Prospectus Spring 2011

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The Changing Face(s) of Business Education

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FINANCIAL LITERACY

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GEOFFROY STEPS DOWN

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Raisbeck Endowed Dean. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Labh Hira Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dan Ryan Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Katie Raymon Bob Elbert Writers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dennis Smith Dan Ryan Deborah Martinez .

Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PUSH Branding and Design

Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phillips Brothers Printing Contact College of Business Robert H. Cox Dean’s Suite 2200 Gerdin Business Building Ames, Iowa 50011-1350 515 294-7188 business@iastate.edu www.business.iastate.edu Prospectus is prepared twice per year by the College of Business at Iowa State University. It is sent without charge to alumni, friends, parents, faculty, and staff of the College of Business. Third-class bulk rate postage paid to Ames, Iowa, and at additional mailing offices.

The views and opinions expressed in this publication. do not necessarily represent official statements or policy of Iowa State University but are the personal views and opinions of the authors.

Prospectus welcomes correspondence from alumni and friends. Send your comments to Dan Ryan, editor, at the above email or postal address. Prospectus reserves the right to edit all correspondence published for clarity and length.

Iowa State University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, sex, marital status, disability,. or status as a U.S. veteran. Inquiries can be directed to the Director of Equal Opportunity and Compliance, 3280 Beardshear Hall, 515 294-7612.

The College of Business at Iowa State University is accredited by AACSB International — The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. The AACSB is the premier accrediting and service agency and service organization for business schools.

Dispatches from the New Cultural Revolution

Features

How We Got Here

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Past achievements are a. springboard for future success.

A Lesson from Basketball

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Education meets globalization.

Experience Preferred

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Adding perspective through. professional experience.

Changing Faces, Trading Places

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China’s expansion is impacting Iowa.

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The Quest for Financial Virtue

Teaching Honors students . sound financial values.

24 Launch Pad for Learning

A new class offers guidance. to potential business majors.

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Departments 2 28

Dean Labh Hira Briefs

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IN THIS ISSUE ■

FINANCIAL LITERACY

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GEOFFROY STEPS DOWN

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NEW DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR

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ON THE COVER NEW BUSINESS FACULTY ARE

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The Changing Face(s) of Business Education

Development Dr. Charles Handy

INCREASINGLY DIVERSE AND .

MORE EXPERIENCED. HOW IS .

THIS CHANGING THE COLLEGE. OF BUSINESS?

M ESSA GE FR O M THE DEA N

Welcoming Challenge, Embracing Change If you haven’t walked the halls of Gerdin Business Building recently, you may be in for a surprise on your next visit.

Discerning consumers understand the value of an Iowa State business degree.

— LABH HIRA

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The nearly 400 young Chinese faces are not the only difference. Listen and you’ll hear as well the voices not only of Chinese, but German-, African-, Indian-, and British-born faculty members, among others, as they lead a class or discuss a project with a student.

These voices are, in fact, no less than the vanguard of what can only be described as a “cultural revolution” (to borrow a phrase) that is changing the way business is taught across the globe today. And those who choose to sit out this revolution will only be left behind.

At Iowa State, we will not be left behind and we’re not content merely to follow: we aim to be in the vanguard.

As alumni and friends of the college, our readers are the last people who need to be told that business has changed dramatically over the past 25 years. Barriers to trade have fallen, Asia has risen, and the competition for jobs and business opportunities that was once defined by local, regional, and national economic zones has long gone fully global.

As business goes, so, inevitably, must go business education.

Today, the college finds itself facing challenges negative and positive, internal and external. Internally, our state appropriations have been slashed to the point where, today, public funding represents less than 20 percent of the cost of delivering a world-class business education.

That’s the negative.

The external challenge is far more positive.

We and other bricks-and-mortar schools face rising competition from commercial online educators who offer business degrees at all levels. However, discerning consumers understand the value of an Iowa State business degree.

And make no mistake: our students are discerning consumers. You and they know that our actual competition is—and must be—those institutions worldwide that offer hands-on learning opportunities in state-of-the-art classrooms and labs. That offer faculty educated at top schools, dynamic young scholars who not only disseminate knowledge but create it as well. These are the institutions that challenge us to take our game to the next level, to a larger stage that is global in every sense of the word.

