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Photo of Kristin Morvik holding big picture frame with text "In My Rebel Era"

Breaking the Mold

Breaking the Mold

MBA graduate Kristin Morvik is using her business education to educate the world.  

Formerly a brand manager for corporate entities like Kroger and the Cincinnati Bengals, Morvik made a career transition to become a business education teacher at Boone County High School in Kentucky. Public education proved to be her true calling, yielding big results for Boone County students. Morvik – who is also involved as a dance coach and Future Business Leaders of America coach – recently won her district’s Break the Mold Award, which is given to teachers who go above and beyond in connecting with the school community. 

“I hope I can encourage my students to go into business,” said Morvik, “And that they’ll maybe be change agents for better ways of learning business.” 

Learn more about Morvik and her accomplishment. 

Fans Arrive Like Butterflies

Large, one-off events such as music concerts can create economic impacts not seen from professional sports, suggests rockin’ research by Joshua Hall, chair and professor of economics. Hall and Justin Parker, a 2020 Ph.D. economics graduate, found that Pearl Jam’s Seattle “Home Shows” in August 2018 generated $58 million in additional hotel revenue and $9 million in hotel tax revenue. That dwarfs Seattle Mariners baseball games ($140,000 in additional hotel revenue on game days). Their research was published in the Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights.

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Immersed in Indonesian

Jana El-Khatib, a Master of Business Administration student from Hurricane, West Virginia, was one of four WVU students to earn the Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State. Over the summer of 2021, El-Khatib got to study Indonesian, a language she became interested in after spending time living in Southeast Asia as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant. She hopes to use the skills gained from the scholarship to improve her cultural competency for a future career as a healthcare provider. 

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Anomaly Detector

While COVID-19 has forced us to pivot the way we work and play, the Robbins Center for Global Business and Strategy is no exception. In fact, two virtual activities alone in October saw more than 250 students involved in international lecture, case analyses and culture sessions in Hong Kong and Bahrain. “Framed in this way, that's very promising international reach between WVU and these two international partners,” said David Dawley, executive director of the Robbins Center. 

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A Big Four Dream

Lana Latif has already met her goal of securing a job with a Big Four accounting firm -- and she’s still in grad school. Latif will earn her master’s in accountancy in 2021 before heading to Pittsburgh to be an assurance associate at Ernst & Young. According to her mentor, Gary LeDonne, this is a great success story for Latif who came to WVU after living with her family in Palestine. 

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Front of the House

Frank DeMarco, teaching associate professor of hospitality and tourism, recently received the Excellence in Tourism Education Award from the West Virginia Hospitality & Travel Association. 

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