kim.

“We also were able to discuss and explore the basic concepts of marketing in the first few classes. The following classes will get more intense and study marketing concepts in depth. I have been receiving positive feedback from students until now. I am quite sure that the students will have a stronger foundation of the subject,” Kim added.

The Macroeconomics course covers gross domestic product, unemployment, investment, interest rates, the supply of money, inflation, exchange rates, international trade, business cycles, and fiscal and monetary policy. This study of macroeconomics considers the worldwide economic environment within which businesses operate. The course is taught by instructor Sebastian Keita.

Macroeconomics course is a follow-up course of the Microeconomics course offered in Summer quarter. “The students were very attentive and participative. It is very easy to easy to teach and also easy to understand for the students as this is a follow-up course and students have already had their foundations. This course will make the students delve into deeper topics in economics,” said instructor Keita.

Olivet Business School (OBS) professor, Jacob Chatterjee reflected on the Microeconomics course offered during summer quarter.

Interviewer: Why do you think microeconomics course is important for MBA students?

Professor Chatterjee: Microeconomics and macroeconomics are an essential part of every MBA curriculum. Though on the surface, they seem as some of the less useful courses for an MBA student, it is the foundation of every exchange in our societies, whether it is for a single individual choice or societal.

Interviewer: It is said that economics is a hard subject to study. What is your comment on that?

Professor Chatterjee: Economics is usually seen as a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. However a simpler way to see economics is through scarcity mindset – There is simply not enough resources on this planet for everyone, so we have to manage them properly. Economics becomes increasingly purposeful and interesting with this view.

Interviewer: What was the most interesting part about the microeconomics class this summer?

Professor Chatterjee: The class was very interesting, especially when students were able to identify various concepts of economics in their everyday life without even realizing it. For instance the students were taught about the notions of Average Cost, Marginal Cost, Average Variable Cost, and Marginal revenue. One of our current students was previously working in Samsung, deciding the price of laptops. He didn’t know that he was actually using those 4 notions without knowing it. The class was more practical than conceptual which was helpful for the students to be malleable for today’s world.

Interviewer: What were some of the responses of the students about the class?

Professor Chatterjee: One of the students who took the class said, “The class helped me have a critical look at my indirect surrounding. There are many things we don’t even think about but we are forced to experience. I think, at least for me, now I am forced to think a little bit differently after my microeconomics course.”

Interviewer: Is OBS offering any follow-up course on economics?

Professor Chatterjee: Yes, OBS is offering macroeconomics in Fall for those who took microeconomics in summer.

The Olivet Business School, OBS, is currently organizing a back to school tour event of Wall Street and its surrounding area in the financial district of New York City. OBS Dean Jacob Chatterjee is serving as the main organizer for the event.

“The tour’s primary objective is to immerse the OBS new and prospective students in some of Wall Street’s most iconic landmarks,” said Chatterjee.

“We hope the students will understand why they chose OBS in NYC as their destination of choice to study business instead of anywhere else in the world. “Our international students will need a sense of perspective and belonging to one day achieve their dreams and that of their respective communities,” added the OBS Dean.

The tour serves as the beginning of a series of events for the upcoming academic year to engage students to potential and possibilities found in New York City. The experience would hopefully allow students to embrace their degrees and offer a balanced outlook inside of the world’s biggest business center.

An initial agenda of the Wall Street tour includes visiting many historic sites on the street itself such as the previous location of the bank of New York at 1 Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street, the Federal Hall National Memorial corner of Wall Street and Broad Street, 40 Wall Street (The Trump Building).

Also, many Financial District museums visits have been planned during that day, notably South Street Seaport Museum, the Fraunces Tavern Museum as well as the 9/11 memorial.

The event will be attended by Olivet’s business students and is an open invitation to all Olivet University Students who wish to join. It will be held at the beginning of September. For more information, visit http://obs.olivetuniversity.edu and contact the Olivet Business School in Manhattan New York.