News

Spring is usually the busiest time of year for our School, and Spring 2017 was no exception.  Among other highlights, fifteen of our students traveled to Silicon Valley, California during Spring Break to learn about human resources in the high tech sector.  The trip was part of a course on that subject taught by Professor Sumita Raghuram.  Visiting company headquarters and meeting with HR professionals from Facebook, Survey Monkey, Uber, Cisco, Yelp, and Google provided students with a great opportunity to get first-hand knowledge of HR practices in this exciting industry. Jessica Steele, our School’s Career Advisor, helped lead the trip and took every chance to tell the companies visited about the great students we are turning out.  

Spring also saw our School’s students traveling abroad.  For the first time, we offered our World Campus Masters students a chance to take a study tour.  Sixteen online students traveled to Ireland to learn more about international human resources and employment relations.  And a second group of University Park students spent several days in Sweden learning about the country’s approach to HR.  More on both trips below.

Our Annual Philip Murray Memorial Labor Lecture is always one of the highlights of the spring semester.  This year’s lecture was presented by Mary Kay Henry, President of the Service Employees International Union, the second largest union in the country.  She gave a great talk and also met with LER students interested in the labor movement.

Spring also means commencement.  As has become our tradition, we participated in two receptions for graduates of our program during commencement weekend.  On Friday night, a large number of our World Campus students attended a reception in their honor at the Bryce Jordan Center.  These students came from all over the country to attend graduation, and for many, this was their first visit to campus.  On Saturday, we held our Annual Commencement Reception on the lawn in front of Pattee Library for students from both University Park and the World Campus. The reception presents a chance for faculty and staff to meet the families and friends of our graduates and, in turn, grads take the opportunity to introduce loved ones to the faculty and staff who helped them along the way.  This year we had record crowds at both receptions.

Our faculty and staff always look forward to the summer based on the mistaken belief that the hectic pace at our School will slow down.  But we seem to be as busy as any other time of year.  Since commencement we have hosted a Global Conference on International HR Management in New York City, conducted a four-day seminar for regional union leaders as part of the Mid-Atlantic Labor Leadership Institute, and had 54 of our online MPS students visit campus for our annual One-Week Intensive Summer Class program.  This in addition to offering 49 online classes throughout the summer.    

One constant for our faculty and staff is how quickly the summer flies by.  Fall classes start August 21, so it will not be long until the students are back on campus and a full schedule of classes for our University Park and World Campus students gets underway.  As is always the case at LER, we have a lot planned for our students when they do return.  We are looking forward to a great 2017-2018!