Media Coverage

Robert Falzon to succeed Mark Grier as Vice Chairman in December 2018 and a member of the Board of Directors in August 2019.

The Board also announced that Robert Falzon, Rutgers College (RC) ’81, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Prudential, has been named vice chairman of the company, effective December 1, 2018. Falzon will succeed Mark Grier, who will retire from Prudential and step down from the Board in August 2019, at which time Falzon will join the Board. Grier will transfer his functional management responsibilities to Falzon on December 1, 2018, and will support Falzon and Lowrey in their transitions, as well as focus on concluding some specific strategic projects.

Lord & Taylor, an anchor at Monmouth Mall for nearly 30 years, will close the store after the holiday shopping season, a company official said.

It gained a reputation for selling classical styled merchandise to high-end consumers, Marc Kalan, a marketing professor at Rutgers Business School in Newark and New Brunswick, said.

"The top end (shopping) is moving away and being dominated by a few retailers, and the mass is moving elsewhere, either to Target, Walmart or an Amazon," Kalan said. "If you think about it, they’re kind of caught in the middle."

Rutgers University has opened its doors this semester to the Class of 2022, the largest first-year class in the university’s history and one if its most diverse.

Many of the 9,300 students who have begun their post-high school academic careers on one of the university’s major campuses have already proven themselves both in and out of the classroom.

After four seasons as a standout at Millburn High School and much soul-searching, Peter Serruto postponed his chance to play Major League Baseball (MLB) with the Cincinnati Reds in favor of pursuing an academic career. Serruto of Millburn said it was the reputation of the Rutgers Business School as well as the Scarlet Knights’ baseball coaching staff that drew him to Rutgers-New Brunswick.

Rutgers University-Newark has had a presence in the city for more than 100 years, and today, boasts programs in industries ranging from arts and sciences, business and law to criminal justice, public affairs, and administration. The university employs some 1,600 faculty and staff members, spends a net of $356 million a year on salaries, and contributes local tax revenues of $31 million.

“We want to serve as a direct strategic partner in support of the city of Newark. We work closely with the mayor’s office and strive to be an anchor institution that’s committed to creating pathways for local residents to access our university,” says Arcelio Aponte, senior vice chancellor for administration and economic development and chief financial officer of Rutgers University-Newark. “We’re always working to develop our own strategic initiatives, but we’re also trying to meet the mayor’s expectations in terms of local procurement and having more faculty and staff live locally.”

9 Of The Best Business Schools For Careers In China

A career in China offers unprecedented velocity and the excitement of disruptive innovation.
Professor Kar Yan Tam, dean of Hong Kong’s HKUST Business School, says “China will remain the world’s major growth engine in the years ahead.”

7. Rutgers Business School (between 6. USC Marshall and 8. Stanford University Graduate School of Business)

Rutgers' strong internship placement, which has hovered "at or near 100% since 2007,” can launch graduates eastward. Lei Lei, dean of Rutgers Business School, says: "[Rutgers] students gain valuable US corporate working experience that companies in China respect.

"Our effort to instill our unique brand—Resilient, Resourceful, and Responsible—has given our students a strong work ethic and professionalism.”

Not only did Rutgers raise the highest amount of donations in the university’s history — $223.4 million — but for the first time in its history, more than 50,000 donors made or pledged gifts to the university.

Founded by Rutgers graduate Gary M. Cohen (Rutgers College '80 and Rutgers Business School '83) and supported by his intent to contribute $1 million, the Rutgers Institute for Corporate Social Innovation will embed interdisciplinary coursework into the Rutgers Business School curriculum, preparing students to drive successful business results in sustainable organizations that are financially, environmentally and socially responsible.

Three major cryptocurrency organizations have partnered to launch a rocket with bitcoin on it to the moon by 2020.

"The concept of Bitcoin to the moon has been very popular, a pop-culture-like comment and concept within the Bitcoin and broader blockchain ecosystem," said Cameron Schorg, chief business development officer at AirdropX.