So, yes, we are meeting both of these challenges. Through differential tuition in the college and general tuition increases at the Regents universities, our students are paying more. But, as you will read in the stories in this issue of Prospectus, today those students are getting so much more to prepare them to compete with the best the world has to offer.

We welcome the world to Gerdin—and we welcome its challenge as well.

*** ISU President Gregory Geoffroy recently announced his intention to step down no later than July 31, 2012. I want to offer my congratulations and thanks to him and his wife Kathy for their service to Iowa State. Dr. Geoffroy has been a strong leader who has guided the university through its most difficult period in recent memory. All of us in the College of Business wish him the best. ■

Labh S. Hira, Raisbeck Endowed Dean

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P R E FA C E

D I S PAT C H E S F R O M T H E N E W C U LT U R A L REVOLUTION AMES

CHINA

The College Responds to a Changing World of Business Education In the 1960s, as student uprisings roiled U.S. campuses, China retreated into the self-imposed isolation of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The “Cultural Revolution,” as it came simply to be known, was in large part a response to the debacle of the so-called “Great Leap Forward” earlier in the decade, a forced march into modernization-throughcollectivization that only pushed China farther down the international economic ladder.

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or 10 years, from 1966 to 1976, China emptied out its colleges and universities, dispatching its best minds to the countryside for “re-education” in Marxist ideology as they labored on collective farms. “Capitalist roaders” and assorted other counterrevolutionaries were driven from the Chinese Communist Party, as hardliners promoted the “scientific socialism” of “Mao Zedong Thought.”

Not until Mao’s death in 1976 and the subsequent purge of party hardliners would the nation’s economy and educational system recover under policies championed by Deng Xiaoping.

Today, no one needs to be reminded that China’s real “Cultural Revolution” began when, under Deng’s leadership, the state unleashed the power of the “capitalist roaders” IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY

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through market reforms beginning in the 1990s and extending to the present. Large-scale capital formation and investment was encouraged, stateowned enterprises were privatized, and citizens were allowed—even encouraged—to acquire private property, including businesses.

As part of the reforms, China undertook in this decade an overhaul of its university system in order to expand the availability of higher education to its rapidly growing middle class, many of whose members are using their new wealth to send their children abroad to American colleges and universities— including Iowa State. Especially intriguing is the nation’s wholesale adoption and aggressive promotion of an American-style business education for its citizens, including MBA and doctoral

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programs that the Chinese are determined will rank among the world’s best.

But it’s not just China: colleges and universities across the globe are revamping their curriculums and standards to conform to the American model. What’s more, foreign students are flocking to American business schools more than ever before, including PhD programs in business, where today foreign-born scholars represent the majority of new faculty produced

by American universities. In short, the American way of studying and teaching business has gone global, challenging institutions worldwide to take their games to the next level no less than with the globalization of business itself.

Iowa State is no exception. In this issue of Prospectus, we look at the College of Business’s response to this global challenge, to what is in effect a shift—if not, in fact, a revolution—in the worldwide culture of business education, and thus in the culture of the college as well. From the explosive growth in enrollment of Chinese students to the increasingly international makeup of our faculty, from a new doctoral program and a renewed focus on research, the following four articles chronicle the college’s efforts to rise to the challenge of delivering the best business education available to prepare our students to compete on the global stage. ■ 3

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H OW W E G OT H E R E College Leaders Lay a Foundation for the Future When the Gerdin Business Building was dedicated in 2004, many at Iowa State thought the College of Business had finally “arrived.” To the contrary, the college was preparing a radical—and necessary— departure from its past. Gerdin was the beginning of a process, not the end, a vehicle that would carry the college into its future.

“ The physical facility,” notes

Raisbeck Endowed Dean Labh Hira, “is just a catalyst for other enhancements you can bring because of the pride it gives your alums and donors, and the visibility and respect that it brings on campus.”

Those “enhancements,” Hira stresses, extend beyond Gerdin and Iowa State—beyond even Iowa and the nation—to embrace a sea change in the very culture of the college as it positions itself to be a player on the international business education stage.

