Letter from the Director
Greetings alumni, industry partners, and SHR Center friends,
Another academic year is in the books and five additional SHR MBAs were welcomed to alumni-hood on Saturday, May 11. We are incredibly proud of our Class of 2024’s many accomplishments and look forward to following their career journeys in the years to come. We are equally as excited about our Class of 2025 students’ summer internship opportunities and to welcome an impressive Class of 2026 who hail from from Utah to New York.
In this newsletter, we share an overview of spring 2024 SHR Center happenings, including more about our trek to Milwaukee in early April and On, Wisconsin weekend during which we welcomed 10 incoming SHR MBAs to Grainger Hall. We update you on student news and placement and, of course, kindly remind you to register for our highly-anticipated SHR Symposium 2024, which will be held on Friday, September 27. We also highlight the research of Assistant Professor Jirs’ Meuris, who currently teaches two of our required SHR specialization courses.
We hope you set aside a few minutes to read both our newsletter and our student blog posts and that those few minutes make you proud to be a supporter of our SHR Center. We appreciate the many ways our SHR Center alumni and community contribute to our students’ success during the program and beyond, and we look forward to collaborating with you in the coming year. There are so many ways to become involved (or more involved) with our Center; a few of them are outlined at the end of this newsletter. Please reach out if you would like to discuss any of these opportunities. Thank you again, and enjoy your summer. On, Wisconsin!
Warmly,
Tanya Hubanks
Strategic Human Resource Management Center Director
Wisconsin School of Business
SHR Center News: Spring 2024 Milwaukee Trek
This past April, the SHR Center ‘trekked’ to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to visit multiple companies, engage with alumni at a Thursday evening reception, and participate in a round-table discussion with local human resources leaders. We concluded our trek at Great American Ballpark, visiting with Cas Castro, Milwaukee Brewers Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Planning, and then taking in an exciting Brewers game in in the Northwestern Mutual Legends Club. Thank you to those who made our trek possible. We could not have had a successful and informative applied learning experience without your help. We “shout you out’ again in our industry partner highlights below!
SHR MBA Prachi Garg shares more about the SHR Center’s trek to Milwaukee in her blog post. Click below to learn more about her experiences visiting Komatsu Mining Company, Northwestern Mutual, Baird, Molson Coors, and the Milwaukee Brewers! Spoiler alert: this was Prachi to first baseball game, and she witnessed a Brewers’ win!
SHR Symposium 2024: Registration is Open!
The SHR Center is pleased to announce the SHR Symposium 2024 website is live and registration is now open! The SHR Symposium will take place Friday, September 27, 2024 at the Pyle Center in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. This year, we celebrate 20 years of our WSB SHR specialization, at least in its current iteration. There were excellent predecessor programs, too!
Be sure to check out the information on our confirmed presenters and panelists. We are excited to showcase another superb line-up of professionals and experts and offer multiple opportunities to network with our students and future HR leaders. Want to know more about our annual SHR Symposium before registering? You can read about SHR Symposium 2023 on our website. Hotel blocks are also live – act quick, rooms are limited! Madison in late September is a perfect time to visit. Take advantage of early bird pricing and register today!
We Appreciate Your Support: Calling for SHR Symposium Sponsors
Are you, your company, firm, or organization interested in supporting our Center and students through sponsorship of our Symposium? Sponsorship is available in four different levels, including a low-cost student supporter level. Each level has associated benefits to our sponsors. Learn the benefits of sponsorship levels linked here.
Read more about sponsorship here! >>
SHR Student News: Celebrating the Class of 2024
The most important news of this issue: we congratulate the SHR MBA Class of 2024! Please join us in sending Alice, Amanda, Anais, Katie, and Shanae best wishes in their full time placements and in their future journeys! They will be missed in the SHR Center, but we are excited to have them as engaged SHR Center alumni. We share a special congratulations to Alice, Anais, and Shanae who became SHRM certified professionals in February 2024.
Class of 2024 Full Time Placements
- Anais Arrigo: Search in progress; is relocating to Chicago, IL (please reach out if you have opportunities for Anais)
- Katie Caffrey: Global HR Program Associate at Bank of America (Charlotte, North Carolina)
- Alice Chang-Der Bedrosian: Principle Compensation Analyst at U.S. Bank (Madison, WI)
- Shanae Doerr: HRBP at University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI)
- Amanda Moran: Senior HR Generalist, HR Leadership Program, at Microsoft (Miami, Florida)
Second-year student Katie Caffrey shares her excitement, with just a bit of nervousness, of beginning her next adventure upon graduation in her SHR blog post. After two years with the SHR Center, Katie is moving to Charlotte, North Carolina to join the Global Human Resources Development Program with Bank of America. Read more about her next chapter below!