"The purpose of RutgersBit is to spread the word of cryptocurrency and blockchain, especially the business applications of it," said Christian Buren, a second-year student at Rutgers Business School. "This allows us to take a non-technical approach to educating students — we can give an explanation of blockchain and cryptocurrency and since we're in Rutgers Business School, that allows us to utilize all the resources that Rutgers Business School has like connections to existing firms.

Many of the 9,300 students who will begin their post-high school academic careers on one of the university’s major campuses have already proven themselves both in and out of the classroom.

After four seasons as a standout at Millburn High School and much soul-searching, Peter Serruto postponed his chance to play Major League Baseball (MLB) with the Cincinnati Reds in favor of pursuing an academic career.

Serruto of Millburn said it was the reputation of the Rutgers Business School as well as the Scarlet Knights’ baseball coaching staff that drew him to Rutgers-New Brunswick.

A group of economists and real estate executives debated the U.S. and Global Outlook: Tax Cuts, Trade Wars and Rising Interest Rates during a symposium hosted by Atlantic Environmental Solutions Inc.

Participating speakers included economist Julia Coronado, Executive in Residence at Rutgers Business School, Morris A. Davis, Chair of Real Estate, Rutgers Center for Real Estate; Scott Perkins, NAI James E. Hansen; Jonathan D. Stravitz, SVN l BIOC; and Robert D. Pearson Esq., of the National Realty Club.

“While there is still plenty of bluster and noise on trade policy, two things are becoming increasingly clear: First, the prospect of rounds of tariffs imposed by the United States and counter-tariffs imposed by our trading partners have moved from being a threat to a reality,” said Coronado.

Petra Cephas, a Central Jersey mortgage broker company, is offering a financial need based scholarship towards the Rutgers Business School in New Brunswick and Newark.

The scholarship is aimed towards the B-STAR (Business Student Transition at Rutgers) program, a program designed to support high-performing and high-potential freshmen minority students that accepted admission to the Rutgers Business School. The scholarship will encourage students that demonstrate unmet financial need to apply for it.

Petra Cephas pledged to be a donor for the next five years with Rutgers University and plans to make more contributions towards scholarships with a total gift amount of $15,000.

One of the Trump administration's intentions to add tariffs on autos, auto parts, steel and aluminum is to bring manufacturing back to the United States and revive jobs. However, experts said the idea shows U.S. misconception about world trade.

Farok J. Contractor, a professor in Rutgers Business School's management and global business department, said that while jobs will be preserved for a while against international competition in industries such as steel, winning back those already gone is difficult because global value chains take time to be reshaped.

He pointed out the fact that U.S. workers are losing many jobs because of automation rather than outsourcing. Statistics show that for every U.S. job lost through international outsourcing, three jobs are lost because of automation.

In its debut ranking by the Financial Times, Rutgers Business School's Executive Education earned the No. 11 spot among U.S. open enrollment programs.

"We are truly honored to be recognized in the premier global ranking for executive education," said Peter Methot, executive director of Rutgers Business School's Executive Education. "It amplifies that Rutgers Business School is a leading provider of professional and lifelong learning education for individuals and organizations."

When President Donald Trump last year signed into law the biggest tax overhaul in three decades, many experts concluded it was clear that most of the cuts went to the wealthy. Less clear was that the cuts disproportionately favor whites over minorities — a gulf that will likely worsen a centuries-old economic divide between the races.

Lawmakers should have been mindful of that fact when writing the law, said Jay Soled, director of the Masters of Accountancy in Taxation program at Rutgers Business School.

“The tax act largely and disproportionately helps Caucasians at the possible expense of those who are non-Caucasian,” Soled said. Republicans didn’t have “an agenda [of] ‘how do we hurt the non-Caucasians?’” But Congress “should be proactive in trying to reform the tax code in a way that doesn’t perpetuate or worsen income inequality,” he added.