T H E P H YS I C A L FA C I L I T Y I S J U S T A CATA LYS T F O R OT H E R E N H A N C E M E N T S YO U C A N BRING BECAUSE OF THE P R I D E , V I S I B I L I T Y, A N D R E S P E C T T H AT I T B R I N G S .

They include a new PhD program, paired with a renewed emphasis on groundbreaking research. They include a faculty reinvigorated by new academics from virtually every corner of the globe, steeped in both scholarship and industry. And they include a historical surge of Chinese undergraduates seeking the best business education their nation’s newly minted wealth can buy.

Welcome to the 21st-century College of Business at Iowa State.

A S T R AT E G I C R E S P O N S E If necessity is the mother of invention, then vision is the midwife attending the birth of an organization’s future. And, Hira says, necessity’s labor pains were getting too strong to ignore.

“A lot of ‘state’ schools are increasingly tuition-driven, with minimal state support,” Hira

acknowledges. “We’re getting to that stage, and I’ve been saying for a number of years that the state is not going to reverse this. So everybody is going to have to be more market-oriented,” he adds. “Business education is no exception.”

That shrinking state support has come at the same time forces worldwide are challenging American schools, demanding more and better resources to prepare students for competition in a global marketplace.

How, then, do you pay for the best minds to teach tomorrow’s managers and marketers? How do you provide the labs and technologies needed for a quality program? How do you generate new knowledge to help young graduates compete with well-educated peers overseas?

Business education in a market economy is, as Hira suggests, business after all—and the lifeblood of business

• Labh Hira

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is money. For the college, that means finding new revenue to fund the worldclass education students increasingly must have to succeed. It’s no surLABH HIRA, RAISBECK ENDOWED DEAN prise, then, that one of the first resources should be students themselves, who since 2009 have been asked to pay differential tuition in their junior and senior years for degrees that simply cost more to deliver than programs in other areas.

It’s a value proposition, says Rick Dark, interim chair of the college’s accounting and finance.

“Our undergraduates may be paying more,” he notes. “But they’re getting a lot more for their investment in their educations.”

Besides smaller classes, more faculty resources, and better labs and facilities, no small part of that added value comes from exposure to nearly 400 new Chinese undergraduates, a built-in network of colleagues from the nation positioned to be America’s top competitor for decades to come.

Not only that, most of those students from China’s burgeoning middle class pay full freight for their Iowa State educations, thereby subsidizing the educations of their American peers.

A third source of revenue has been alumni and friends, whose support has enabled the college not only to build Gerdin, but also to endow the named faculty positions Hira calls “critical” for raising the college’s international profile. It’s good for the college, good for students—and even good for alumni, whose degrees rise in value with the status of their alma mater.

THE COLLEGE’S ACADEMIC DEPARTMENT CHAIRS (FROM LEFT): TOM CHACKO, MANAGEMENT AND MARKETING; RICK DARK, ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE; QING HU, SUPPLY CHAIN AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS.

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W E H AV E S O M E V E RY SUCCESSFUL ALUMS AND THEY’RE GIVING BACK TO U S . T H AT E N A B L E S U S T O E N H A N C E O U R R E P U TAT I O N AND HELP OUR UNDERGRADS W I T H G R E AT O P P O RT U N I T I E S .

• Rick Dark

“We have some very successful alums from before we were a college,” Dark observes, “and they’re giving back to us. That enables us to enhance our reputation and help our undergrads with great opportunities in the business profession.”

A P R E C E D E N T F R O M O U R PA S T While in some respects this cultural shift may seem dramatic, it is not entirely unprecedented in the history of the college. And, in fact, it is not so much a “cultural revolution” in the sense of a radical break with the past—let alone the character of the college—but more an adaptive response to both need and opportunity.

Tom Chacko, chair of the departments of management and marketing, not only remembers a comparable shift in the college’s direction; he was part of that change more than 25 years ago.

“Within a year after we became a college,” Chacko recalls, “we had the MBA program approved. So the focus

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was shifting to more research, more graduate education.

And that kept up, subsequently. It was a cultural shift.”

Merely by TERRY CHILDERS, becoming a college DEAN’S CHAIR IN rather than a school MARKETING of business—let alone a department— in what is now the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, business at Iowa State was asserting an identity independent of other disciplines in the university. In fact, it was taking its first fledgling steps onto the national stage long occupied by its peer programs in engineering and agriculture, opening the possibility of potential conflict between the old guard and the new.

