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Letter from the Executive Director
Mark J. Riedy, PhD
Every spring, we invite and encourage you to provide USD's real estate graduates with full-time career opportunities. Every fall, we invite and encourage you to provide internships, mentorships and part-time jobs for our graduate and undergraduate real estate students. As we gear up for the fall semester, which begins later this month, we again hope you will turn to our exceptionally strong classes of undergraduate and graduate real estate students to fill your needs and help them fulfill theirs.
The twist this year is that I would ask you to expand your thinking about job opportunities, internships and mentorships to include bright and talented students and graduates from throughout USD’s nationally ranked School of Business Administration (SBA).
Because USD’s admissions requirements are so high, the quality of the entire student body also is commensurately high. The SBA’s MBA and other graduate students are exceptionally capable. Undergraduate students studying finance, economics, accounting, marketing and management, among other business fields, also are excellent candidates for jobs and internships.
As employers with real estate internship and job opportunities or as professionals who desire to “give back” by mentoring a graduate or undergraduate student, you already know to contact either John Ferber or Annie Grand in the Burnham-Moores Center. To expand your horizons to include USD’s finance, economics, accounting, marketing, management and other students, contact Christy Bergheim. I know that you will find Christy just as helpful and knowledgeable as the BMC’s career services professionals.
Experience for yourselves what San Diego’s business community has known for a long time: Hiring and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students from all parts of USD’s School of Business Administration, including the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate, is a smart business move, one that promises an excellent return on your investment.
Dr. Mark J. Riedy
Executive Director
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| The Woodruff Scholarship recipients with Mark Riedy and Malin Burnham at the Aug. 8 dinner |
Burnham-Moores Center Executive Committee member Malin Burnham, president of the Burnham Foundation, and his wife, Roberta, hosted the Eighth Annual Daniel B. Woodruff Memorial Scholarship recipients dinner at the Burnhams’ home in San Diego Aug. 8. Twelve of the 18 Woodruff Scholarship recipients and their guests attended the dinner including: Philip Bretsch ’06 (BBA), Ann Bruce ’02 (BBA), Brad Flewellen ’09 (MSRE), Svetlana Istrati ’08 (BBA), Brett Kondrick ’08 (BBA), Ron May ’07 (MSRE), Caleb McKinley ’02 (BBA), Rodd Miller ’01 (BBA), Rey Ross ’03 (MBA), Jacob Schwartz ’02 (BBA), Justin Shifrin ’11 (MSRE) and Jesse Votaw ’06 (MSRE). Those not in attendance included: Alexandra Bryant ’04 (BBA), Elizabeth DiLorenzo ’05 (BBA), Molly Jones ’11 (BBA), Michael Scafuri ’05 (MSRE), Elsa Vasquez ’03 (BBA) and Joshua Wilton.
The scholarship was established by the Center in 2000 in permanent tribute to USD graduate Daniel Woodruff ’98 (BA), to honor the most outstanding student pursuing real estate as a career profession. Woodruff died of cancer at the age of 27, less than two years after graduating from USD.
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| The winning team (from left to right) Argier, Walsh, Falivene and Engelken at the Third Annual Real Estate Alumni Association bowling tournament. |
On July 14, over 50 people attended the Real Estate Alumni Association’s annual scholarship fundraising event, held at East Village Tavern and Bowl in downtown San Diego.
With the help of sponsors, the event successfully raised funds for multiple Real Estate Alumni Association Scholarships. The scholarships are awarded to outstanding undergraduate or graduate students studying real estate at USD. This was the first year the event raised enough funds for as many as five scholarships.
Of the 12 teams that participated in the bowling tournament, the winning team was: Michael Argier ’11 (MSRE), Joe Engelken ’11 (MSRE), Evan Falivene ’10 (MSRE) and Nick Walsh ’10 (MSRE). Justin Brennan ’06 (MSRE), took home the best individual score award.
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| Cristina Hermosillo with her son Mario at Hermosillo y Asociados Arquitectos company booth at the Baja Aerospace Show in Tijuana July 21 |
When MSRE student Cristina Hermosillo decided to go back to graduate school last year, she knew it was going to be an immense lifestyle change for her. Already extremely busy working full-time as junior partner at the San Diego office of Hermosillo y Asociados Arquitectos, a Mexican design and construction firm owned by her father, and as a wife and mother of four children, reentering school meant making many temporary adjustments to find the time to accomplish her longtime goal of earning a graduate degree.