Multinationals typically run their royalty agreements by the IRS before using them. The Medtronic decision has “very consequential” implications for companies relying on any kind of royalty agreement with the IRS, said Harvey Poniachek, a professor at Rutgers Business School.

Companies will need to thoroughly analyze how they’re valuing their transactions and be wary that past agreements with the IRS may not hold water for future transactions, Poniachek said.

Ranked third by Ivy Exec, the Rutgers Executive MBA Program from Rutgers Business School is ranked #5 in the U.S. Northeast and #15 in the world overall.

The 20-month program is comprised 85% of classroom experience and 15% of experiential learning. The average cohort size is 57. Classes meet every other week for a weekend and there is one week of required residency each term. The program also requires a 10-day immersive business experience in Shanghai and Beijing.

The average student sees a 53% salary increase after earning a Rutgers EMBA. The school offers access to career coaching as well as various workshops, job portals, and certificate programs designed to help you find the next rung in your career.

“It was very hard for him to make the decision,” Joanne Manhart, an executive assistant, told The World-Herald on Monday. “He enjoys doing that very much.”

“We were sad to get the news,” said Rutgers University business professor John Longo, who has brought groups of students three times to the Buffett question-and-answer program and hoped to bring another group in 2019. “I guess it had to end sometime, but I’m sad it’s ending now."

Word of the decision has gotten to the students, Longo said. “There was some disappointment that we couldn’t go back, but I have nothing but fond memories of the experience, and I’m grateful for the trips we took. ... I hope he lives past 100.”

The current bull market for US stocks, which began in March of 2009, will likely become the longest on record since at least the 1920s. The S&P 500 has increased roughly 300 percent since the depths of the Great Recession. Wall Street has an expression, “Bull markets don’t die of old age.” What causes bull markets to die and bear markets to begin? According to research by J.P. Morgan, bull markets typically die due to one or more of the following reasons: A forthcoming recession; extreme valuations; an aggressive central bank; or a commodity price spike.

The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) has named Miklos Vasarhelyi, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, winner of the 2018 AICPA Distinguished Achievement in Accounting Education Award. The annual award honors full-time college accounting educators who are distinguished for excellence in teaching and have achieved national prominence in the accounting profession. This year’s award was announced today at the annual meeting of the American Accounting Association (AAA) in Washington, D.C.

Professor Vasarhelyi founded and serves as Director of the Rutgers Accounting Research Center (RARC) and Continuous Auditing and Research Lab (CAR Lab), where he assigns projects to PhD students to address audit technology issues for companies. He has held the KPMG Distinguished Professor of Accounting Information Systems professorship for more than two decades. Currently, he teaches at Rutgers Business School. A prolific author, he has published more than 20 books and 200 journal articles.

New Jersey is where tech evolves.

That's according to entrepreneur Ritika Singh, Rutgers Business School MBA '17, who says New York may draw a lot of talent, but Garden State-based startups are eager and hungry for growth.

One of the places assisting these startups is Princeton, N.J.-based InnCreTech, where Singh is founder and CEO. The self-funded tech company expanded into an incubator so Singh can help fellow entrepreneurs execute their own technologies and innovations.

The government announced a 20% hike in import duties on about 328 textile goods on Tuesday. Knotted carpets, men’s and boy’s jackets, trousers, ensembles of silk, artificial fibre, garments for babies, women’s lingerie, bathrobes, men’s underwear are bound to experience cost hikes. Minister of State for Finance Pon Radhakrishnan sent a notification in the Lok Sabha.

With trade protectionism customers are left limited choices, infant industries seldom grow and sometimes this leads to inflation too, argues Arthur Guarino, assistant professor in the Finance and Economics Department at Rutgers University Business School.

“As investors start to look at hedge funds in terms of their broader portfolio, they’re using or employing more-customized solutions via managed accounts and nontraditional structures where they’re assessing hedge funds in numerous ways to fulfill their needs and objectives,” RBS alum Joe Gasparro, Rutgers MBA '11, who leads strategic advisory and content for Credit Suisse Capital Services, said by phone.

