Thinking outside of the border

“It all began 30 years ago,” Scott Moir, accounting junior, nervously chuckled through a smile as he stretched his arms above his head and slouched into the green bench outside Summerfield Hall. It was a beautiful February day with a spring-like sun shining directly above; the wind was calm enough to feel the sunrays warm your skin with a soothing comfort of happiness. Even so, Scott had much more to be smiling about.

As co-founder of the non-profit organization the Dundori Orphans Project, Scott has shown he’s anything other than an average college student by going the extra distance – literally.

The Dundori Orphans Project serves the orphaned and widowed in Kenya, particularly those affected by the AIDS epidemic. It is a Christ-centered humanitarian organization which takes on a holistic approach by serving and building lasting relationships with the orphans. By providing food for these children, the organization plans to expand the feeding program to meet the needs of more orphans, enable educational opportunities in the community, foster spiritual growth, and ultimately deliver hope for the future. 

Kim Moir, Scott’s mom, was a young nurse when she traveled to Kenya with a missionary and his wife to work in a much needed community in the mid 1980s. After 10 weeks, Kim returned to the states while the missionary and his wife would stay and make Kenya their permanent home.

“She really wanted to stay in Kenya and help the children, but she said for some reason she just felt like she was supposed to come back to the states,” Scott said. “But now it makes so much sense as the puzzle pieces have started to fall into place.”

Kim has not returned to Kenya since her visit 35 years ago, but she did reach out to her friend Edith who lives in Kenya for the possibility of establishing an international adoption agency in order to facilitate adoptions for people in the United States. Unfortunately, Kenya has many restrictions on international adoptions, making it very difficult to do so.

The Dundori region has a high orphan rate. In a five-mile by five-mile radius there are roughly 3,000 orphans. These orphans live with either their grandmothers or extended family members. The grandmothers typically have four or more orphans living with them and must do their best to provide for the family on their meager wages of less than a dollar a day.

In 2007, Kim received an email from Edith’s husband, Nicholas, who was feeding orphans in his community. Nicholas was using his own money to buy food and a woman within the community was preparing meals for the children. He was reaching out to Kim as he jump-started his organization, the Dundori Orphans Project.

“Growing up, my mom would always tell crazy stories of the things she saw in Kenya,” Scott said. “It made me want to go and see Kenya, to really experience it.”

Scott did not have contact with Nicholas until December 2009 when they started to plan for Scott to visit Kenya in the summer of 2010. 

“For two months I lived with Nicholas and his family,” Scott said. “They had no international help, so when I returned to the states I was able to help build that international support.”

Although it can take somewhere from six months to a year to be accepted as a non-profit organization, the Dundori Orphans Project was certified in just two months.

In order to continue serving these orphans and hopefully more, the organization would have to make a few adjustments to its operations.

“We needed to make our own site in order to make the food for these kids,” Scott said. “So we did fundraising and built a kitchen and storage.”

Scott will return to Kenya for a third time this summer for two weeks, and he’s not going alone. His mom will be educating the women and children about proper nutrition and health, and his dad will be teaching courses for men, to help them be more aware of and supportive of their families, as often times the father will leave the children. Scott and three of his friends will do necessary construction to complete the building site for the dining area to feed the orphans.

“We needed to expand our facilities before we can include more kids in the program,” Scott said.

The Dundori Orphans project prides itself on being a very transparent, efficient organization. With the organization meeting peoples needs on a personal level, it is easy to see where the finances go. Scott explained that each dollar donated is put directly into the funding of the project to build facilities, feed the orphans, and fund a woman’s salary in Kenya who cooks the meals for the children and oversees the orphan care center. The project uses local labor, which creates jobs for people in the community and empowers them to help others. 

“There was that thought in the back of my mind, wondering if what we were doing for these kids was really making an impact,” Scott said. “Was I truly making a difference? Were these kids grateful?”

Scott found his answer at the end of his first trip to Kenya at the airport on his last night before returning to the states. Conflicts with his flight plans had delayed take-off for another five hours. Nicholas and his family had already left the airport, but it was a man named Sylvester who helped Scott in more ways than one.

Sylvester was a cab driver who offered to take Scott to a restaurant, an offer that Scott wouldn’t be able to pass. During the drive, the two strangers built a lasting connection as they found parallels in their lives.

Sylvester was one of 29 kids. His family was polygamous, meaning he had one father and three mothers. The family was poor and the notable high school Sylvester was accepted into was far too expensive. A couple at his church took it upon themselves to pay his four years of tuition and gave him a raincoat as a gift. They changed his life. Sylvester attended the high school and now works as a cab driver, in which his earnings are first invested in his family, then he tithes to the church, and whatever amount of money remains is donated.