Thanks to strong leadership, though, that conflict never happened.

“I’d attribute that to Chuck Handy,” Chacko says, referring to the college’s founding dean. “But to give credit to all our faculty, they saw that what happened in the past didn’t work any longer, and that we were moving in a new direction.”

A L O T O F ‘ S TAT E ’ S C H O O L S A R E I N C R E A S I N G LY T U I T I O N - D R I V E N . E V E RY B O D Y I S G O I N G T O H AV E T O B E M O R E M A R K E T- O R I E N T E D .

• Labh Hira

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THE GERDIN BUSINESS BUILDING WAS A MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENT. BUT MOST IMPORTANT, IT HAS SERVED .

AS A CATALYST FOR THE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS.

Fast forward 25 years, and today the College of Business is taking its first not-so-tentative steps from that national stage into the international marketplace of business education, a full-throated claim to standing among the best America has to offer to its own—and the world’s— business aspirants.

“With the PhD, we’ve become a full-fledged business school where research becomes important,” adds Chacko. “We’re creating future faculty here, and that’s a huge contribution an institution can make.”

BULLISH ON THE COB That the college has achieved so much in seven short years since the Gerdin Business Building opened is remarkable; that it has done so during the sharpest economic downturn since the Great Depression is nothing short of astounding.

Qing Hu, holder of the Dean’s Professorship and chair of the supply chain and information systems department, embodies that achievement both personally and professionally.

A seasoned but still youthful scholar in only his second year at Iowa State, Hu has witnessed remarkable change in both his native China and himself the past 20 years. Still, he is impressed by what he’s seen in his short time here.

“It’s an amazing story,” Hu reflects. “In this overall adverse economic climate in which many other schools are contracting and eliminating departments, freezing hiring— even firing people—the college is able to continuously expand.

“That reflects well on the strategic management of the college’s leadership,” Hu continues, “and also on the university—from the president and provost’s support for this college—that we are allowed to

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hire new faculty in this kind of environment.”

And it’s not just leadership that’s bullish; it’s the new faculty themselves. Almost overnight, it seems, both accomplished scholar-teachers and top new PhDs from some of the world’s leading programs were looking at Iowa State with fresh eyes.

And while the college’s PhD program and other new resources may have drawn their interest to start, for many the deal was sealed by more time-tested qualities.

Assistant Professor of Marketing Sekar Raju admits that, when he started working on his PhD in 1998, Iowa State wasn’t even on his radar.

But by 2005, when he was looking

T H E VA L U E S R E M A I N . B U T W H AT H A P P E N S I S T H AT W E F I N D WAYS T O E M B R A C E O T H E R VA L U E S A S W E L L .

G R E AT U N I V E R S I T I E S R E A L LY H AV E G OT A GREAT BALANCE. • Terry Childers

to move up from his first appointment at the University of Buffalo, he knew that big changes were coming to Ames, and that research and graduate education were gaining significant resources in the college’s planning. Yet there was more.

“I met more people in my first couple of weeks at Iowa State than I did in four years at Buffalo,” Raju recalls. “People knocked on my door and said, ‘we heard you are new faculty; welcome to Iowa State University.’

“I was blown away by that!” he exclaims. “The congeniality and the way people interact with you are genuinely different here.”

C O R E VA L U E S R E M A I N The ability to take risks, to welcome change—to embrace the challenge of the present and the promise of the future without pause or reservation—is the hallmark of dynamic THE COLLEGE HAS MANY NOTABLE .

ACHIEVEMENTS SINCE THE GERDIN BUSINESS .

BUILDING OPENED, MANY DURING THE SHARPEST .

ECONOMIC DOWNTURN IN DECADES.

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organizations and dynamic people.

Dean’s Chair in Marketing Terry Childers was in the prime of his career when he left the University of SEKAR RAJU, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF Minnesota for MARKETING, WAS IMPRESSED WITH the University of THE WELCOME HE RECEIVED UPON Kentucky in 2000, ARRIVING IN AMES. and again when he left Kentucky for Iowa State in 2009.

Yet for Childers, it’s not so much a question of cultural change as growth from an already strong foundation.