Since her plate was already full with family, work and community activities, Hermosillo knew that the full-time MSRE program was not an option for her. Luckily, she was able to cut her hours to part-time at her current job until she graduates in May 2012, and her family offered her their full understanding and support. Her oldest son Mario, 14, even helped her study for the GMAT.
Now that she’s been back in school for close to a year, she has found a way to maximize time with her children, Mario, Jorge, 11, Fernando, 9, and Cristina, 3, and her husband Jorge, a plastic surgeon who owns his own practice in Tijuana and San Jose del Cabo.
“We manage to find quality time together, and we really enjoy those moments,” says Hermosillo.
Although juggling so much at once would seem like a hectic life to some, Hermosillo, originally from Mexicali, Baja California, says she is used to it and must have gotten it from her overachieving parents.
“My father,” she said, “is a workaholic and devotes many hours to the company, but still manages to have his hobbies and be very involved within his community. My mother was also a very active person who was able to manage her family life and was always politically and socially involved in several causes.”
With one year of graduate school under her belt, Hermosillo says she is pleased with her decision to become a student again and is thrilled with all of the networking opportunities the program offers. Last spring, she decided it would be important for her company, as a design-construction leader in Mexico, to have an in-house LEED AP, so she decided to work toward obtaining the LEED AP certification. She earned the LEED Green Associate certification in May.
After she graduates next year, she and her family plan to move back to Tijuana, where her husband is pursuing a new project related to stem cells, and she will return to work full time and look for new business opportunities on both sides of the border.
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| Joel Munoz |
MSRE student Joel Munoz has been awarded a nationally competitive $4,000 scholarship from the Pension Real Estate Association. In addition to the scholarship, Munoz also is invited to be a guest at PREA’s fall conference, scheduled for Oct. 17-19 in Chicago. Munoz and the other scholarship recipients will be acknowledged at the association’s dinner on Oct. 18.
Munoz will complete his Master of Science in Real Estate degree in May 2012. He recently served as co-captain of the team that won first-place in the Argus Software University Challenge.
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| Vivek Sah, PhD, and Xiaorong Zhou, PhD, at the joint Asian Real Esate Society-AREUEA conference on Jeju Island, South Korea |
Assistant Professor Vivek Sah, PhD, presented his co-authored paper, “Index Addition Effects on Dividend Expectations: The Case of REITs,” at the joint Asian Real Estate Society-AREUEA conference held on Jeju Island, South Korea July 11-14. Sah presented the paper with his co-author, Xiaorong Zhou, PhD, from the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in China.
On July 2, Professor Norm Miller, PhD, presented his co-authored paper, “Integrating Real Estate Market-Based Indicators into Fundamental Home Price Forecasting Systems,” at the Western Economic Association International’s 86th Annual Conference in downtown San Diego. Miller and Michael Sklarz, PhD, president of Collateral Analytics, co-authored the paper.
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| Norm Miller, PhD |
Professor Norm Miller, PhD, has had his co-authored paper, “The Economic Impact of Anticipated House Price Changes - Evidence from Home Sales” published in Real Estate Economics, Vol. 39, No. 2. The paper was co-authored by Liang Peng, PhD, and Michael Sklarz, PhD.
Miller’s paper with the same co-authors, “House Prices and Economic Growth,” was recently published in the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Vol. 42, No. 4.
A third paper, “Foreclosure Contagion and REO versus Non-REO Sales,” which Miller co-authored with Sklarz, Stephanie Rauterkus, PhD, and Grant Thrall, PhD, was just accepted by the International Real Estate Review and will be published in 2012.
Mark J. Riedy, PhD, executive director of the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate, was recently selected for the 2012 edition of “Who’s Who in America” due to his outstanding achievements in the real estate and banking industries. Riedy has been listed in “Who’s Who in America” since 1982 and “Who’s Who in the World” since 2005.
Norm Miller, PhD, has been reappointed to the faculty at the Weimer School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Land Economics at the Maury Seldin Advanced Studies Institute. Established in 1982 as part of the Homer Hoyt Institute, the Weimer School is a unique forum for fostering academic work that improves the quality of decision-making in real estate and land economics. Faculty members in the school meet twice a year for four days in North Palm Beach, Fla., to discuss cutting-edge topics in real estate. Miller’s six-year reappointment to the prestigious school begins in 2012.
