A hands-on summer at the DeGroote School of Business
Seven undergraduate students from the DeGroote School of Business, including fourth-year student Mary Quintieri, are assisting professors with their research over a four-month period.
Throughout the summer, seven undergraduate commerce students are working with McMaster professors on a variety of research projects involving finance and economics, operations management and information systems.
The Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA) program presents a unique set of benefits and challenges, enriching students’ coursework while allowing participants to gain skills for the future. Each URA is chosen to complement a student’s area of study, and allows them to develop both academically and professionally. The mentor-student relationships is also vital, as supervisors help pupils think critically and understand the impact of the information they are researching.
Check out some of the research being conducted by McMaster students in the URA program:
The sustainability of online grocery shopping
Amy Man, a fourth-year Commerce student, is working with Kai Huang, assistant professor of Operations Management. Man is hoping to determine whether purchasing groceries online is more sustainable than purchasing groceries in-store. In order for this to be determined, Man and Huang are using the Arc Geographic Information System to calculate traveling distance and the amount of carbon emissions released for both methods.
“The Undergraduate Research Assistantship is a great way to gain more insight regarding our fields of study beyond the classroom. I chose to work in the operations management area as I am submajoring in geography and aspire to work in this field in the future. It also allows students to be more involved in the DeGroote community,” says Man.
Developing websites for decision makers
Fourth-year student Alycia Mazepa is currently working in the information systems field with Khaled Hassanein, area chair and director of the McMaster eBusiness Research Centre (MeRC). Mazepa is striving to understand what older adults think of “e-commerce.” She is developing guidelines for companies to make it easier for older customers to use their websites.
“In class, I have the opportunity to expose myself to many readings about the information industry and to learn about the value of information today,” Mazepa explains. “This position allowed me to be exposed to the information systems topic in depth.”
Discovering the changing opinion about market efficiency
Mary Catherine Quintieri, also in her fourth-year of study, is assisting Richard Deaves, a professor of Finance and Business Economics, in his research involving market efficiency. The market efficiency hypothesis states that stock prices fully reflect all available information. In a broad sense, Quintieri and Deaves are examining how the opinion on market efficiency has changed over the last 25 years. The research seeks to prove that in previous years, markets have been referred to as perfectly efficient. However, as more information is discovered, markets are increasingly interpreted as inefficient. This situation impacts investors, since more time is required to correctly evaluate securities.
“This program is a valuable tool because it allows students to utilize the information they learn in the classroom and apply that knowledge to the real world,” says Quintieri.