“As the emphasis changes,” Childers reflects, “it does so without losing the values we already embrace. For example, by charging differential tuition and reducing class size, we’re also reducing teaching loads. And we’re doing that keeping in mind that the student experience is still very important to everyone.

“So the values remain,” Childers adds. “But what happens is that we find ways to embrace other values as well. Great universities really have got a great balance.”

Grounded in its abiding values of collegiality and service, that balance is reflected in the college’s outreach to new faculty, new students—and new opportunities to embrace the rising challenges of a new world and century. ■

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A LESSON FROM BASKETBALL The Globalization of College and Curriculum in the New Century The year before Andreas Schwab earned his bachelor’s degree at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, Schwab’s countryman and fellow basketball player Detlef Schrempf graduated from the University of Washington, where he had majored in “International Business.”

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hough tall, Schwab didn’t have quite the prowess on the basketball court of Schrempf, who was selected eighth overall in the 1985 NBA draft, and went on to play with the Indiana Pacers and Seattle Sonics in the 1990s. Schwab benched his hoop dreams and instead enrolled in an MBA program at Eastern Illinois University. He then went back to Germany for a master’s in business administration before returning to the States for a PhD in management from the University of Wisconsin.

Although listed as a forward, in another sense the 6’10” Schrempf played point for a surge of international players into the NBA, as from the 1980s on, dozens of Europeans made their names in what once was considered a quintessentially “American” sport. But if you asked him to explain the phenomenon, Schrempf would doubtless shrug and tell you there was no “German” basketball or “American” basketball (let alone “international basketball”)—there’s just basketball, and anyone with enough desire can be a player.

NOT UNTIL THE RISE OF BUSINESS CURRICULUMS IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES WA S T H E R E A N Y T H I N G APPROACHING A SCIENTIFIC S T U D Y O F M A N A G E M E N T. 8

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A N D R E A S S C H WA B W O U L D T E L L YO U T H E R E I S N O “ I N T E R N AT I O N A L B U S I N E S S ,” J U S T B U S I N E S S , A G A M E T H AT ’ S AT T R A C T I N G MORE—AND BETTER— P L AY E R S F R O M A C R O S S T H E G L O B E E A C H PA S S I N G Y E A R .

Schrempf’s college major notwithstanding, Andreas Schwab likewise would tell you there is no “international business,” just business, a game played on an international stage that’s attracting more—and better—players from across the globe each passing year.

A DIFFERENT BALLGAME Unlike basketball, business was hardly “Made in America.” Nor, strictly speaking, is “globalization” unique to our time: merchants have traded “globally” over seas and across continents for millennia in a variety of state-controlled, mercantile, and capitalist economic systems.

But business education? That’s a different ballgame.

From trade guilds to apprenticeships to “business schools,” every culture has had both formal and informal methods of educating people for business careers. But not until the rise of business curriculums in American universities—particularly the MBA in the 20th century—was there anything remotely approaching

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a scientific study of management, let alone a full professional path connecting it to careers in the business world.

And for most of the 20th century, that’s what business education remained: an American game that, like basketball, over the years attracted increasing numbers of foreign students to the United States to get the kind of education largely unavailable in their homelands.

“The U.S. system has always attracted foreign scholars at all levels,” says Schwab. “I think that draw is probably stronger today but also because it’s easier for someone to penetrate and get a job here.”

It’s still an American game. But anyone paying attention—or who has just spent a few days in the College of Business at Iowa State— would notice a big difference between the college’s birth in 1985 and today.

Schwab is the living embodiment of that difference, as are Iowa State’s Jing Zhang, Ginka Borisova, Toyin Clottey, Sekar Raju, Qian Wang, and hundreds of other young, foreignborn scholars who balance—and increasingly dominate—faculty rosters at American business schools today. As such, they reflect nothing less than a global shift in business education that fully parallels the globalization of business itself over the past 25 years.

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T H E C O S T O F O P P O RT U N I T Y While they have a decidedly international makeup, the college’s “Young Turks” came to learn and teach in the United States in the same progressive, scientific manner that made America the magnet and model for business education today.

And while some may wonder where native-born scholars fit into the equation, college leaders are quick to note that the changing face of TOYIN CLOTTEY, .

