A Strong Asset

Mid-December marks an in-between time on campus — between first Christmas decorations and last deadlines for projects, papers, or presentations; between tense nerves ahead of final exams and joyous anticipation of the well-earned holiday break. In Briggs Hall, students huddle for finals week pep talks, professors reach into a colleague’s candy jar as they rush by their office, administration wraps up for 2024, and planning ties up for 2025.

In the show-down to an internal competition, three students are facing off, delivering their sales pitches toward a hypothetical audience of high school students — convincing them why Graceland University is the best choice for their future. Their presentations showcase very unique approaches to selling the Graceland Experience. After a brief deliberation, the jury consisting of C.H. Sandage School of Business professors Sehwan Kim, PhD, Robert Poulton, PhD, and Jeffery McElroy, EdD, ’84 return to provide individual feedback and announce the winning pitch. “You’re all winners,” Kim wraps up the year’s final pitch, commending the enthusiasm, thought, and creativity that the three contestants had put into the challenge to successfully close the deal with potential buyers on Graceland as a place to belong, learn, and grow.

Experiential learning through friendly competition is the School’s value proposition: in its classrooms, start-up ideas are incubated, business-related clubs convene, and field trips into industry settings are planned — and there’s always an occasion to gather Accounting and Finance, Management and Marketing, Sport Management and Agricultural Business students, faculty and staff for a mixer event.

Briggs Hall is constantly buzzing with opportunity. Right now, everyone is excited for the MBA program that will be launched in the fall!

An Incredible Event Takes Flight

Secretary Naig (pictured with School of Business professor Max Pitt ’86, left, and President Shrock, right) stopped by the Lamoni campus for the annual event and met with students, University staff and leadership, area FFA advisors, and other agribusiness partners.

You had to be careful not to get hit by the pointy noses of aircraft soaring through the lobby of the Shaw Center: the unusual high air traffic density was caused by young aspiring entrepreneurs quality-testing their products – colorful paper planes – as they prepared to pitch their aviation company ideas to an expert jury of Graceland students — technical engineering, logo design, marketing plan, and all.

The sales competition was part of the action-packed Agricultural Business/FFA/School of Business Day that took place in November. To its 12th edition, the entire School of Business team that had been on their organizing feet for weeks proudly welcomed over 300 south-central Iowa and northern Missouri high school students enrolled in FFA chapters and Business courses and their accompanying teachers to Graceland, along with always happily returning exhibitors and speakers from partnering organizations. The business simulation, educational stations, games and activities, presentations and demonstrations took the young visitors and their chaperones across campus and Lamoni to learn about agricultural topics and business management, community service and leadership.

Another regular visitor also gladly followed the invitation to this flagship event: Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, who summarized the successful day: “Graceland University’s Ag Business Day was incredibly successful at bringing together students, alumni, and high school FFA members to interact with and learn from faculty, area businesses, community leaders, and many other ag industry partners. From conservation, water quality, and crop production to livestock, renewable energy, and rural economic development, this full day of learning and networking was able to provide students with a chance to ask questions, explore, and experience the many possibilities available to them in Iowa agriculture. Graceland’s ag curriculum and hands-on programs are a stellar example of the innovative and collaborative workforce initiatives that exist across Iowa for students who want to engage with agriculture.”

A Lab for Incubating Ideas

In Briggs 106, a stock ticker display flashes on the wall: the day they installed it, Kaminski remembers with a grin, the U.S. stock market had closed strong.

Justin Kaminski ’15 (majors: Economics, Accounting, Business Administration) recognizes a good investment opportunity when he sees it, and for him and his wife, Alumni Board member Allie Krabbenhoft ’16 Kaminski (majors: Education, Math), giving back to their alma mater was such an opportunity. On his homecoming weekend visit to attend the School of Business Advisory Board meeting, Justin took a look at the good deal that he and Allie, Jeffrey Morgan ’00 from Institutional Advancement, and the Business School faculty had worked out — a classroom upgrade to Room 106 as the new Finance Lab.

