What a great month it’s been at the College of Business Administration. We celebrated the official excavation for our new College of Business Administration building, held our Advisory Board Annual Awards Luncheon honoring outstanding business leaders, and recognized a renowned faculty member who has been a part of CBA for 48 years.

Mayor Chris Beutler, Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst and many business partners  joined us to recognize outstanding business leaders who have given so much to Nebraska and CBA on April 10. We presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to Richard Callahan, founder of Callahan Advisory, LLC, of Denver, Colorado. Callahan also met with CBA students for an entire day to tell his story and provide inspiration for our next generation of leaders. Wendy Birdsall, president of the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce, received our award for Business Excellence. Birdsall’s leadership has been critical to the recent success of Lincoln, which has been recognized with a variety of “best of” awards nationwide. The Corporate Leadership Award went to BKD, LLP, who is one of the largest accounting and advisory firms in the country. BKD continues to be an elite placement for our graduates. In the fall, we will present two more awards to Tonn Ostergard, president and CEO of Crete Carrier Corporation, for Business Leadership, and Angie Klein, vice president of Northeast Marketing and Sales for Verizon, who will receive our Young Alumni Award.

Many of our advisory boards were busy meeting on Friday and provided critical feedback to our college leaders. We now have 13 advisory boards whose participation has been crucial to the positive trajectory of our college.

In a celebration of a 48-year career at UNL, we were also proud to recognize the retirement of Dr. Fred Luthans. He presented a talk “The Anatomy of a Career” which was followed by a reception for special guests, business partners, faculty and staff on April 22. Luthans’ accomplishments are numerous. You can read about them in his personal story included in this month’s INSIDE CBA.

Our new building is underway with Hausmann Construction as the contractor. A fence now surrounds the entire site and the actual excavation began on April 9. They even let me climb up on the excavator to see the site from up there. We can’t wait for the building to be completed, but in the meantime you can follow the construction by viewing a live stream dedicated to showing the construction available on our website.

Chancellor Harvey Perlman praised the CBA faculty for “creating a program that has secured the confidence of the alumni” who are funding this building. Nothing could make me prouder than to know the efforts of our own people at CBA have inspired the confidence in our alumni to contribute to the building project. I know it will reap dividends for both Nebraska and many generations of business students to come.

Thanks for your support and to learn more about our building project go to http://cba.unl.edu/building. Published: April 21, 2015