Last week, 33 small businesses on Chicago’s South and West sides were chosen to receive shares in $5 million worth of grant money from the city’s Neighborhood Opportunity Fund.

The grant money will go toward the development or rehabilitation of real estate and projects for small businesses in disinvested neighborhoods.

Lourdes Duarte of WGN-TV talks to two of the awardees about what they plan to do with the grant money. She also checks in with Lyneir Richardson​, executive director of The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers University. Richardson is an expert on investing in low-income, urban environments and will break down some of the challenges organizations like those face when trying to set up shop.

The United States government levied some massive tariffs against China this summer. And the move obviously wasn’t appreciated by leaders in China. In the end, the $34 billion in tariffs from the United States (on things like vehicles, medical devices, and industrial machinery) were met with $34 billion in tariffs from China (on things like vehicles, food, and beverages).

“When the elephants dance, everybody gets shaken up,” said Lyneir Richardson, executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers Business School. “In this instance, [small businesses are often] dealing with the supply chain asking for higher costs that cannot be quickly passed onto customers. It means more time thinking about pricing, renegotiating, and managing cash flow.”

The CPA profession has been hearing a lot about Robotic Process Automation (RPA), a software technology that can help auditors sift through structured data. But RPA can only do so much. Abigail Zhang, a PhD student in the Department of Accounting and Information Systems at Rutgers Business School, explains why auditors should also consider Intelligent Process Automation (IPA).

While RPA is good for some tasks, IPA expands its functions to make the automation scalable, flexible and intelligent. IPA is the trend of the future in automation, and the major RPA vendors are competing to make their products AI-powered.

Your social calendar might be sucking the joy out of activities that are supposed to be fun or relaxing, according to an upcoming paper co-written by a professor who studies time management. The paper argues that when a leisure activity is planned rather than spontaneous, we enjoy it less.

The paper, to be published in the journal Current Opinion in Psychology in April, is written by Malkoc, an associate professor of marketing at Ohio State University, and Gabriela N. Tonietto, an assistant professor at Rutgers Business School. It notes that there are many things grabbing at our free time.

Clip: Season 2 Episode 17 | 7m 9s
Steve Adubato and Kevin Lyons, Associate Professor, Department of Supply Chain Management at Rutgers Business School, sit down to talk about the “Hire.Buy.Live.Newark” initiative and how it is significantly making an impact on the city and providing Newark residents with jobs.

When the character of Apu was created in 1994, he was the first Indian to show up on American TV. The character was described as a hard-working Indian store owner with solid values, something all Indians should be proud of. I can never accept some Indians, typically of the millennial generation, being so upset with his accent. I am a professor at Rutgers Business School and am pleased to report that some of my best students have accents.

My advice to those Indians upset with Apu's accent is to get over it. We come in all stripes. The chief executives of Microsoft and Google are Indian, as are so many taxi drivers in New York City and professors at top U.S. universities. Matt Groening and Frank Azaria, please do not kill off one of the most delightful characters on your show. Many of us will be devastated with his passing.

Ronnee Ades, the director for the master of quantitative finance program at Rutgers University, and Aniket Goel, Rutgers MBA student, join Bloomberg's Julie Hyman to discuss one of the first MBA classes to focus solely on ETFs and indexing. Goel represents a student team that won a competition to create an index.

A master’s degree in SCM can help you gain an edge in a growing field. Here are the ten schools that, according to Best Colleges, offer the best master’s programs — many of which can be completed part-time and online.

You can start a career in supply chain management (SCM) with a bachelor’s degree, but if you’re looking to climb the ladder and push your career forward, you will want to explore a master’s degree in the field. SCM is becoming an important role in multiple industries, including retail, manufacturing, technology and the federal government.

If you want to expand your expertise and get ahead of the competition, here are the top ten schools where you can get a master’s degree in supply chain management, according to data from Best Colleges.

