IDSc Faculty Member, Alok Gupta, Named Faculty Director of MBA Carlson Consulting Enterprise

Faculty Involvement Brings Additional Depth to MBA Consulting Training

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In September 2002, Associate Professor of Information and Decision Sciences, Alok Gupta, was named Faculty Director of the Carlson Consulting Enterprise (CCE). CCE is one of four "MBA Enterprises" that encourage student leadership and experiential learning in the context of externally-funded real world project projects. The other enterprises are: the Carlson Fund Enterprise (for funds management), the Carlson Entrepreneurship Enterprise and the Carlson Branding Enterprise. The Carlson School 's strategy with these four enterprises is to supplement students' classroom training in a manner that will set them apart of competitors from other business schools, when they enter the job market.

Alok brings a unique set of skills to the Carlson Consulting Enterprise. His training in Management Science, Computer Science and Information Systems at Purdue University and the University of Texas at Austin enable him to employ a range of perspectives in bringing advisory help to the MBA students. In addition, during his time as a faculty member at the University of Connectity, Alok gained experience in a variety of business school consulting project settings with leading firms such as Priceline.com, General Electric and UBS Bank. He is a past National Science Foundation Career Award winner, for his research on electronic auctions and markets, and currently has research interests in technology forecasting, online consumer behavior, price transparency and mechanism design in Internet-based transaction-making, and information security. He also currently acts as Ph.D. Coordinator for the Information and Decision Sciences Doctoral Program.

His primary role is to anchor CCE's academic quality and direction, and to assist the students in the development of solution approaches to the consulting problems that they are undertaking. Alok works cooperatively with CCE Professional Directors, Laura Terwisscha and Curtis Moore, who are in charge of business development for the student-led projects, and day-to-day management of the enterprise.