Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Jack's 2019 Fall Semester Classes

Today is the first day of classes for Jack's senior year at Georgetown. His classes include:

TRT 270 - Adv International Business
This course analyzes the international business environment (IBE), defined as the economic, political, and social factors that shape firms’ global strategies. We seek to explain the ways in which—and the reasons why—countries differ in macroeconomic and regulatory policies relevant to the firm. The course places special emphasis on the political economy of the IBE, which means that we study how international and domestic political forces influence continuity and change in the rules governing international economic
transactions.

OPIM 274 - Business Forecasting
This course builds upon the regression models studied in OPIM 173 and related introductory courses in statistics. The aim is to further develop statistical modeling skills for business applications, with particular emphasis upon time series, which form the inputs for sales forecasting and production planning as well as much financial and economic activity. The reason for examining time series is to enable us to make forecasts and to ascribe to those forecasts an adequate measure of the uncertainty surrounding the forecasts.

  • Why do we forecast? The reason that businesses forecast is to aid the process of planning.
  • Why plan? Planning enables you to modify your actions in response to potential challenges and opportunities. If a forecast does not have the potential to change your actions, it is useless. If you do not respond to change your business probably will not survive very long.

If we accept the premise that forecasting is vital to a business, how should we carry out the task? We must first recognize that there is no such thing as a universal best method, but rather we need to develop an arsenal of different approaches and to recognize when each approach is appropriate.

The choice of forecasting method depends upon:

  • The objectives of the exercise [e.g. short-term production planning, investment planning, medium-term budgetary planning, long-term strategic planning]
  • The importance of the task in hand [financial impact per item forecast, # of items]
  • The extent to which other variables can affect the outcome, and whether or not those factors are under our control [e.g. YES: own production; NO: GDP, weather]
  • The quantity and quality of data available, and when those observations become available [e.g. macroeconomic variables, new movies]
  • The number of forecasts required [e.g. 10,000 product lines; US unemployment]

The course will focus primarily upon quantitative methods for forecasting, ranging from purely extrapolative approaches to causal modeling, but with some coverage of judgmental methods.

Model building and forecasting are not passive activities. Students will be expected to bring their laptops to class and to work on different forecasting assignments both in class and in team-based projects.

ARTH 255 - Global Contemporary Art
This survey course provides a general introduction to global contemporary art. After providing a brief grounding in 20th-century modernism and socio-political events of recent decades, this course considers a broad thematic range: pop and conceptual art; the emergence of performance, installation, and new media; earth works and site specificity; identity-based and institution-critical art; relational aesthetics and new modes of spectacle and digital consumerism; and the emergence of the global biennial and gallery system. This course assumes no prior knowledge and introduces students to a constellation of artists from around the world—from Cindy Sherman to Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei, Lygia Clark to Kara Walker and Walid Raad, and many more.

ARTH 431 - Museum Architecture
Museum architecture shapes visitors’ art experience and plays an integral role in the life of a city or region. In this course students will think critically about the architecture of the art museum. Questions to be considered include: How does architecture contribute to a museum’s visiting culture? What is architecture’s appropriate role – should buildings be at the forefront of a museum experience or remain as a backdrop? What challenges arise when designing buildings for contemporary art? How have signature buildings impacted an area’s economic standing? The work of designers such as Renzo Piano, Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid and Snøhetta will be explored. Case studies addressing institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Louvre will also be analyzed. Students will gain familiarity with field scholarship, visit multiple area museums and complete writing and presentation assignments.

Fall 2016 Semester
Spring 2017 Semester
Fall 2017 Semester
Spring 2018 Semester
Fall 2018 Semester
Spring 2019 Semester
Fall 2019 Semester
Spring 2020 Semester

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