American business ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN faculties is at once a MANAGEMENT result of and response to the same market forces changing the face of business worldwide.

American students, says Raisbeck Endowed Dean Labh Hira, have increasingly shunned PhD programs in fields such as engineering and business over the past quarter century, as the American economy provided plenty of high-paying jobs for people with MBAs or even just undergraduate degrees.

T H E U . S . S YS T E M H A S A LWAYS AT T R A C T E D F O R E I G N S C H O L A R S AT A L L L E V E L S .

I T H I N K T H AT D R AW I S P R O B A B LY S T R O N G E R T O D AY. • Andreas Schwab

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ANDREAS SCHWAB, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT, REALIZED HE WAS BETTER SUITED TO COMPETE .

ON THE INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STAGE THAN THE .

BASKETBALL COURT.

“Job opportunities are much better for our undergraduates than other cultures,” Hira adds. “There aren’t a whole lot of jobs for people with an undergraduate degree in China. So the opportunity cost for them going to school is a lot lower than American students going to graduate education.”

By the logic of international markets, then, we won’t see many Americans going after PhDs unless and until the domestic market for their MBAs and bachelor’s degrees flattens sufficiently to make a four-year doctoral program economically attractive.

In the meantime, those new PhDs will continue to be foreign-born, young men and women who represent the best their nations have to offer in exchange for opportunities they simply cannot find SEKAR RAJU, ASSISat home—at least TANT PROFESSOR OF for now.

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But like all good business deals, the trade in international intellectual capital is a two-way street: while some of the sharpest minds in the world get shots at well-paying careers in American b-schools, American students—people who must make their careers competing on a global stage—will enjoy the benefit of sustained exposure to those minds.

“International scholars who come to business schools really bring tremendous value to business school education,” remarks Supply Chain and Information Systems Department Chair Qing Hu. “Twenty years ago, American businesses didn’t have to consider international or global strategies. ‘I’m the biggest manufacturer in the world,’ they’d say, or ‘I’m the biggest financial services company and all my clients are here, so I don’t need to care what Asia or Europe is doing.’

“But,” Hu continues, “in the last 20 years, tremendous technology development has made American businesses international and globalized.

Now, those companies are clients of the business schools; they hire our products. So when your clients are globalized, obviously they wish our products to be trained with those global perspectives.”

A FOCUS ON RESEARCH But the increasingly international makeup of college faculty is only one

part of the equation. Equally significant, these young scholars are products of some of the best PhD programs in their fields, and bring to Iowa State a reinvigorated focus on the kind of breakthrough research that at once will ensure their futures in the academy and help take their teaching of both graduate and undergraduate students to the next level.

Besides good-paying jobs on American business faculties, then, it’s the freedom—indeed, the professional necessity—of creating new knowledge that draws these global scholars to Iowa State and other American institutions. That research component simply isn’t available anywhere else to the extent it is here.

“They are teaching schools,” Sekar Raju remarks of his homeland’s colleges and universities. “Even the best-known schools—the Indian Institutes of Management—are all predominantly focused on teaching.

Only in the last few years, have we started to see schools coming up in India that are heavily focused on the American model.”

W H E N YO U R C L I E N T S A R E G L O B A L I Z E D , O B V I O U S LY THEY WISH OUR PRODUCTS TO BE TRAINED WITH THOSE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES. • Qing Hu

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The necessary complement to research, of course, is graduate educaQIAN WANG, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF tion. And though ACCOUNTING they are not yet as likely to teach in the college’s new PhD program as senior faculty, let alone serve as major professor to PhD candidates, these younger faculty cohorts consider doctoral-level education an important factor in their teaching and, therefore, their decisions to come to Ames in the first place.

Moreover, most new faculty members acknowledge the possibility of working with their senior faculty colleagues both in conducting research and mentoring graduate students as part of their attraction to Iowa State. “There were people here who work in international finance— most of them in corporate finance, which is all the things I’m looking at,” Ginka Borisova remarks. “So the quality of the faculty definitely was a big attraction.”

As for mentoring, Jing Zhang recalls the value of working with both junior and senior faculty in her own PhD program, and hopes to begin a similar apprenticeship under a senior college scholar in the near future. It’s a winning proposition for everyone concerned, she notes.