Karyopharm Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq:KPTI), a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company, today announced the appointment of Ian Karp as Vice President, Investor and Public Relations. In this role, Mr. Karp will lead all of the Company’s corporate communications activities, including corporate visibility, financial communications, and media and investor relations.

Mr. Karp holds a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Emory University and an M.B.A. from Rutgers Business School with a concentration in pharmaceutical management.

The study provides critical data to better inform decision-making for the public and private sectors alike.

Municipalities may need to increase their expectations of how new multifamily construction will affect their schools, and probably should stop using a “one size fits all” model in determining the impact of multifamily construction on local school capacity, according to research released by The Center for Real Estate at Rutgers Business School.

(requires free registration)

HCMC - HCMC Open University and the Business and Economics Research Group are jointly organizing a Vietnam Business and Economics Research Conference (VBER2018) in HCMC from July 22 to 24.

With the theme “Financial Development & Inequality in Emerging Markets: The Facts and The Future,” the conference takes place in two venues, including Renaissance Riverside Hotel Saigon and HCMC Open University, both in District 1.

VBER2018 is a conference for academics, policymakers, practitioners and postgraduate students. This year, the conference is attended by keynote speakers, including Professor Ken Clements from the University of Western Australia and Professor Cheng-Few Lee from Rutgers University, U.S.

The Rutgers University Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUUED) has launched the Council for Urban Entrepreneurs (CUE) with the intent to provide guidance, inspiration, and educational opportunities for aspiring business owners who wish to build their organizations in urban locales.

Lyneir Richardson is the executive director of CUEED. “Our goal is to bring together successful business owners so we can study them and write case studies about how they impact economic development, create jobs and create wealth in communities,” he told TNJ.com.

Modern b-schools strive to be inclusive and accepting institutions. Today, admissions officers seek more than just high GPAs and test scores. They seek diversity.

Lyneir Richardson, executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey, says another area to mention diversity issues is in the admissions interview.

“Therefore, you should express that you have a viewpoint and perspective that – if admitted – you will share with your classmates (and that you’re open to learning from others),” Richardson tells US News. “Make it clear, because of some element of your background, that you are confident and will be able to understand, survive and adjust to the environment and pace of the school.”

A Rutgers University marketing student and a recent graduate of Ocean County College who is continuing nursing classes at Stockton University will be the 2018 recipients of the New Jersey Business & Industry Association’s Rising Star Award.

Amanda Maher, an undergraduate at Rutgers Business School in New Brunswick, is a marketing major who aspires to work in the cosmetics industry after she graduates in 2019. Maher took an important step toward her career goal by gaining hands-on experience working as a marketing operations intern at L’Oréal this summer. Maher has distinguished herself as a leader at Rutgers, where she is co-founder and vice president of Rutgers Care; community service director of Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society; and marketing director of Women BUILD. As an employee of Rutgers Student Affairs, she has grown engagement on the Rutgers Student Food Pantry social media accounts by 311 percent and continues to spread awareness through food drives with nonprofit Foodstock NJ.

White paper finds number of children living in new rental buildings closely tied to renter household incomes, density, demographic shifts.

The number of school-age children in multifamily housing units increases with the number of bedrooms, regardless of the residents’ income level and building product type. And, if income and bedrooms are fixed, it can be shown that denser properties will have fewer school-aged children.

Those are just two of the conclusions drawn from a white paper released Thursday by the Center for Real Estate at Rutgers Business School, the institute’s effort to answer one of the most pressing questions in the industry.

The study was completed by an academic and industry team led by Morris Davis, the Paul V. Profeta Chair of Real Estate and academic director of the Rutgers Center for Real Estate.

