{"id":6959,"date":"2010-03-17T10:33:37","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T14:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/?p=6959"},"modified":"2014-11-14T16:00:08","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T21:00:08","slug":"first-graduation-takes-place-for-professional-mba-panama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/2010\/03\/first-graduation-takes-place-for-professional-mba-panama\/","title":{"rendered":"First graduation takes place for Professional MBA-Panama."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On February 26, 2010, the 28 students in the inaugural <a href=\"http:\/\/business.fiu.edu\/chapman\/pmba_panama.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">Professional MBA in Panama<\/a> (PMBA-Panama) graduated from the twenty-month, weekend MBA program designed for busy working professionals. Quality Leadership University (QLU) in Panama City offers the program, primarily taught by professors from the College of Business Administration at Florida International University (FIU).<\/p>\n<p>Oscar Leon, QLU president, welcomed the graduates; <strong>Christos Koulamas<\/strong>, associate dean of the business school, handed out the \u201cFaculty of the Year\u201d award to <strong>Ron Gilbert<\/strong> and \u201cBest Course\u201d award for <strong>Competitive Strategy<\/strong>, taught by <strong>Manuel <\/strong><strong>Lasaga<\/strong>. <strong>Craig Morrissey<\/strong>, vice president, American Hospital Management Company, won both the \u201cLeadership Award of Excellence,\u201d voted by his classmates, and the \u201cAcademic Award of Excellence,\u201d from the faculty.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_6969\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6969\" style=\"width: 550px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/group-shot.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6969\" title=\"group-shot\" src=\"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/group-shot.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"349\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-6969\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Twenty-six of the 28 students graduating in the first-ever Professional MBA-Panama group attended the February commencement ceremony.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThough the classes and professors were great, I definitely enjoyed the other students and the multicultural environment of the program the most,\u201d said Morrissey, who spoke at the commencement ceremony. \u201cThe diversity of the other students\u2019 work experience, education and home country resulted in me learning as much from them as I did from the professors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The students also heard from Antonio Zafarroni, executive director, Grupo Unidos por el Canal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe challenged them to stand up for their country and community by embracing the opportunities ahead with full commitment and willingness to do their best, to be high performers, to exert attitudes that he considered to be getting quite scarce among the younger generations,\u201d said <strong>Gladys Simpson<\/strong>, who teaches information systems courses. \u201cHe reminded all attendees that the bottom line is that we are all in the game of improving the life and conditions of humanity, that we must not forget this as we go on our daily lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Relative newcomer to FIU Business\u2019s overseas program offerings starts strong.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The PMBA-Panama, one of the college\u2019s newest overseas programs, has already become very popular, according to <strong>Marta Torres-Berlingeri<\/strong> (MS &#8217;06), assistant director, global programs at FIU.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn addition to this first group of 28, we had a class of 30 students who began the program in 2009 and are on pace to graduate in December 2010,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On February 26, 2010, the 28 students in the inaugural Professional MBA in Panama (PMBA-Panama) graduated from the twenty-month, weekend MBA program designed for busy working professionals. Quality Leadership University (QLU) in Panama City offers the program, primarily taught by professors from the College of Business Administration at Florida International University (FIU). Oscar Leon, QLU [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[162,431,1025,1031,1566,1680,1777,2066,2147,2167,2180,2181,2301],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23970,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6959\/revisions\/23970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}