 “Sylvester was the one to reassure me,” Scott said. “He told me he had wished every day that it would rain just so he could wear his raincoat.”

That answered all the uncertainty Scott had about his impact in these children’s live. He was helping create opportunities that would not otherwise exist for these orphans, and that is not going unnoticed by them.

Scott, Nicholas and all others involved are responsible for 32 orphans currently being fed. As the site is finished this summer, they will be able to start accepting more orphans into the program.

“This is my last visit to Kenya because there isn’t really any need for me to be there anymore,” Scott said. “Everything we are doing will be to focus on increasing the international support.”

The Dundori Orphans Project has planned for spring events locally to help increase awareness of the students and the community through a pancake feed, benefit concert, bingo night and percentage nights at various locations on Mass St. All dates have yet to be set.

As Scott balances his passions of giving back to the community and achieving his degree in accounting, he will graduate in the spring of 2013. He then plans to sit for the Certified Public Account (CPA) exam and eventually pursue a career in public accounting for several years, to gain experience.

“I do not see myself ending up working in public accounting, but there is valuable insight and experience to be gained while working for a firm,” Scott said. “Opportunities to be involved with nonprofits open up even more once you have your CPA and experience in public accounting.”

Scott would like to continue working with non-profits and assist them in being as financially efficient as possible.

“Ideally, I could work on the administrative side of a non-profit organization, overseeing operations that go on in the United States or on the ground where the organization is working,” Scott said. 

Scott has experience volunteering with other organizations throughout the state such as the Flint Hills Summer Camp and the Salina Rescue Mission.This summer he will be working at a Kanakuk Kamp in Missouri, K-West, which is an activity driven, Christian enhancing camp for kids.

Even though Scott would like to focus on his career after graduation, he would still like to be involved with the project in at least some capacity. 

“My faith is calling me to help these kids. This is what I am supposed to be doing.”

School of Business offers students chance to spend winter break in India

Eighteen business students traveled nearly 10,000 miles during winter break to study abroad in India.

Nick Alexander, a senior in marketing, climbs a coconut tree during some free time. 

The Asian School of Business (ASB) in Trivandrum, India hosted a group of students led by University of Kansas School of Business faculty, Kissan Joseph, Stockton Faculty Fellow and associate professor, and Joyce Claterbos, alumna and lecturer. The group of undergraduate and graduate students visited Trivandrum, Bangalore, Mysore and Kochi, learning about the business practices and economy of India. The faculty at ASB lectured on topics including advertising, branding, e-commerce and innovation in India.

"India is an exciting part of the world because there is a lot of innovation taking place there," Joseph said. "India has a solid middle class now. It's the market for all kinds of goods such as education, tourism and entertainment. If a student here is thinking about a market, India is a very attractive and growing market."

In addition to the classes, students visited such businesses as Infosys, an international information technology company, and TVS Motor Company, part of the TVS Group and one of the largest two-wheeler manufacturers in the world.

"In the manufacturing and IT sectors, I saw a lot of CEOs and managers who thought outside the box," said Erica Collins, a senior economics major and vice president of the Undergraduate Business Council. "Despite all the restraints from their infrastructure, they found ways to prevail. It gave me a competitive advantage to think the way they did."

Collins said she had a great time. "We saw eight different companies, travelled to two or three different cities and met with locals. It was a good balance of leisure, business and overall travel experience."

Students and faculty in front of Infosys,
an information technology and consulting company.

India is part of what economists call the BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India and China. These countries have similar economic growth and are expected to become important players in the international market. Arnobio Morelix, a sophomore double-majoring in marketing and economics, is a transfer student from Brazil who plans to go into international business. Morelix hopes to do a similar study abroad program with Brazilian students in the near future.

"I figured since I am Brazilian I might as well learn about other BRIC countries," Morelix said. "It was an amazing country. It was interesting to see that, although it's half a world away, it shares similarities with my own country."

The three-week-long program also gives students the chance to learn about Indian culture and visit with people like the State of Kerala's Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. "Both countries should strengthen their relationship and foster greater openness to solve the problems of the world," the chief minister said during a meeting with the group, according to a news release from the ASB.

Oommen Chandy, chief minister of the state of Kerala, speaks
to the group. The students spoke with CEOs and high-ranking officials.