“A senior supervisor has more experience and contacts and financial opportunities,” Zhang relates,

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“where a junior supervisor has a solid research methodology, updated knowledge and literature—that would be a good combination for a PhD student.”

A REMINDER FROM THE DEAN Research, doctoral students, and an international orientation, together with the opportunity of continuing their professional development through work with senior scholars in an exceptionally collegial environment: it’s clear that the College of Business’s “new” culture has much to offer these young new faculty faces. But Labh Hira expects much in return.

“I make it absolutely clear when I visit with a faculty recruit that for us to get national exposure, research is important, publications are important, teaching graduate education is important,” Hira says. “But there’s no doubt that, as with any large public institution, our main mission is undergraduate education.

“I don’t want them ever to forget that,” Hira continues. “Graduate education provides intellectual enrichment they can bring into the undergraduate classroom, and that really creates a different type of experience when you permeate that culture.”

It creates, in fact, a different kind of culture, one the college has no choice but to embrace if its graduates are to compete on the world stage. And, inevitably, it creates as

PROSPECTUS

I M A K E I T A B S O L U T E LY C L E A R TO FA C U LT Y R E C R U I T S T H AT R E S E A R C H I S I M P O R TA N T, P U B L I CAT I O N S A R E I M P O RTA N T, T E A C H I N G G R A D UAT E E D U CAT I O N I S I M P O RTA N T. B U T O U R MAIN MISSION IS UNDERG R A D UAT E E D U CAT I O N .

• Labh Hira

well a different set of demands on Hira and the rest of his leadership team to balance this new focus on research and graduate education— the tickets to the global stage— with the college’s abiding mission and cultural values.

“It’s up to the leadership,” Hira acknowledges, “to make it a healthy rather than unhealthy tension, where the pendulum swings too far in one direction.”

For as the college keeps its eye on the world, Iowa keeps its eye on the college. ■

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EXPERIENCE PREFERRED New Faculty Bring Industry Ties with Them While leaders in Gerdin acknowledge the need to change the way the college does business to meet challenges both at home and abroad, they’re quick to qualify their terms. What they’re engaged in, they’ll tell you, is not so much a “revolution” as a necessary shift in the college’s culture.

I

n short, the “new” does not replace but instead stands on the shoulders of the tried and true, building on a foundation that has served the college and its stakeholders well for the past quarter century. Anchoring that foundation is, arguably, what has made American business education the gold standard for the world: the bond linking teaching and research to business as it’s actually practiced in today’s global economy.

“In business school, we don’t study natural phenomena like life

I F YO U H AV E N E V E R WO R K E D I N A N O R G A N I Z AT I O N , I T W I L L TA K E YO U E X T R A T I M E A N D E F F O RT T O I M A G I N E HOW AN ACTUAL ORGANIZ AT I O N B E H AV E S U N D E R C E RTA I N C I R C U M S TA N C E S .

sciences,” Supply Chain and Information Systems Department Chair Qing Hu reminds. “We study organizations and organizational processes. If you have never worked in an organization—if your life has been from school to school to school—then it will take you extra time and effort to imagine how an actual organization behaves under certain circumstances.”

It’s no wonder, then, that in addition to whatever other abilities or achievements they bring, the college’s new faculty are valued as well for the hands-on industrial experience most of them had even before earning their PhDs. Not only does that experience inform their own doctoral studies and research before arriving in Ames, it allows them to hit the ground running once they get here—and take their students along for the ride.

“We’re attracting a different sort of people,” says Raisbeck Endowed Dean Labh Hira. “Almost 100

percent of them are coming in with industry experience. You talk to our new faculty, they’ve worked five, ten, fifteen years in industry. It’s becoming more common in PhD programs.”

B R I D G I N G T H E O RY A N D P R A C T I C E That goes not just for the younger, but also for the college’s “older” new faculty. Hu himself is “Exhibit A” in this regard: both while and after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering, Hu spent seven years as a research engineer in Chinese heavy industry before enrolling in a PhD program at the University of Miami, and has continued his industrial engagement ever since.

