College of Arts & Science at Miami University
Career Paths of CAS Graduates in Business & Industry
The College of Arts and Science provides the foundation for effective thinking, solving, and communicating. Our graduates appeal to the full range of professional, entrepreneurial, institutional, and cultural employment opportunities. Because of the breadth of our training and perspective, we can meet the fluidity of the challenges of our time, and of times to follow.
- Howard Biel (Senior Managing Director, Faison)
Howard Biel and nearly all other CAS Alumni Advisory Board members pursued careers in business and industry.
In profiles and videos (below), CAS alumni reflect on how their Miami experiences led to their professional successes.
Laurie Moline (Strategic Specialist, Aultman Hospital)
Probably the best thing I've brought to my clients is my critical thinking skills. And I credit Miami a lot for the critical thinking skills that I've developed ...
having to have that type of very broad base of education, helps you just as a thinker.
[Listen to Laurie Moline talk about the value of her Miami education, as well as give advice to current students.]
Tina Beaty (Account Supervisor, Porter Novelli)
I chose Miami after doing a lot of research as a high school student. I knew I wanted a school with a strong communications program. So, after looking at a lot of different schools and understanding their culture plus their academic foundation in communications, I came and toured Miami ... I kind of knew this was the place I should go.
[Listen to Tina Beaty talk about the value of networking for her career, as well as give advice to current students.]
Jenny Rooney (Editor, CMO Network, Forbes)
Miami prepared me for what I am doing now in the sense that it really caused me to have an important focus on the value of writing and of literature ...
the professors were always so available to me to consult with, I felt as though they were really a part of my education.
[Listen to Jenny Rooney talk about the rewarding aspects of her career and how she came to choose Miami.]
Kevin George (SVP & Global Chief Marketing Officer, Beam, Inc.)
The thing that Miami prepared me to do, and specifically the education of liberal arts, is help me to think laterally ... The ability to think laterally is something that no one can ever take away from you, the ability to organize thoughts, and write well, is really important, and it comes into so many aspects of you life.
[Listen to Kevin George talk about how his liberal arts education led to a successful career in business.]
Jim Heinen (Associate, Armstrong Teasdale)
The advice I would give to someone who is coming to Miami is that you will not be disappointed. I'm sure there are many great colleges around the country but everything at Miami that you've heard about, it lives up to its reputation.
[Listen to Jim Heinen talk about why he came to Miami and why he majored in chemistry.]
Howard Hershey (Research Director, Pioneer Hi-Bred International)
My experience at Miami that really helped me more than anything else in deciding a career path was the opportunity in undergraduate education ... to go to work in a lab ... [and make] a connection between chemistry and biology and the relevance of what we can do to the real world.
[Listen to Howard Hershey talk about about how his experiences at Miami were instrumental in beginning his career path.]
Steve Gilman (VP-R&D, CSO, Cubist Pharmaceuticals)
I moved from a pure scientific job and pure scientific interest into a mix of science and business ... by asking questions ... How does a business work? How do you convert science into medicines, into business, into providing new treatments for patients, both from the bench into the clinic and then on the market?
[Listen to Steve Gilman talk about how he has parlayed his science background into a career in business.]
Scott Glaser (VP-CFO, Lane Bryant)
A class that I had at Miami freshman year, Religions of the Middle East ... is helping me understand what's going on in that part of the world today, and it's helping me as I build business partnerships in that part of the world. There's no getting away from the fact that we increasingly live in a global environment.
[Listen to Scott Glaser talk about the value of Miami's study abroad opportunities in the current global environment.]
Patrick Jones (Associate Partner, Rosetta)
Wherever you start in terms of where you interest is or where your passion is in terms of what you study, perhaps the initial rung on your own career ladder, it doesn't necessarily define the path you take ... I went from politics to business and management consulting into moviemaking and television into interactive media.
[Listen to Patrick Jones talk about the role serendipity plays in a career path.]
Michele Molden (President-CEO, Piedmont Heart Institute)
Ending up in the business side of medicine, after starting from a very technical field, isn't perhaps as unusual as it may seem ... the same scientific method that I had used and been trained in so well at Miami were the basics for analyzing business problems.
[Listen to Michele Molden describe how she went from an undergraduate degree in liberal arts to earning her MBA.]
Robert Essner (former chairman & CEO of Wyeth Laboratories, ret.)
What's the connection between studying history and running a large industrial research corporation? ... The skills that I picked up learning to be an historian probably helped me: the ability to find data, to amass data, to analyze data, to be critical of sources.
[Listen to Robert Essner talk about the connection between his major at Miami and his ensuing career.]
Russ Starkey (nuclear energy executive, ret.)
I was a physics major as an undergraduate, ... With the nuclear engineering training [and experience ] provided by the Navy ... and the technical background provided by Miami, I decided, What am I going to do with the rest of my life? ... I spent the next 35 years either in power generation facilities or uranium enrichment facilities, and had a very rewarding and challenging career.
[Listen to Russ Starkey describe how his Miami experiences provided the foundation of his career in the U.S. Navy and the power industry.]
Michael Jacoby (Managing Director, Deutsch Bank)
You know, you take these courses when you're an undergrad. And it's so common to think, why will I ever need this? I'll never use this. I would tell you, between calculus and what I learned in economics, in terms of learning how to solve problems, understanding approaches to problems, I still use them every day.
[Listen to Michael Jacoby explain how he 'learned to think' while he was an undergraduate at Miami.]
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