At the same time, the program strengthens the academic relationship between India and the United States. "Encouraged by the enthusiastic responses of the student delegates who visited ASB last December, a new team is visiting us this year," said S. Rajeev, director designate of ASB in an interview with The Hindu. "Our phenomenal reach into the industry, impeccable program design and execution capabilities have made the India Study Abroad Program an annual feature."

For more information on studying abroad, visit the IIB homepage.

Economics professor investigates file sharing, tax evasion

Business professor Koleman Strumpf

Koleman Strumpf’s office doesn’t look terribly organized, and when you talk to him, you get the feeling that his mind is moving faster than his mouth. His website, assuming you want to click every link, can take hours to get through. The window blinds in his office are closed and he sits at his desk surrounded by two desktop computers and a laptop.

Strumpf is the Koch Professor of Economics at the University of Kansas School of Business. He has degrees from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Strumpf is author or co-author of more than a dozen papers with three more on the horizon. He is the associate editor for The Journal of Prediction Markets and he uses these markets to teach his economics students. When someone wants a crowd to make a decision on a question, Strumpf said, prediction markets are set up. The students use fake money, but they research and trade as if it were real.

“I think it’s a good experience, particularly for undergraduates, to get an opportunity to see how markets function firsthand,” Strumpf said. “I don’t know how much experience most of the undergraduates have in trading, but this is a pretty painless and riskless way to do it.”

In addition to teaching, Strumpf is working on a number of papers. One of these papers deals with an important aspect of Kansas, the aviation industry. Wichita is the air capital of the world, at least for now, because of the many airplane manufacturers located in the city. Many people in the state and in the nation own general aviation planes. A general aviation plane is any plane other than a commercial plane. Kansas is one of the states that tax these planes. It’s broken down by county, so if you have a plane in Douglas County, you owe a certain amount based on the tax code in that county. The law says that if your plane is parked in Douglas County on Jan. 1, you owe taxes on it. Some owners have interpreted the law very literally, although most lawyers that Strumpf has spoken with disagree with the interpretation.

“So they get in their planes on Dec. 31,” Strumpf said, “fly to Oklahoma, a state that doesn’t tax their planes, hang out for a day and come back on Jan. 2.”

Strumpf has information from the FAA on more than 20 million flights over a period of five years. Most tax evasion is not observable, Strumpf said, such as a waiter getting paid cash or someone putting their money in an overseas bank account. In this case, with the FAA flight data, he can physically observe it.

“The idea is to see if there is disproportionate activity around the assessment date of Jan. 1 in a state like Kansas that taxes planes, compared to Oklahoma,” Strumpf said.

Another part of Strumpf’s research is file sharing. File sharing has come to the spotlight once again with the recent SOPA and PIPA bills that were adamantly opposed by Google and other websites. Strumpf has something to say about this issue. He has been researching the world of file sharing almost since the beginning. In 2007, he published his first paper on the subject, though there was an earlier draft in 2004. To give a reference point, Napster was shut down in the summer of 2000. Strumpf collaborated with Harvard business professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee on “The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis” and “File-Sharing and Copyright.” In their first paper they come to the conclusion that “downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero.” Their second paper, “File-Sharing and Copyright,” found that file sharing does not hurt album sales at all. But, even with that data, the government is still trying to pass legislation to stop file sharing.

“Will content industry people try to get another law passed?” Strumpf asked. “Yes, without any doubt. Will any of this stuff work? It’s very skeptical.”

Legally, Napster was easy to take care of, he said, because it was entirely in the United States. Now we have things like Pirate Bay and Mininova which are not located in a central place.

If something like SOPA passed, Strumpf said, someone will probably make a nice windows-based graphical user interface to share files within a couple of months.

“It would be hard to shut things down at this point,” he said. “The internet is too international to have any one country regulate things. When there’s enough demand for the activity, markets will arise to supply it.”

That’s the economist in him speaking. The U.S. activity on BitTorrent is only about 20-25 percent of the total, Strumpf said. In addition to looking at the impact of file sharing on the music industry, Strumpf is working on analyzing the impact it has on the movie industry. He has five months of data about what movies were in theaters, which movies were most popular on DVD and what movies were downloaded in that time. Ascertaining what movies were downloaded, when they were downloaded and where they were downloaded requires Strumpf to have the internet protocol (IP) addresses of the devices used. An IP address is a unique set of numbers assigned to each device with an internet connection. He can usually identify the location of a device down to the zip code just by knowing the IP address. So, to understand what effect downloading has on the movie industry, he divides the data by metro area so he can compare different parts of the country, and by movie to discover what movies were popular in certain cities. Using the IP addresses of those who downloaded movies, he can see how much downloads effect movie sales in that area.

