A Students’ Champion

By Carolanne Roberts

To grasp the scope of Dean Sharon Oswald, consider four between-semesters trips undertaken by this woman who loves to push boundaries and travel far. Pre-COVID days saw her trekking more than 100 miles on the challenging Portuguese Camino and on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Then there’s her ascent up Machu Picchu in Peru or, just last June, hardy hikes in both Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks.

In other words, our Dean is a person with energy, endurance and drive, the same qualities she has brought to her leadership of the College of Business for the past 12 years. There’s everything positive, nothing tentative, about Oswald, who is scheduled to retire June 30, 2023. As she prepares to pass the torch, it’s worth walking back in time to visit the major mile markers of her tenure in Starkville – and a few “who knew” facts along the way, too.

First comes her favorite: the MSU Center for Entrepreneurship & Outreach, known as the E-Center.

The idea was in my head when I got here,” she says regarding the much smaller program that then operated under a separate branch of the University. “I envisioned it being part of the College of Business yet serving every college, not just business – which is what happened once we raised the funds and built the state of the art facility in the center of campus.

Today, the Dean points to companies incubated and enabled through the E-Center.

“There are viable businesses valued in excess of $30 million [combined], and without the Center, they would not have existed,” she remarks.

She applauds E-Center Director Eric Hill, COB Director of Outreach Jeffrey Rupp and the news that the E-Center will soon expand to Vicksburg. She also points to the offshoot Idea Shop, where E-Center companies prototype their concepts, and the Market Innovation Lab & Observatory, which enables behavioral research for concepts.

“We can stand up against anybody in the entrepreneurship field,” she states. “We have students who are as good as any in the country.”

Oswald also takes pride in the growth of the Supply Chain Logistics major which continues to expand, both adding faculty and swelling student engagement, and in the MBA Venture Pathway program that offers business building blocks to students who are primarily majoring in the STEM areas.

“I personally think everyone needs a business background,” she explains of the latter. “So we prepare them with MBA prerequisites or simply the tools needed to go forward in their chosen fields.” Notable, too, is the growth and reach of online degree offerings – among them the online MBA, BBA and accounting programs.

This Dean is a true champion of the student, having operated from day one with an opendoor policy, making herself available for discussion, encouragement and patient listening.

Near her office, a closet of clothes – men’s and women’s – stands ready to help out business students by appropriately outfitting those heading to job interviews.

Had Oswald followed early instincts toward pharmacy or architecture, her appointment at State might never have happened. Had she not aspired to a PhD largely because her accomplished brother had earned one, she might not have found the passions that led her to State. Those fortuitous steps, along with her 24 years on the business faculty and as Head of the Department of Management at Auburn, plus her tenure at MSU, sum up a noble career of service and leadership.

Much of her motivation derives from her father, who modeled the ethics of leadership.

“It was something he instilled in us as children,” she notes. “He spent much of his career in upper management but never forgot his humble beginnings and his family. He believed in giving back in terms of his time.”

Likewise, Oswald spent years on the international board of the Academy of Health Care Management based in Prague, Czech Republic (linking to her research areas in that field) and currently serves as President of the Southern Business Administration Association, which includes 150 business school leaders from across the southern United States and as far away as Hawaii.

While at Mississippi State, Oswald has reached into her heart and her purse to endow a client consultation room and a client waiting room at the MSU Animal Health Center in memory of her late Shih Tzu, Quinn. The College of Veterinary Medicine bestowed upon her its Vice President’s Pegasus Award for her contribution to that field.

“I receive so many emails and texts from people who have waited in the Quinn Room with their ill pets,” she says. “I never imagined how Quinn’s story would impact and comfort people every day.”

She has also established a scholarship in the College of Business to enable students to travel internationally.

“I was an exchange student in Germany, and my father was first generation American,” she says. “Because my father gave me the opportunity to study abroad as a high school student, kindling my love of travel, I created the scholarship in his name.”

There may soon be more time for travel – and for tennis, painting and perhaps even the game of golf as a beginner. But she also looks at other possibilities, like teaching in a study-abroad program or helping with an online consulting class.

Entrepreneurship and outreach have expanded tremendously under Oswald’s leadership. Here, Oswald (sixth from right) takes part in the ribbon cutting for the Idea Shop in downtown Starkville.

Photo by Beth Wynn

Oswald’s canine companions (from left) Czesky, Cocoa and Tucker – and other animals – are dear to her heart. She has endowed a client consultation room and a client waiting room at the MSU Animal Health Center.

Photo by Emily Daniels

“I know I’m not going to sit still,” she says, meaning every syllable.

The time will come, too, to reflect on the journey. On how she arrived in Starkville a dozen years ago knowing almost no one; how she has forged professional and personal friendships in the Bulldog world; how she has seen students enter and graduate, fulfilled, educated and ready for their futures and how glad she is that she listened to a mentor who advised the very rooted Auburn professor that, “Sometimes people, like plants, need to be repotted.”

In retrospect, she says, “Coming to State was the best decision I ever made.”

But this isn’t goodbye. Oswald cares too much to shut the door.

“I think the College is in a good place, and it’s time for someone else to take the reins,” she says. “I won’t interfere, but I’ll always want to know about the good things happening. And there will always be good things happening because the folks here are such good people. They’re going to make me proud forever.”

And on that note, the Dean, who has one more promising semester ahead, returns to her favorite life quote from Thoreau: “To make one person’s life a little better, this is to succeed.”

And in this role, at this University, for its many students and faculty, Sharon Oswald has indeed succeeded.

Oswald oversaw the College’s yearlong centennial celebration in 2015, which included sponsoring the Alabama football game.

Photo by Kelly Price