Providence College

By Vicki-Ann Downing

A summer of paid research, a full-tuition scholarship for senior year, and the chance to develop a program to encourage young women in the sciences — those are the opportunities enjoyed by Emma Burgess ’18 and Bianca Saliba ’18, the first Clare Boothe Luce scholars at Providence College.

The Luce program is made possible by a $288,538, four-year award PC received from the Henry Luce Foundation to encourage women in the study of science, engineering, and mathematics. Burgess and Saliba were selected based on their academic standing, commitment to the sciences, and interest in pursuing an advanced degree or career in their fields of study.

They each received a $4,000 stipend to spend the summer on campus in research with faculty. Burgess, from Huntsville, Ala., an applied physics major and mathematics minor, works in the lab of Dr. Seth T. Ashman, assistant professor of physics, on computational and experimental projects. Saliba, from Johnston, R.I., is a chemistry major working with beta-Carbolines in the lab of Dr. Seann P. Mulcahy, associate professor of chemistry.

Burgess and Saliba, who are students in the Liberal Arts Honors Program, are among about 70 science students doing research on campus this summer. As part of the Luce grant, they will continue the research for academic credit during the 2017-18 school year and will undertake a service project to encourage young women to study science.

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Marie-Florence Koikou ’16 of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, who majored in finance at Providence College, has been selected as one of Africa’s most promising young female leaders by the Moremi Initiative for Women’s Leadership in Africa.

Koikou was one of 28 women selected as a 2017 Moremi Initiative Leadership and Empowerment Development Fellow after a competitive process that drew more than 2,500 applicants from 45 African nations. Selection was based on leadership promise, community service, and commitment to the advancement of women in Africa.

Koikou will spend three weeks at an intensive training program hosted by the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Legon. She will learn about leadership in the broad African context, cultivate skills to occupy and excel in leadership positions, and explore issues critical to African women and their communities.

The fellowship is for a year. It will include networking, media coverage, career planning, management, and access to opportunities and resources. Each fellow will initiate and lead a community change project on an issue of importance to her community or to African women.

Koikou applied for the fellowship because she noticed that few women from French-speaking countries in West Africa were represented each year.

“I hope to pave the way for more young African women, especially from Francophone Africa, to realize their potential for leadership and impact in their respective communities,” said Koikou. “I would like to use this fellowship to get more tools and resources, and to learn good practices from the other inspiring participants to make my organization more impactful.”

After graduating from PC, Koikou returned home to Abidjan to work for one year with GE Africa. She then applied for the prestigious GE Financial Management Program, which accepts only a few people from Africa each year. The process included a written examination and interviews in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Koikou was one of three people accepted for the program. Employees work in six-month rotations in four different countries over the course of two years. In August, she will move to Johannesburg to begin the first rotation.

Since graduation, Koikou has continued to work on her social ventures, including Ahiman Women (Women of Tomorrow), an empowerment and mentorship program she started for young girls.

“I organized boot camps and shadowing days to give them more resources and visibility to develop their potential,” Koikou said.

She also became deputy secretary of the alumni board of her all-female high school, Lycee Ste. Marie. While attending school there, Koikou was accepted to the African Leadership Academy, a high school in Johannesburg for the top students from 54 African nations. She spent two years learning about entrepreneurship, leadership, and service, 3,000 miles from home.

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Once each academic semester, Dr. Sonia Gantman, assistant professor of accountancy, provides her accountancy students a valuable, real-world business experience through a hands-on term project. In her course, Accounting Information Systems, a required class for accountancy majors, students work in small teams with organizations on and off campus to study and analyze their business processes and help them to improve their methods.

“The goal of the project is to give the students an opportunity to work with real-world organizations and compare what they learned in class with what happens outside of class,” said Gantman, who said 30 to 40 students enroll in her class each semester.

She continued, “Finding a client organization on their own, interviewing people about their jobs, dealing with logistics contingencies, and handling interdependencies within the team are all invaluable experiences gained from the project that help students get a better grasp of the profession and prepare them to the job market.”

During the Fall 2016 semester, each student group studied the buying and other processes within one of four businesses: Peter Pan Bus Lines, the New England Patriots’ ProShop, PC’s Phillips Memorial Library, and the College’s Raymond Dining Hall. In studying the processes, the students aimed to identify problems with their client’s current methods and help them to become more efficient in their buying.

Therese Nessralla ’18 (Raynham, Mass.) explained that while working on the Raymond Dining Hall project, her group learned how the cafeteria operates its purchasing and inventory management by interviewing the unit controller, John LaBreche of Sodexho, the College’s food services provider.

In order to create a flow chart of purchasing activity, her group asked detailed questions concerning the recording process, the cafeterias vendors, and any delays that might impede purchasing.

Nessralla explained how learning about business methods, such as purchasing, in the context of a real business was not what she expected in her class.

“It is surprising to see why a process is done a certain way, whether it is for cost-efficiency, timeliness, and/or accuracy,” said Nessralla. “I also find it interesting to see how many risks we face in order to do business. The most challenging part is being extremely thorough and trying to detect risks that we normally do not think about.”

While working with the New England Patriots’ ProShop, Kathleen Cronin ’18 (York, Maine) explained that her team worked with a different type of inventory process called “complimentary item process.” Through this process, team members analyzed how the ProShop updated its inventory when items were given to visitors of the stadium as complimentary gifts.

From left, the team of Kellie Roach ’17, Lauryn Picknelly ’18, Brenna Williams ’18, and Jake Beaton ’18 studied processes at the Peter Pan bus company as part of the Accountancy Information Systems course.

Cronin discussed how working with the ProShop built off her classroom lessons and put them into the context of the business world.

“Throughout the interview, my group and I could envision ourselves taking on the inventory process and creating a detailed flowchart that would represent it,” said Cronin. “In the classroom we were able to see how the flowcharts and context diagrams worked, but by working with a business we were challenged to take what we knew and create our own narrative, context diagram, and flowchart.”

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As a former 16-year Major League Baseball (MLB) infielder and now a coordinator with the Cleveland Indians organization, John McDonald ’10SCE knows a thing or two about sustaining a successful professional career. 

McDonald recently shared his hard-won wisdom with nearly 100 Providence College student-athletes who attended Student-Athlete Career Night in Slavin Center ’64 Hall.

Held every two years, Student-Athlete Career Night gives student-athletes from the junior and senior classes a chance to network with and gain valuable advice from more than 40 professionals and life coaches from various career fields. Professions represented included sports administration, marketing, education, finance, insurance, information technology, medicine, sales, and law. Twenty-eight of this year’s career night participants were alumni.

Coordinated by the Department of Athletics, the Center for Career Education and Professional Development, and the Office of Academic Services, Student-Athlete Career Night was made possible through the support of athletics benefactors Yvette Boisclair ’84 and Mark Mandell, who have sponsored the event since its inception in 2008. Boisclair and Mandell are attorneys with Mandell Schwartz & Boisclair, Ltd, in Providence.

The evening commenced with Robert G. Driscoll, Jr., associate vice president for athletics and athletics director, welcoming the student-athletes and guests and conveying how the consistent support of Boisclair and Mandell has paved the way for countless student-athletes to begin their career journeys.

“Friar student-athletes spend four years playing a sport that they love. When they graduate, we want them to find a career that they are equally passionate about. Ultimately, it’s about pursuing a life of meaning, and that has always been the ethos of Providence College,” said Driscoll.

Mandell told the student-athletes that this was their night to build their futures.

“Our goal is to make sure every student-athlete who comes to PC lands a job. This night is about the fellowship and establishing relationships that could make a difference,” he said.

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