The growth of the Internet in general may be largely because there just aren’t that many regulations for it. Without regulations, it has had the chance to explode in the past decade.

“It’s about as international as anything I can think of,” Stumpf said about the Internet. “It transcends country, culture and language.”

These are just a few of Koleman Strumpf’s many interests. In just six years at the KU School of Business he has published four papers and been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Spin Magazine and Forbes, among others.

If you would like to know more about his research, read other stories in which he’s been featured or find out what music he likes, visit his website.

Final days in India

by Joyce Claterbos


We've made the local papers three times so far about various events we've attended. ASB, the school here, is using our visit to generate a lot of PR for their MBA program because it's so new. Having a relationship with a US school is a real coup for Indian schools. 

The group at the Hill Palace, one of the residencies of the royal family of Kerala.
Front to back: Mahesh, Erica, Joe, Alisha; Joyce KB Aaron, Natalie, Liz, Gordon, Case, Helen, Apryl; Wes, Jordan, Anobio, Wes, Gordon, Boone, Nick.

Friday we were in Cochin and saw the Hill Palace, one of the residencies of the Kerala royal family. It was donated to the state and is now a museum. Regrettably, we could only take pictures outside so there are no shots of the beautiful gold crown and the formal reception rooms. In the evening we saw a presentation of traditional dances and costumes. It was pretty spectacular. We met a person who graduated from KU in 2008! 

We got to ride on a houseboat on Lake Vambanad Monday. It was a lot of fun. We had lunch cooked on the boat and most of us went swimming. We were tied up to the bank next to some rice fields and the student found a coconut tree that hung out over the lake. Several climbed the tree, picked a coconut, and then jumped into the lake. Lots of fun until the owner of the tree came up in his boat and asked us to quit! We left his coconuts in a small pile on the bank for him.

Tuesday we visited a cashew factory and had a boat ride and dinner at Sundara Theeram, a local lake. We walked down a dirt track to the lake to a covered set of tables. It started raining after the dinner so KB hired a jeep to carry up back up the track to the bus which was parked on the paved road. I think the students had the most fun on the ride back up the track. It was muddy and bumpy and was a lot like the safari ride at Animal Kingdom at DisneyWorld! Some students were invited into a local woman's home to meet her mother and children. 

Erik, Case, and Jordan meet school children at Hill Palace. We saw three different groups of children visiting the Palace that day.

We will have our final dinner at a restaurant called Island Shack tonight. It's on the beach in Kovalum and it is pretty primitive, but the seafood comes directly to the beach and goes straight to the kitchen. We'll have Tandoori fish, lobster, and shrimp with lime sodas. We will sit on plastic chairs on the sand at the beach with candles on the table. You eat with your right hand in India and use the local bread to scoop up the juices so it can get a little messy. You get a bowl of warm water with a lemon slice at the end to clean your hands. The bathroom was also primitive, but it flushed! Still a step above camping. Dinner is usually at 9 pm so that's been a challenge to get used to.

I think we're all ready to come home. It has been intense, but we all agree, worth the effort. See you next week in class. Make sure you ask us about our trip and to see our pictures. 


Joyce Claterbos is a marketing lecturer at the University of Kansas School of Business.

Letters From Trivandrum

by Joyce Claterbos

At Lake Vembanad we had the opportunity to buy fish for our morning snack. Erik, Aaron, and Gordon opted for local tiger shrimp. The cook on our houseboat cooked them for us.

Today we had our first company visit! After our morning classes, we went to Technopark to visit US Technologies Global. Technopark is in Trivandrum and was the first high technology industrial park in India. UST Global is a privately held provider of IT services with facilities in five countries. Mr. Praveen Kumar, Offshore Head of Global Sourcing, described to us their strategy for building organizational vision and supporting innovation efforts of their employees. UST Global has set up three integrated systems focused on supporting innovation. We were able to visit The Apple Tree Lab, “an innovation gym where professionals are invited to experiment without fear of mistakes.” The company also has 'Eureka!',  UST's Idea Management System and 'Open Minds', a collaboration space on the Web.

A few of us had an opportunity to captain our houseboat. Kissan Joseph had his turn at the wheel.

We then visited Veli Tourist Village, a park on a lake. Children often come up and ask us where we are from and want to shake our hands. We had just enough time to make a quick trip to Shanghumughom Beach on the Arabian Ocean to watch the sunset.  (http://trivandrumdistrict.blogspot.com/2010/11/shanghumughom-beach.html) No swimming suits for the Indians here! Women in their shalwar kameez and men in lungis (traditional dress) watched their children play at the edge of the waves. The beach is orange sand and the waves were red as they come up on shore. Beautiful! 
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Nick was the first to climb this convenient coconut tree and pick a coconut. He then dropped into the lake after we checked the water depth to ensure it was deep enough.