Read Katie’s blog post here >>
Second-year student Shanae Doerr was a leader in inclusive leadership throughout her time with SHR. She founded the Graduate Inclusive Leadership Committee (ILC), overcame imposter syndrome, and had the honor of speaking at graduation. Read more about her leadership journey, and the impact she has made, below.
Read Shanae’s blog post here >>
Class of 2025 Internship Placements
This summer, our Class of 2025 SHR MBA students begin their internship journeys, The Class of 2025 summer internships are diverse from both an industry and a geographic perspective.
- Antionett Jackson: Corporate Human Resource Intern at Caterpillar Inc. (Decatur, Illinois)
- Prachi Garg: Human Resources Intern at Illuminus (Madison, Wisconsin)
- Megan McCarthy: Graduate Human Resources Intern at U.S. Bank in (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
- Barbara Trujillo: Marketing Strategy Intern at UPS (Atlanta, Georgia)
More Student Blog Spotlights
Women in Business Panel
SHR MBA second-year Anais Arrigo attended the Graduate Women in Business and the Diversity in Business Club’s “Leadership in Action Series: Women in Business Panel.” She got to hear from four women of various backgrounds and went away with tips and tools for being a business leader.
On, Wisconsin Weekend
On, Wisconsin Weekend 2024 was a hit! 10 of 11 incoming SHR MBA class of 2026 students joined us in Madison for a welcome weekend in mid-April. Ty Day, an incoming student, details the weekend, including his excitement of becoming a Business Badger!
Faculty Spotlight: Jirs Meuris
Jirs Meuris is an Assistant Professor in the Management and Human Resources Department at the Wisconsin School of Business. His research focuses on the intersection of human resources management and public policy, focused on examining how demographic and economic disparities affect workplace and organization outcomes. Read Unbreakable Ceilings: (WSB) Study Reveals Startling Truth Behind Sluggish Progress on Gender Equity to learn more about Professor Mirs’ research.
This past semester, all SHR MBAs took Professor Meuris graduate Leading Change class, which is required for our SHR specialization. Jirs also taught our second-year SHR MBAs in People Analytics. We are fortunate our students have the opportunity to learn from him!
Industry Partner Highlights
Thank you to Komatsu, Northwestern Mutual, Baird, Molson Coors, and the Milwaukee Brewers for making our SHR Center Trek to Milwaukee possible. Your partnership and willingness to host our Center for an industry visit strengthens our students’ academic journeys. Providing applied learning opportunities and answering business-focused questions on timely human resources issues plays an instrumental role in shaping the future of our students and the HR workforce.
Also, huge thanks to the human resources leaders who joined us for our discussion-focused luncheon, including human resources professionals from Goodwill, GE Healthcare, Enerpac Tool Group, and International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. We appreciate you!
While we are thanking partners, we must offer another big thanks to the companies that sponsored our 2024 human resources capstone projects: Exact Sciences, Fiskars Group, and UW Credit Union! In this course, our SHR MBAs further develop consulting and project management expertise while applying the knowledge gained and skills developed in their program. Like with our treks, this valuable opportunity would not be possible without our SHR Center industry partners. We appreciate your support and partnership!
Supporting our SHR Center
Be a Part of SHR Symposium 2024
Are you, your company, your firm, or your organization interested in supporting our Center through sponsorship or being a speaker at our symposium? Different sponsorship options are available; you may also be a student supporter. Our SHR Center and students appreciate your consideration to be a sponsor or speaker.
Reach out for sponsorship and speaker opportunities »
Make a 2024 Gift to the SHR Center
Making a gift to support our Strategic Human Resource Management Center is simple and greatly appreciated. Gift funds support invaluable initiatives within SHR, such as financing industry visits, partially funding conference attendance, case competitions, SHRM membership, and certification exam fees. Larger donations will enable us to attract the best and brightest graduate students by offering scholarships. Will you consider making a donation? Give to SHR, or reach out to Center Director Tanya Hubanks if you would like to discuss additional gift options.
Engage with us on LinkedIn
Follow our page on LinkedIn to stay up to date with SHR news. Check out our new alumni, student, and speaker spotlight series to read about the people who are part of our work. If you are interested in being a featured alumni, let us know!
Hire Our Students or Be a Mentor
Interested in hiring one of our SHR MBA graduates? Interested in mentoring a SHR MBA student? Email our team at the link below to discover ways to be involved or to learn more about the either the hiring process or mentorship experience!
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Know anyone who might be interested in receiving our newsletter? Direct them to the link below to join the SHR mailing list to receive updates and invitations to events.