The Kaminskis’ motivation was the many positives in their lives that they attribute to Graceland — including finding each other. Justin explains per video call from his personal and professional headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas: “Graceland made it possible for me to successfully complete my education, moved me out of California for a better environment, and moved me into some of the businesses I later started. I got prepared for my career and met my future wife there.” He wanted to pay it forward to the next Yellowjacket generations.

Professor of Economics Robert Poulton, PhD, expresses just how many students benefit from the new space:

“We are extremely grateful for the generosity of Justin and Allie. Their gift helped transform a generic Briggs classroom into a state-of-the-art Finance Lab that will serve as a collaborative space for the Graceland Investment Club and as a resource for courses in our rapidly-growing new Finance major. In addition to their financial support for the room, they have founded a new investment fund that the club will manage and grow. The support for these experiential learning opportunities will significantly impact current and future students. Thank you, Justin and Allie!”

ROBERT POULTON, PhD
Professor of Economics, Finance Program Coordinator

Since managing the Graceland University call center as a student, Kaminski’s work ethic turned into many business opportunities and connections — some were the right ones, and some weren’t. His corporate career path led him to the finance departments of Walmart, Sam’s Club, and finally Walton Enterprises. He is just as much intrapreneur as entrepreneur, always on the go running his own companies, including a new financial advisory firm, and supporting startups.

He hopes that the new Finance Lab provides a safe space for students, under the guidance of their professors, to learn the basics of money and understand the value creation it offers, but also train in the implications of financial decisions. This includes experiencing emotionally what it means to lose money, and developing the ability to objectively identify why it was lost so they can later help themselves grow their own wealth.

An Intercontinental Professor

Once a student in the very classrooms he now teaches in, “Soso” is a favorite professor among students.

Even when you meet “Soso” in a hallway of Briggs on U.S. Central Time, you don’t know which time zone he might currently be thinking or operating in. Assistant Professor of Business Ioseb Gabelaia, who recently added an EdD to his PhD, may have just — physically or virtually — presented on circular economy at a conference in Lithuania or design thinking in Croatia, met with a research group in Latvia, brought together scholars with industry professionals and policymakers on AI topics in Poland, represented Graceland at a higher education taskforce in Georgia, chaired an academic association supervisory session in Spain, or shared his business management insight with audiences in Romania, the Netherlands, or Vietnam.

A Master Black Belt in Six Sigma, he pursues all aspects of academic work with equally athletic ambition: teaching, presenting, fundraising for research grants and networking for research partnerships, contributing articles and reviews to journals or chapters to books, serving on committees, consulting at the global intersections of academia and business, and publishing at highest index levels.

Still, he always makes time for a chat. As proud as he is of his index scores as metrics for the quantity and quality of scholarly publications, what motivates Gabelaia are the people he works with — his Graceland students, PhD students in other countries who cite him in their dissertations and can’t believe it when they happen to meet him – “THE Gabelaia??” – in person, his fellow scholars and business colleagues. He wants his work to be impactful, and to connect the disciplines as well as the people who study and apply them around the globe.

He may be traversing several time tones within a given day, but his days, too, only have 24 hours, so Gabelaia maximizes every minute, brain and data set — with disciplined prioritization and powerful collaboration. He and his co-authors efficiently divide up sections and segments to complete in parallel, and effectively create opportunities to widely position and share their applied sciences research wherever it is relevant. His international mentees learn how to become prolific high-quality authors, and research-ambitious students in Lamoni benefit from his project Students in Scientific Research (SiSR) with international-level experience and exposure.

Vivian Tracy ’25 and Joseph Boyce ’25 are such students: they each collaborated with Gabelaia on a study that underscores the transformative potential of interdisciplinary research and its application to real-world challenges. Tracy examined conditional psychology in marketing, and Boyce explored the integration of sustainable practices in the luxury real estate sector. Both studies were accepted for presentation at a conference in Spain, and for publication in high-impact journals.

At the end of a day at the C.H. Sandage School of Business, Gabelaia and a colleague head out the doors of Briggs Hall — the colleague looking forward to dinner, and Gabelaia, having just returned from a different international time zone, to a quick nap.

Know a student who might be interested in our new MBA program? Learn more and get in contact with our Admissions team here.