Holiday Greeting from Dean Lenway

Dear Friends,

The faculty and staff of Opus College of Business extends our warmest wishes to you and your families this holiday season.

I write you as the world is more in need of our compassion than ever before. And, I ask myself, how can the Opus College community embrace others with empathy and respect to make them feel like they belong and help make this world a better place?

At the Opus College, we teach our students that the purpose of business – any business – is to advance the common good. We teach them to become principled business leaders by thinking critically, acting wisely and working skillfully. We teach them to be agents of change and to cultivate respect, understanding and empathy for others. We also teach them to recognize the consequences of their actions and that business decisions are about purpose as well as profit. At St. Thomas, students also learn to recognize the implications of business decisions on all stakeholders.

It’s been a true joy for us to hear from Opus graduates who have brought this philosophy to their careers and communities. I hope that in the new year you will have an opportunity to meet some of our recent graduates.

The holiday season also offers us the opportunity to pause and reflect on the successes of the past year. We’ve made tremendous progress and look forward to new challenges in 2019:

• Online MBA: Our first Spring Online MBA cohort will begin early 2019.
• Executive Coaching: Our new Graduate Certificate in “Effective Coaching in Organizations” is one of the few university-based coaching education programs in the world.
• Master in Health Care Innovation: This new one-year, accelerated program teaches students core business skills with a strong focus on health care systems in human centered design.
• Schulze Innovation Scholars: The Schulze School welcomed our inaugural cohort of ten Schulze Innovation Scholars, recipients of our four-year, full-tuition scholarship program for incoming freshman who have demonstrated exceptional entrepreneurial initiative.
• The Hitch Health case study was accepted for publication at Ivey Business School. This health care case, a collaborative effort between St. Thomas, Hennepin County Medical Center and United Healthcare, illustrates our focus on the future of digital health.
• The 2018 exit survey of Executive MBA students indicates that 75 percent of students have earned additional work responsibilities, 66 percent have received a significant promotion, and over 50 percent were awarded a significant pay raise while in the program.

This has been an exciting but busy year! I am grateful to everyone for all they have done to make each of these initiatives possible and for being a part of the Opus community.

I wish you a wonderful holiday season and a happy healthy new year.

Sincerely,
Stefanie

Stefanie Lenway
Dean of Opus College of Business