10 Questions…on Escalating Gas Prices for George Huang
Driving cars these days elicits a double-cringe – first when we step on the accelerator and then again when we pass the corner gas station to see prices have gone up yet again. Here, Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation Economist George Huang explains how it's actually good that prices are going up and how they can hurt society at the same time, and whether it’s actually possible for rising gas prices to curb overall inflation. Full story

On Point: The Power of Co-branding
A pair of Adidas sneakers now bears Goodyear rubber soles, new home owners in a North Carolina real estate development receive a John Deere tractor lawnmower upon move-in, and everything from face soap to power tools is given overt placement on television programs like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Yes, marketers have brought co-branding to a new level, but as Assistant Professor of Marketing Melissa St. James suggests, not all partnerships work out and few rival the frequency of the celebrity endorsement. Full story

CBAPP and Campus News

Knighten One of 12 Hearst Scholars in California
Senior Deidre Knighten, public administration, received the Best and the Brightest Millennium Momentum Award last year and has followed it up this year with three awards including the prestigious California State University Hearst Trustee Scholarship, given to only 12 students in the entire CSU System. Full story

CBAPP Consolidates Five Departments into Three
With some of CBAPP’s departments holding small numbers of full-time faculty members, Dean Jim Strong reorganized them this summer, taking the five former departments and folding them into three new ones, to broaden the faculty relationships within each and to lessen the departmental duties of professors. The consolidation will have no effect on the frequency or number of courses offered to students. Full story

Newsmakers

Jared Chandler (MBA, 1999) recently began pursuing his Ph.D. in computer and information security at Northcentral University. Chandler will continue to work full time as a configuration manager for Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis through matriculation.

Larry Press, professor of information systems, presented a talk, titled “An African Internet Infrastructure Proposal for the G8” at the Business and Information Technologies Conference at UCLA on July 22-23. The paper is available online at http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/documents/areas/ctr/bit/larry%20press.pdf. He also convened and chaired a panel at the Association for Information Systems Americas Conference on Information Systems at the University of Nebraska, Aug. 11-14. The panel focused on Press’ earlier papers on the grand-scale challenge of connecting rural villages to the Internet throughout the developing world.

Valerie Orange (MPA) was recently appointed chief executive officer of Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, located in Downey, Calif. The 395-bed hospital is internationally renowned in the field of medical rehabilitation, consistently ranked as one of the top rehabilitation hospitals in the country by U.S. News and World Report. Orange credited Public Administration Professors David Karber and Mary Auth for her success and the education from which she draws upon on a daily basis in her current position.