Business dept. names Ola chair for a second time
As the famous Aerosmith song says, “back in the saddle again,” so too is Assistant Professor of Business Administration Christian Ola. He has been named the Chair of the Business Department at Waynesburg University for the second time in his tenure.
The previous term as chair was for a brief period in the Fall 2015 semester before Dana Cook Baer took over as the interim chair. She also took over as the interim provost in the beginning of the Spring 2016 semester.
With Ola heading back into the top position of the business department, there is excitement from the other professors in the department.
“With Dr. Ola coming back it gives us that presence again where all the students know the chair-know who he is-they’ve met him and had him for class,” said Assistant Professor of Business Administration Joshua Chicarelli. “It’s good to have the stability that he can bring to the job.”
Ola is excited to accept the job again.
“I’m very excited to be back,” said Ola. “It hurt in September when I had to step down, because I felt selfish. I work with wonderful people, so of course I am excited to be back, and I hope that the department is as well.”
Students are also excited to have him in charge because they can now expect consistency in their education.
“With Dr. Ola, his main priority is students’ success,” said sophomore finance major R.J. Leon. “In my almost two years here, this has been the consistent message that he has left me and many other students with.”
The business department as a whole, however, is constantly changing to the market and its needs, said Chicarelli. The adjustment to which he referred is the changing of the class curriculum and how they can better prepare students for when they graduate and get jobs. This will affect new students coming in who have not yet taken the classes in question.
“Things are going to evolve and grow,” said Chicarelli. “As the market changes, we will adjust with it.”
The new students coming in will see a business department that has changed to the market and the needs of the market, but what they see their freshmen year will remain consistent.Ola also mentioned the proposal of an applied business major that will have five or six different tracks.
According to Ola, this will help students who want to stay in the business department and give them a different choice of how they wish to pursue a career in business.
With the addition of the major and the new tracks comes the rigor that Ola plans to bring to the department.
“We are beginning to see it already,” said Ola. “We as a department are going to increase the rigor in all of our classes, and plan to also introduce more technological aspects.”
The plan with these technologies is for the addition of simulations on the computers for classes that have not had them before, such as one for human resources, finance and marketing.
“Our goal is to continually try and make the department better,” said Ola. “Sometimes you swing and miss and sometimes you hit a home run, but those are the types of things that we want the students to see with our efforts.”