ArtUp, an award-winning Memphis-based arts innovator in conjunction with Rutgers University-Newark Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUEED), announces the new Memphis Business Hub for Creatives Program to further empower creatives to achieve business success. The Memphis Business Hub for Creatives Program leverages a leading program of the Rutgers-Newark CUEED for artists and creatives with business education tools and entrepreneurial mentorship. This combination is producing options for longer-term business sustainability for artists, creatives and their communities.

Lyneir Richardson, Rutgers-Newark CUEED Executive Director expressed, “Our intention in collaborating with ArtUp is to elevate creative people who operate in media, art and entertainment industries in Memphis. We aim to help creatives, (especially people of color) to become stronger entrepreneurs and property owners.”

Rutgers University-Newark's Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Jerome Williams has received an exclusive award for his wide range of work and achievements. The American Academy of Advertising (AAA) presented Williams with The Kim Rotzoll Award for Advertising Ethics and Social Responsibility. The award recognizes individuals or organizations who have demonstrated lifetime achievement and an outstanding commitment to advertising ethics and social responsibility.

“To be recognized for promoting the positive aspects of advertising, in the context of ethics and social responsibility, is particularly gratifying” Williams said.

Feeling time-pressed has become ubiquitous. Time management strategies have emerged to help individuals fit in more of their desired and necessary activities. We provide a review of these strategies. In doing so, we distinguish between two, often competing, motives people have in managing their time: activity maximization and outcome maximization.

Lyneir Richardson, executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey, says that the admissions interview is an ideal time for MBA applicants to discuss diversity issues.

Richardson says that the interview helps MBA admissions officers decide whether an applicant is a good fit for their program.

"Therefore, you should express that you have a viewpoint and perspective that – if admitted – you will share with your classmates (and that you’re open to learning from others)," Richardson wrote in an email.

John C. Coates is the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School; Darius Palia is Professor of Finance at Rutgers University; and Ge Wu is a Ph.D. candidate in finance at Rutgers Business School. This post is based on their recent paper.

A large financial economics literature has found that shareholders earn significant abnormal returns over the market on announcement of a merger and acquisition transaction. These studies have found that target shareholders earn positive abnormal returns of between 20 percent and 35 percent, whereas bidder shareholders earn zero to small negative abnormal returns.

We examine the impact of merger clauses on the abnormal returns earned by target and bidder firms, respectively.

A major investment decision requires some amount of due diligence to figure out the risks as well as the returns involved, so that you have an idea of what’s in store for you and you have no unpleasant surprises later.

Financial Times (FT) releases its annual global MBA rankings for colleges/universities. Various parameters are also analyzed and colleges ranked accordingly. Value for money which is indicative of a program ROI is one such parameter. This value is calculated by dividing the post-MBA alumni salary three years after graduating by the total cost of the program. This cost would take into account the MBA tuition, and related expenses as well as the opportunity cost (forgone income during the duration of the program) minus the scholarship or any financial aid obtained.

MBA programs in USA with the best ROI

1. University of Florida: Hough
2. University of Connecticut School of Business
3. Brigham Young University: Marriott
4. University of Texas at Dallas: Jindal
5. Wisconsin School of Business
6. Georgia Institute of Technology: Scheller
7. Ohio State University: Fisher
8. Pennsylvania State University: Smeal
9. Michigan State University: Broad
10. Purdue University: Krannert
11. Arizona State University: Carey
12. University of Pittsburgh: Katz
13. Rutgers Business School
14. Rice University: Jones
15. Emory University: Goizueta

Leading thinkers and agitators in migration, diversity and integration will debate the latest research, challenges and successes from across the globe, when international and national academics, practitioners and community representatives converge in Sydney this October.

They will be joined by award-winning author and Distinguished Professor of Management and Global Business at Rutgers Business School, USA Dr. Nancy DiTomaso, who will address how business and migration in the 21st Century intersect.

For years now, attorney and Black Parents Workshop head Walter Fields has been litigating against academic levels in the South Orange-Maplewood School District with the U.S. Department of Education, and more recently in federal court, on the basis that higher level honors and AP classes have fewer black students in them.

