Q&A with Dean

In early December 2022, the university announced a program-altering gift to the university: a donation of more than $29 million – the largest academic gift in ACU history – by the late Dr. Bill and Janie Dukes that will transform the College of Business Administration and its finance program.

The gift will establish the Dr. William P. and Janie B. Dukes Excellence in Finance Endowment, providing prestigious finance student scholarships, preparing students to attend highly preferred graduate programs, and establishing endowed faculty positions in finance. In recognition of this historic gift, the university will launch the Dukes School of Finance in the College of Business Administration in 2023.

ACU’s finance program currently includes three tenured faculty, 139 students (including double majors), and a Student Trading and Research (STAR) group that manages about $1.9 million in university endowment funds. In addition, the new Swinney Financial Markets Lab, a 40-seat lab with a Bloomberg terminal, opened this fall, and the Real Estate and Banking Society launched this spring.

“The thoughtful philanthropy of Bill and Janie Dukes will bless students and faculty in ACU’s finance program for years to come,” said Dr. Phil Schubert (’91), ACU president. “Their gift also recognizes the historical strength of ACU’s College of Business Administration and its faculty, students and graduates.”

Q: Let’s talk first about the magnitude of the gift. How will this transform the College of Business Administration?

Crisp: It’s obviously more significant than anything we’ve experienced before. Five years ago we had an endowment of $30 million, and by mid-2022 we had grown it to $54 million. Then, you stack another $29 million on top of that. We’ve experienced an incredible amount of generosity. So, what can we do now that we couldn’t do before? We’ll be able to attract and support our faculty in ways we couldn’t do before. We already have fantastic students, but this will help us attract more of them, support them and assure we can get the best possible outcomes.

Q: Can you touch on the Dukes Scholars program that starts in 2023 and how it fits into this gift?

Crisp: The endowment provides scholarship dollars with a unique call to identify individuals with character and ability and also a commitment to Christ. So we’ll provide experiences to help them dream about what their life can be – not just about an incredible business career but one that can impact the world. The experiences we want to create for these scholars include connecting them with people who will help them get to the places they want to go and giving them a chance to learn from other people’s stories, both good and bad. And it’s a chance to do some culture-building with a core set of students. We’ll uniquely pour into them, and see how that lifts the entire student body as we’re able to engage them. The finance faculty conducted a rigorous selection process this spring for current and prospective students, and we can’t wait to begin the program with more than 20 Dukes Scholars this fall.

Q: How does this gift impact the entirety of ACU, not just COBA?

Crisp: This is a gift for the finance program, but it means more than that because it provides a resource base that allows us to dream. Could we be the best in Texas? Could we actually be one of the best Christian programs in the country? It demands that we think about how we steward the gift so it produces those kinds of outcomes. Not because we want to say we’re great, but because we want to have that kind of impact on students and the world around us, and that can have ripple effects throughout our college and our university.

Q: What are two or three ways that this gift will impact and change the entire model of what you’ve been doing?

Crisp: It’s hard to get your mind around $29 million and what kind of impact it can have. But it’s an endowment, so it’s not $29 million that will be available for spending; it’s $29 million that the university will responsibly invest, and about 4.5% of that will be available every year. Once we have a full year’s worth of earnings, that’s about $1.3 million per year that will be available for spending that we didn’t have before. The sole purpose is to invest in our finance students and faculty and make that program a top program. There are some parameters around how we spend the money, but that’s a substantial amount to be able to spend every year. Certainly, resourcing our faculty in a way that we haven’t been able to in the past – funding for research or Bloomberg terminals or trips with students, faculty compensation, and the ability to add full-time and adjunct faculty. The money will also allow us to flesh out and enhance our finance curriculum. What we have right now is a good finance program, but it doesn’t have many of the courses that you would see at the top or larger programs, so we’ll be able to offer those kinds of courses to compete with any other finance program.

Q: In the last 15 years, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of giving to ACU, and now the Dukeses have provided the university with a transformative gift for the School of Finance. Where does your mind go when you think about how a gift like this will benefit students for generations to come?

Crisp: I think the common thread is business people who have used the gifts God has given them to build businesses and secure wealth, and they’ve had the mindset to be generous. We’ve already seen several business graduates who have chosen to give back, and that’s what we expect to see continue in the future. That’s what Bill and Janie Dukes dreamed about: a whole generation of men and women with the skills, influence, and ability to create businesses and wealth and the desire to be generous and bless the people around them.

From 2016-18, COBA faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends engaged in a process to rearticulate our values, mission and vision as well as to formulate strategic initiatives to guide the college through 2022. The following summarizes key accomplishments under this recently completed strategic plan.