Jewelry Television (JTV), a national television home shopping and e-commerce network of companies headquartered in Knoxville, has created the JTV Center for Applied Business Analytics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business through a transformative gift.
The focus of the center will be to facilitate collaboration between businesses with issues requiring data analytics and teams of undergraduates in the Department Business Analytics to enhance skill development in real live situations. JTV’s gift will provide the center with funding for scholarships and fellowships, student travel to conferences and competitions, technological equipment, and administrative and faculty support to carry out the center’s mission.
Charlie Wagner (’66, ’68), vice chairman of the company and a UT business and law graduate, said the center will be a unique asset for UT business analytics students.
“We think this new center will be very significant for the future of business, and we wanted to be part of something bigger than ourselves, or even our company,” Wagner said. “Data analytics have been very important to the advancement and success of our business, and UT has always been very helpful to us as JTV grew and developed.”
For Wagner and the cofounders of JTV, supporting UT has personal significance. All graduated from the university, and today the company employs approximately 120 UT alumni. JTV has an advanced analytics department and values its collaboration with UT.
“We all love the University of Tennessee,” Wagner said. “We feel this is something that will last into the future, and we wanted to do something for the community, the state, and the university. The business analytics department is one of the fastest—if not the fastest—growing departments at UT, and so this is an opportunity to endow something important that will last long into the future.”
A unique aspect of the new center will be its emphasis on educating undergraduate students. It will provide a capstone experience for student teams to develop soft skills and hone their ability to communicate data-driven insights, says Mike Galbreth, professor and head of the business analytics department in the Haslam College of Business.
Our students will have brighter futures as analytics professionals thanks to the generosity of the JTV family.
– Mike Galbreth, professor and head of the business analytics department in the Haslam College of Business
“At the JTV Center, students will complement their strong technical skillset with the ability and confidence to communicate new insights and drive change,” Galbreth said. “This combination of hard and soft skills is needed in many organizations, and our students will graduate with the analytical, business, and communication skills to be comfortable interacting with both the technical team and business leadership.”
Galbreth added that the center will include an Intelligence Lab, which will host speakers, researchers, and competitions to ensure students remain on the cutting edge of advances in analytics and artificial intelligence.
“As a direct result of this gift, countless Haslam students will embark upon their careers with a truly world-class preparation to be data-driven leaders,” Galbreth said. “Our students will have brighter futures as analytics professionals thanks to the generosity of the JTV family.”
Steve Mangum, dean of the Haslam College of Business, says the new JTV Center will allow the college to ‘scale’ concepts that have proven successful in graduate programs, bringing them to undergraduate students as well.
“The founders of JTV and other members of its leadership team have long been devoted to UT,” Mangum said. “It is exciting to now see this relationship more visibly and formally memorialized through the establishment of this center. It would not have come to be without the persistent devotion and visioning of Charlie Wagner, and it is indeed exciting to contemplate what will be made possible through the auspices of this center and its programming.”