Given binding Supreme Court precedent, though, including the Parents Involved v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County cases in 2007, which struck down two race-based school integration plans as unconstitutional, there is no good legal basis for the assertion in the Fields litigation that academic levels in South Orange and Maplewood violate the law.

Wayne Eastman holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and is a professor at Rutgers Business School where he teaches business law and business ethics.

Balance transfer credit cards have a lot of moving parts, including a balance transfer APR, balance transfer fee, annual fee and, potentially, introductory rates and fees. Plus, offers change regularly.

What’s the best way to find the best balance transfer credit card?

Dr. John Longo is a Professor of Professional Practice in the Finance & Economics Department at Rutgers Business School.

"Many websites compare balance transfer credit cards. When looking for a card, a person should keep in mind their objective in doing the balance transfer. Hopefully, that objective is to pay off their debt faster. In that case, one should select the credit card that gives an introductory rate period that allows the balance to be paid off. If the balance, including new purchases and their interest, cannot be paid off in that time, one should not do the transfer."

The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY) today announced that Damien Atkins has been named Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, effective August 13. In his new role, Atkins will lead Hershey's legal, government relations, and corporate secretary functions.

Atkins brings 20 years of legal experience to his new role at Hershey. Most recently, he was General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for Panasonic Corporation of North America.

Atkins serves on the Board of Directors for the Minority Corporate Counsel Association; Habitat for Humanity, Newark; Rutgers Law School Center for Corporate Law and Governance; and is Vice-Chair for the Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers Business School.

Everyone's so busy these days that it is easy to think you need to schedule time to have fun.

But be careful about how you do that, said Selin Malkoc, a time management expert at The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.

In an invited article in the journal Current Opinion in Psychology, she and Gabriela Tonietto of Rutgers Business School evaluated recent research that shows how people can find time for leisure and still keep it fun.

They recommended three keys:
Schedule more roughly.
Avoid hard stops.
Focus on the now.

THE DATA IS IN: Thirty percent of incoming freshmen at U.S. higher education institutions are the first in their families to attend college, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Unfortunately, the first-year dropout rate for these students is four times that of their next-generation peers. Only 11 percent will complete their bachelor’s degrees in six years or less.

Two schools—Boston University’s Questrom School of Business in Massachusetts and Rutgers Business School in Newark and New Brunswick, New Jersey—recently adopted new approaches for serving first-gen populations. Although their initiatives have been in place for only a short time, the schools already are seeing positive results in the form of higher rates of enrollment, retention, and on-time degree completion.

At Rutgers Business School (RBS) at Rutgers University in New Jersey, the key to supporting first-generation students is a suite of programs called RBS-PLUS (Pathways Leading to Undergraduate Success), launched in 2013. Delivered through the business school’s office of diversity, RBS-PLUS doesn’t just support its current first-generation and low-income undergraduates. It also reaches out to high school students to offer guidance just as they’re beginning their college preparation.

"It’s a “power-packed program,” says Charles Brown, assistant dean for diversity programs.

Going forward, from an estate planning perspective, the vast majority of New Jersey residents will encounter a world void of estate tax exposure. The recently passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was signed into law at the end of 2017, raises the amount every taxpayer can gift or bequeath tax-free to $11, 180, 000 and, furthermore, in 2016 the New Jersey Legislature eliminated the state's estate tax, effective in 2018. The combination of these federal and state legislative initiatives fundamentally changes how state residents will orchestrate their testamentary affairs.

Amid the turmoil caused by a recent spate of tariffs, there has been a great deal of news, analysis, and speculation surrounding financial markets and large industries. It might have left small businesses wondering what are these tariffs and what do they mean for my business?

"When the elephants dance, everybody gets shaken up," said Lyneir Richardson, executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers Business School. "In this instance, [small businesses are often] dealing with the supply chain asking for higher costs that cannot be quickly passed onto customers. It means more time thinking about pricing, renegotiating and managing cash flow."