1780 – The Official Blog of Transylvania University

1780 | The Official Blog of Transylvania University

Admissions Insider

Anthropology student offers different perspective to business world

Posted on by Robin Hicks

Growing up in Cincinnati, Transylvania University senior Abby Cullen couldn’t quite put her thumb on what she wanted to do with her life. “That unsettled me,” she admits. But she hoped to work for the consumer. “I knew that, as a business person, I wanted to ensure that the customer was being respected and represented, and that their voice was always something in the back of our minds,” she explains. At the same time, she wanted the business to be successful. She just wasn’t sure how to “encapsulate it.” Although anthropology might not be seen as a traditional major for someone interested in business, Cullen says the discipline has helped her develop “very pertinent skillsets that apply to business fields.” She has made connections between the broad, structural theories she’s learned in the classroom and how to think about them in the context of the relationship between business and consumer. “I don’t think I had an a-ha moment as I was signing up for classes,” Cullen says, reflecting on how pursuing her interest in anthropology made her a better business job candidate. “It was more just being in class and seeing how these things actually connect pretty well. Not in the classical sense of being in a business class and talking about HR and diversity, but thinking about a cost analysis and how it is going to affect our consumer long-term, and how is it going to affect our quality.”

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How Transy prepared tech entrepreneur Mike Finley for “what might come”

Posted on by Robin Hicks

Mike Finley ’90 doesn’t wait for the next big thing to happen. He’s too busy anticipating, inventing, marketing and selling it. Have you used an automated gas pump lately? That’s Finley. Wish you had sunglasses that offered polarized peripheral vision? His patent. These are two of what he calls the “less esoteric” of his 14 patents. These days, his primary focus is on artificial intelligence—the biggest technological shift he’s witnessed in his 30-year career. He operates with the knowledge that “in a commercially interesting timeframe, companies will be hiring software as if it were a knowledge worker.” Finley, who balances invention and viable enterprise in the full scale of his work, is able to recognize the need and opportunity, develop the tools to meet it, communicate and market the results and embrace the changes in what’s to come. He creates the vision and has the tools to carry it out. A scientist, innovator of technology, co-founder of companies, author and a volunteer who is committed to education, Finley easily traces the multiple facets of his success to Transylvania: learning to think, innovate, write and communicate, and having the freedom to follow his interests by taking a wide array of classes. The world of technology has changed profoundly since Finley graduated from Transylvania in 1990, yet, three decades later, he continues to thrive, ever on the cutting edge, finding his own tailwind, as he describes it, the difference between leading with

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Transylvania senior offers advice to females considering STEM degrees

Posted on by John Friedlein

Transylvania senior Sydney Ellen Gooding, a biology major and chemistry minor, encourages other females to pursue degrees in the traditionally male-dominated subjects of science, technology, engineering and math. She said self-confidence will help them succeed in STEM fields. “You really just have to be assertive and be comfortable and confident in your own self—or you’re going to get passed by,” she said. “Believe in your own ideas as much as your male lab mates would believe in their own.” During an internship at a large research university, she worked with a lot of men in a lab and felt she had to come out and say what she wanted—not just expect to be handed something. At Transylvania labs, however, she feels like males and females are treated equally. “I’ve never felt like more opportunities were given to the male students.” Gooding’s opportunities to excel extend beyond the laboratory. She and about a dozen other Transy students this week showcased their research at the American Chemical Society meeting in Orlando, Florida. Her organic chemistry poster featured research she conducted with Professor of Chemistry Bob Rosenberg on carbon and hydrogen bonding in the presence of fluorines. The meeting included a variety of talks and demonstrations—and it was a chance to meet thousands of chemistry students from across the country—from undergraduates to postdocs. “It was neat to be in that type of environment,” she said.