Husker I-back from LA proud he came here

Football was Newby’s main reason for choosing NU. But he says the quality of CBA’s undergraduate program also was a factor.

Terrell Newby came to Nebraska to play football.

“That was my biggest recruiting tool,” the sophomore running back from Los Angeles said this past spring, standing on the Hawks Center turf after a practice.

But it wasn’t the only recruiting tool.

He also wanted to earn a degree from a school with a strong undergraduate business program.

“My parents and I went around and tried to find a good business school,” he said, “and when we came here, we were just struck by it – by the whole facility and by meeting a lot of great people throughout the program.

“I just felt welcomed.”

He chose Nebraska over Oregon and UCLA.

Donde Plowman, dean of UNL’s College of Business Administration, talked about Terrell during a speech she gave in Arizona earlier this year to friends and supporters of the university.

She also talked about David and Goliath.

“David leveraged his apparent weakness – his size – into his strength,” she said. “We have 3,710 students; 3,400 are undergrads. Growth in our college is helping drive UNL’s overall student growth. Our freshman enrollment is up 43 percent in two years. Many Big Ten colleges are putting all of their efforts into their MBA programs.

“Our advantage – our David – is that we are going to focus on undergraduate education. We do undergraduate business education well and we are proud of that.”

Northwestern University, for example, has no undergraduate business program. (Neither does UCLA, one of Terrell Newby’s final choices.) Undergraduate business programs at Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, for example, are small compared to their MBA programs.

She said it’s an exciting time for the CBA, now celebrating its 100-year anniversary:

The online MBA program is ranked sixth in the nation, while both its on-campus MBA and part-time MBA programs are ranked 18th.

Actuarial Science dominates the field.

There’s no national ranking of such programs, the dean said. “But if there were rankings, we would be No. 1. We are proud to be one of 12 centers of excellence as designated by the Society of Actuaries.”

The new CBA Honors Academy is bringing in a pool of yes, applicants with an average ACT score of 31. It selects only 45 students. They take required accelerated business courses together, receive leadership training, and do other activities together, like Toastmasters. This year CBA had 175 applicants for those 45 slots.

70 percent of its students come from Nebraska and 75 percent take jobs in

Nebraska.

85 percent of its new graduates have jobs or are going to graduate school within six months.

It has hired 35 new faculty members in the past four years, including a “rock star” tax professor from Texas A&M, Thomas Omer, now the Delmar A. Lienemann Senior Chair of Accounting. UNL was able to recruit him, the dean explained, because of the generous gift by the Lienemann family to establish a chair in accounting. Recent faculty hires include faculty from the University of Chicago, Duke, University of Wisconsin, Penn State University, Purdue, Indiana, and many others.

“Why did they choose us? Because now we are Big Ten,” Dean Plowman says. “It has changed everything.

“When we look for faculty hires, we look for two things: One, do they help us build our academic reputation with their research; and two, are they going to be transformational in the classroom?”

Why do people come to Nebraska for a business degree?

Because CBA has a long history of producing transformational business leaders including Warren Buffett, Howard Hawks, Carl Mammel, and many others; because CBA provides exceptional undergraduate education that is a high value to students; and, Dean Plowman would say, because “word is out that we have started something really big – and young people want to be a part of it.”

“We are out of space.”

That’s why a new CBA building will be a blessing once it’s complete. The new building will be twice the size of the current building. It will have state-of-the-art technology that will help bring in world-class speakers virtually to students and will push lectures out to students. Every inch of the space in the new building is dedicated to learning – formal, informal, collaborative, interactive.

The new building will help make UNL reach its goal of having a world-class business school and being one of the best in the Big Ten. The building is projected to cost $84 million.

“This project is exciting because of what it will provide future students and faculty, but it is also significant because it is literally being built by our alums and business partners. It will be their legacy building,” the dean said. “We want every single alum participating in some way in this effort.”

The building, scheduled for completion in 2017, will be located at 14th and Vine, just a few blocks down from Memorial Stadium. (Another interesting highlight: About 20 percent of the Huskers’ student-athletes are in CBA.)

Terrell Newby is majoring in business administration. He wants to become an investor, an entrepreneur. He looks forward to seeing the new building someday. But mainly, he says, he looks forward to the day he graduates from UNL with a business degree.

“I do feel proud because a lot of big names have come out of the program,” he said. “There are a lot of prestigious schools throughout the Big Ten, and Nebraska is definitely up there. It’s one of the best in the nation with the business program.

“So it’s going to mean a lot to me and my family.”

UNL’s College of Business Administration aspires to be a premier business school among the most prestigious set of public business schools in the world — those in the Big Ten. A new building makes these aspirations clear. If you would like to help support the project, please consider giving online or contact the foundation at 800-432-3216.