LehighNow Volume 02, Issue 09

              LEHIGHNOW
January 30, 2002
Volume 2, Issue 9
vSeries debuts in CBE
IN BRIEF
HONORS/AWARDS
Lehigh
announces
expansion of
Hillman Awards
The Hillman Award,
the highest recognition
that faculty and staff
members at Lehigh can
receive, will now be
offered to four individuals. Since 1946, the award |
was most often given to
only one member of the
faculty or exempt staff
each year.
The awards will now
include the Hillman
Faculty Award, the
Hillman Staff Award (for
exempt and non-exempt
employees), the Hillman
Award for Excellence in
Undergraduate Student
Advising, and the Hillman j
Award for Excellence in
Graduate Student
Advising.
Nomination forms for
the faculty and staff
awards can be found at
;h.edu/~inprv/
.lehigh
awards/. For faculty
awards, select the file
Hillman_faculty_award .pdf.
and for staff awards,
select the file
Hillman_staff_award.pdf. I
Nominations for the two
advising awards will be
solicited directly from
undergraduate and
graduate students via
email. Nominations are
due no later than Feb. 8,
2002.
Dale Falcinelli has some
words of advice for
fledgling entrepreneurs:
You don't make it by
working hard; you make it
by working smart. If you
think otherwise, you're in
for a rude awakening.
Falcinelli, an adjunct
faculty member and the
business-savvy creator of
the College of Business and
Economics New Ventures
Forum, is heading up a
specialized track with a
new approach to MBA and
executive education
designed to train the next
generation of entrepreneurs.
vSeries consists of 12
succinct, intensive courses
delivered in relevant
succession, covering a
variety of topics ranging
from creating the business
plan to seeking outside
venture capital. It made its
debut this past fall
semester, and is now fully
operational. (Observers
may notice a billboard
promoting the program on
Route 22 East between
Allentown and Bethlehem).
vSeries courses offer
Lehigh MBAs an entrepreneurial track in their
graduate education and
also provide area companies with an opportunity to
spread their entrepreneurial
wings, Falcinelli says.
A major difference
between the vSeries and
other entrepreneurial
programs is that each two-
day course is taught by
"vSeries Professors," who
have been carefully
recruited from industry. All
are highly accomplished
and experienced practitioners who possess strong
academic qualifications. As
a group, vSeries Professors
are drawn from
start-up and
emerging
enterprises,
accounting and
law fields, and
Fortune 500-size
corporations.
"Lehigh
University's CBE
boasts the only
program of its
kind," says
Falcinelli. "The
wide array of
courses are
diverse enough to
appeal to our
MBA students,
while also
attracting
managers of
highly developed
corporations and
individual
entrepreneurs
who are committed to
building new commercial
enterprises."
Falcinelli's inspiration for
the program grew out of a
conversation with CBE Dean
Richard Durand.
Falcinelli, a market
strategist and business
consultant for 25 years,
proposed an entrepreneur-
ship program that would be
team-taught by executives.
Durand agreed that vSeries
would make an excellent fit
for Lehigh's newly remodeled
MBA program.
vSeries already shows signs
of success. Enrollment
surpassed early expectations,
with 10-20 percent of the
attendees coming from the
business community.
Although the potential for
expansion exists, Falcinelli
feels that the program will be
most beneficial if class size
remains small and intimate.
Falcinelli emphasizes that,
Photo by Theo Anderson
Dale Falcinelli leads a vSeries course.
"Quality standards will be
maintained at the highest
level."
An illustration of the
positive response of vSeries is
seen in the Anatomy of
Entrepreneurship course,
which was taught this
November by Harvard MBA
Peter Turner and Charles
Zeynel, whose diverse
international experience
began with his own graduate
education at the University
of Geneva, Switzerland.
"A unique dynamic
happened between students
and Turner and Zeynel. In
over two decades of teaching
in the CBE, I have never
experienced such intimacy as
that seen in this particular
vSeries seminar," says
Falcinelli.
Fueled by the initial success
on the graduate level, the
CBE is considering the
Please see VSERIES
page 3