Future online MBA applicants to Florida State University can pursue a newly created Major in Alternative Investments and Finance. Aimed at providing a pivotal financial skill set already in high demand, the new major leverages FSU’s nationally ranked programs in finance, real estate, and risk management and insurance.

Florida State University’s MBA specialty in real estate secured the No. 1 spot in Florida and the No. 6 rank nationally, according to public schools listed in U.S. News & World Report’s 2025 graduate rankings released today.

Hurricanes pummeling the coast. Rushing waters flooding property inland. Such natural disasters often turn Florida into ground zero for risk management, including changes in insurance coverage and costs. A new undertaking by Florida State University’s Risk Management and Insurance Center – in partnership with the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) and the Florida Surplus Lines Service Office (FSLSO) – aims to provide a rare, comprehensive look at all sides of the state’s insurance market.

Leslie Mille, a student career services veteran who previously served almost seven years in a leadership position in the college, has assumed the role of the Christopher E. Iansiti Senior Director of Business Career Services, renamed from the Center for Professional Success and steadfast about helping undergraduate and graduate students launch or enhance fulfilling careers.  

A pioneering study from researcher Matthew Baucum, published in Management Science, demonstrates that, when paired with data-driven reinforcement learning, wearable sensor data yields insights that could help physicians better treat their patients.

Researcher Colleen Harmeling declares in a video circulated by the American Marketing Association that our spending decisions “signal to ourselves and others our own moral self-understanding.” She adds in the video that this concept has gone largely overlooked in marketing research.

So you love your job and want to take on another massive project? Consider Professor Wayne Hochwarter’s recent findings published in Career Development International. Even those passionate about their jobs are destined for burnout, his study says, unless they have elevated ego resilience, which enables a worker to pause, reflect and adjust.

Brad Karl, State Farm Associate Professor of Risk Management and Insurance at the Florida State University College of Business, has spent the last half of a decade studying the economic cost of distracted driving, including how cell phone bans affect automobile insurance claims and costs, as well as refining estimates of the risk posed by distracted driving.

Associate professor Sergey Mityakov’s paper, “Unobserved Inputs in Household Production,” contends that almost all existing empirical studies of health, child development and job-training programs fail to account for “unobserved” actions that people commonly undertake – “rendering the conclusions of those studies incomplete and resulting in possibly misleading policy recommendations,” he says.

Alumnus Cameron Pennant (BS Management ’15) became one of five Florida State University graduates to win the Reubin O’D. Askew Young Alumni Award by the Florida State University Alumni Association.