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don_ginocchio
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A confluence of upcoming events and planned curriculum engagements provided us the opportunity to connect with students in six different classrooms at the University of Notre Dame this week as described below. 

On Monday morning we visited a sophomore business class  entitled “Principles of Management”.  Leah Gallagher and I discussed SAP strategy, the importance of the IT Management major, and career opportunities with SAP.  We invited students to visit with us at the upcoming campus career fair to discuss SAP internships in particular.  The class description in the Notre Dame course catalog is as follows:

  • A study of the management process, including planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. Emphasis is placed on executive leadership, organizational behavior, and management theory.

On Monday afternoon I taught two segments of the “Innovation and Design” course in the Mendoza College of Business.  The professor asked me to share the Extreme By Design documentary film (which was sponsored by SAP) and discuss the importance of Design Thinking in SAP.  The class description in the Notre Dame course catalog is as follows:

  • Innovation is about creating new ideas that have apositive impact. It requires thinking differently about the world around us.  We'll discuss the key principles and the innovation processes that lead to breakthroughs and the practices that make them work. We'll learn about design and design thinking in ways that can be used to solve big problems in a human centered way.

On Tuesday I taught a lecture to the class entitled “Social Media: Strategy and Analytics”.  To illustrate some social media stories and inspire the students on current class projects, we showed The Human Face of Big Data documentary and used a portion of the associated study guide to discuss the film.  The class description in the Notre Dame course catalog is as follows:

  • With over 1.5 billion people active on at least one social network, consumer preferences are increasingly conspicuous, yet questions remain with respect to how businesses can leverage social media in a
    meaningful way. How should firms segment their markets and what channels are the most appropriate for engaging each segment in order to achieve measurable results? In this course, you will learn by doing. Student teams will serve as consultants on social media projects to monitor, engage, measure, and create agile yet sustainable social media strategies.

Yesterday I was the main presenter in the Mendoza College of Business Strategic IT class.  SAP Palo Alto has helped me to shape a “Future of Wearables” class project for these students that starts now and will complete in March.  I provided an overview of SAP Augmented Reality solutions and the Wearables marketplace.  Students are to choose a specific wearable and an industry (or a specific firm) and identify places within the entire supply/value chain of the firm where a specific wearable could yield benefits.  The class description in the Notre Dame course catalog is as follows:

  • While Amazon and Dell used the internet to create new retailing business models, that same technology was instrumental in destroying the business models of the telephone and music industries. What caused the
    difference? We'll examine how to use IT for competitive advantage in a digital economy. We'll explore how IT improves problem solving, productivity, quality, customer service, and process reengineering. We'll also examine how to apply current technologies in innovative ways to impact an organization's bottom line.


Our final visit today was with Computer Science Engineering students in the “Operating Systems” course.  We provided a short overview of the upcoming Hack Indiana Series: Indiana vs. Texas Challenge starting January 31st and the associated SAP CodeJams here at Notre Dame on February 6th and 7th.  We invited students to participate in both activities.  The class description in the Notre Dame course catalog is as follows:

  • Introduction to all aspects of modern operating systems. Topics include process structure and synchronization, interprocess communication, memory management, file systems, security, I/O, and distributed files systems.