A busy day! We spent the morning in the classroom studying innovation with Proj. Rajeev Srinivasan. We learned that India was the source of many innovations over time, including mathematics and natural medicine. After lunch we visited Terumo Penpol, a medical products company (http://terumopenpol.com/). We had to don sterile gear to tour the production line. This Indian-Japanese partnership produces 25M blood collection bags a year. Our discussion with Managing Director C. Balagopal covered the challenges facing businesses in India. Terumo Penpol has a very active corporate social responsibility agenda, supporting the causes of blood donation and primary education.

Joyce Claterbos is a marketing lecturer at the University of Kansas School of Business.

Conversations from Trivandrum and the India Business Team

by Joyce Claterbos


I’ll be sending a series of short descriptions of our experiences in Trivandrum, India, as we participate in the India Business Study Abroad Program. For most participants, this is their first experience abroad.

We all arrived safely in Trivandrum at 3:30 am local time after 16+ hours on three planes. The only casualties of the trip were two pieces of luggage, one wounded and one missing in action but due to be recovered today. Adjusting to the time change will be challenging since Trivandrum is about 11 hours ahead of Lawrence. We’re asleep while you’re awake!

Erik, Nick, and Gordon enjoy fresh coconut water at a street vendor in Cochin.

Trivandrum is at the southern tip of India, with a tropical climate so the average daytime temperature is 80-85 degrees. It’s like being on a Caribbean island, complete with palm and banana trees! The rainy season is over so we can expect at most a few short showers, but lots of humidity. The city is the capital of Kerala, one of the 28 states of India. It is one of the most popular tourist destinations in India for both foreigners and native Indians because of its native beauty, especially the ocean beaches.

Our host organization is the Asian School of Business. The campus is still under construction, but we can see that it will be a beautiful campus when finished. (See www.asbindia.in for pictures and information about ASB). It is a private university, supported financially by investors much like Andrew Carnegie’s foundation to build libraries in the US. Our host, Professor K. Balakrishnan (Prof KB), explained that it’s quicker and easier to start a private university than to work with the necessary governmental agencies to build a public university. Our classroom is a technology enhanced case-style classroom.

The campus is located next to a new high technology industrial park (TechnoCity). Security is tighter than what we are used to, with security personnel in all buildings and access to the technology enhanced classroom restricted to badge carriers. The hostel has a 24-hour guard who knows who comes and goes at all times so we all feel very secure.

After a short organizational meeting and a meal, we all went to our rooms for some quiet time before lunch, tea at 4 pm and a trip to a local store to pick up the inevitable few items we forgot to pack.


The campus is close to the coast so after lunch several members of the group went on a “Short” walk find the ocean. Along the way they met several of the local residents.  People are very friendly! 

One of the costumed actors at Greenix, where we saw demonstrations of traditional dances and music. These costumes are essentially the same for centuries.

They were very eager to have their picture taken and help guide us on our way.

But we eventually ran out of road before we could see the ocean so we went back to the school to rest up for our first visit to the city.

Our first trip off campus showed us a vibrant moving city. Traffic in India is chaotic, confusing, and mostly uncontrolled. We were traveling to the center of the city during rush hour. We saw no traffic signals and only a single traffic officer at one intersection. And Trivandrum has 1M residents! The roads are two lane, but often cars and busses were doubled up in a single lane. And drivers, especially cyclists, were opportunistic, using the oncoming lane to bypass vehicles when there were gaps in oncoming traffic. And everyone uses their car horn. Prof. Joseph explained that Indians use their car horn as a courtesy to say, “Hello, here I am.” The hilly terrain means that roads and alleys aren’t in any sort of a grid, making for many awkward intersections. There are many local busses and every business wants a bus stop in front so the busses often hold up traffic.

Liz has some one-on-one time with one of the actors.

We visited Big Bazaar, a six-story department/grocery store. Big Bazaar is India’s Walmart. (http://bigbazaar.futurebazaar.com/indexBigBazaar.jsp). We saw some familiar global brands like Coca-Cola and Kellogg’s and many local brands and types of products that we couldn’t buy in the US.

Tomorrow, classes and company visits begin. More later! 

Joyce Claterbos is a marketing lecturer at the University of Kansas School of Business.