Search

ARCHIVES
CONTACT US
WORLD NEWS

Business moguls welcome students back to school

Arizona Summer Wildcat KRISTY MANGOS/Arizona Daily Wildcat MIS graduate student Benjamin Steers, scoops ice cream for fellow students and faculty yesterday outside of McClelland Hall. The ice cream social was sponsored to welcome incoming freshmen to the UA Eller College of Business and Public Administration.

Blue and red balloons surrounded UA students scooping Wildcat Crunch and Beardown Blitz ice cream under the Tucson sun and the beats of a steel-drum band filled the air, welcoming them back to another year of school.

Arizona-based Shamrock Farms and Eller Media Company sponsored an ice cream social yesterday at noon to welcome incoming freshman to the University of Arizona Eller College of Business and Public Administration.

"It is to acknowledge their importance to the school," said Shamrock Farms CEO Norman McClelland. "They're our future."

McClelland and Eller Media CEO Karl Eller, joined business school faculty members as they served students ice cream outside of the McClelland Building.

McClelland, who graduated from the UA with a business degree in 1949, said the event was a good opportunity to spread their wares to new customers.

"It's nice to have professors serve us," said Mark Tease, a third year financial management doctoral candidate. "It's good advertisement for Shamrock Farms."

This is the first year the companies have held a welcoming ice cream social. Eller and McClelland said they will probably host an event again next year.

In June, the Arizona Board of Regents officially changed the name of the college of business to Eller College of Business and Public Administration.

Eller pledged to donate $23 million to the business school through the years, and said yesterday he has already turned over most of the funding.

Eller said he thinks that the school is now better equipped and provides more of a real world education than it did when he graduated with a business degree from the UA in 1952.

Both McClelland and Eller said they were proud of the accomplishments of the UA and hoped to attract better students and better faculty. This could help the university increase its national ranking, Eller said.