And then there is Terry Childers, a senior scholar who, like Hu, came to Iowa State in 2009 as an endowed Dean’s Chair after years of research and teaching elsewhere. Like Hu as well, Childers paid his dues working several years in industry between his

• Qing Hu

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master’s and PhD programs, first directing consumer research for a national insurance company, then as a research analyst in the business-toGINKA BORISOVA, .

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR business area for a OF FINANCE large agricultural cooperative—all the while teaching quantitative methods as an adjunct at Illinois State University.

“Those were great learning opportunities for me,” Childers recalls, “and I’ve always found that kind of experience valuable in terms of being able to see problems from the side of the academic as well as the side of the practitioner. It’s where we need to go to provide background for my classes, and talk about some of the kinds of projects we did at that time, as well as things I’ve done as a consultant post-PhD.”

Industrial experience before the PhD is especially valuable in order to maintain perspective, and to keep research and theory grounded in and connected to practice, rather than first approaching business from a largely theoretical or “academic” perspective. That’s important, Childers suggests, because academics are necessarily theoretical in nature, as his long experience in his own field of marketing amply demonstrates.

“The theories we try to develop and apply to help us understand what goes on with the consumer tend to be broad and not specific to a particular industry, let alone an individual firm,” Childers acknowledges. “The goal is to find an explanation that can include as many different functions as possible.

“So it requires some skill and experience,” adds Childers, “to take that generalized theory and try to translate that back into a particular

firm’s unique nature. That’s part of what I do as a consultant.”

‘HOW DO I SELL IT?’ Though seasoned veterans Childers and Hu may be, the “younger” new faculty have been every bit their equals in getting meaningful real-world industrial experience under their belts and on their résumés before even considering the PhD. Indeed, for some it was their direct experience with industry that drove their higher academic pursuits in the first place—in Kevin Watson’s case, literally.

ALMOST 100 PERCENT OF O U R N E W FA C U LT Y A R E C O M I N G I N W I T H I N D U S T RY EXPERIENCE. THEY’VE WORKED FIVE, TEN, FIFTEEN Y E A R S I N I N D U S T RY. • Labh Hira

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PROSPECTUS

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KEVIN WATSON, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, BRINGS INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE TO THE .

CLASSROOM AND USES IT TO BENEFIT HIS STUDENTS.

Originally a student of finance and economics, Watson’s exposure to Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints while working on his MBA in the mid-1990s led him to consider its application to distribution problems in the trucking industry.

Energized by Goldratt’s ideas, Watson decided to make an appointment with an executive at the headquarters of a major North American carrier to pitch potential solutions to some particularly vexing distribution issues.

I H E A R D T H I S G U Y TA L K ABOUT SOMETHING IN HIS P L A N T, W H E R E T H E D I S T R I B U T I O N S YS T E M WA S G O I N G TO B E U P E N D E D. I S TA RT E D D E S I G N I N G A F I X — A N D T H AT B E CA M E M Y D I S S E RTAT I O N .

“I walked in the door,” Watson recalls, “and I looked like one of his new hires—I was 20-something.

They tried to put me off and put me off. I got fed up after about two hours, and so I said, ‘just listen.’ And I showed him what I had, and he sat there, and the more he listened, the more he was like, ‘wow!’ And he said, ‘how do I sell it?’

“I didn’t have any idea,” Watson continues. “To me, lower cost, better service, less inventory, less chance for damage—all that seemed selfexplanatory. But he wanted me to tell him how to sell it, and I couldn’t. I sat there and said, like, ‘It’s self-explanatory!’”

Being thus educated on the distance between academic theory and actual business practice, Watson persisted in his attempts to bridge the divide. Undaunted, he used a recommendation from one of his

MBA professors to arrange a meeting with two top supply chain experts at the University of Georgia, where he spent an entire day discussing his theories—and eventually enrolling in a doctoral program in operations management. Then, early on at Georgia, he attended a meeting of the American Production and Inventory Control Society.

“I went to APICS and heard this guy talk about something in his plant, where the distribution system was going to be upended,” Watson relates, brandishing a paintbrush that had sat on top of his bookcase.

“I carry the paintbrush because it was this guy and his company. So I took my knowledge and started designing a fix—and that became my dissertation.”

G O O D F O R E V E RY B O DY Kevin Watson’s early lessons in applying theory to real-world practice prepared him well to expand his industrial experience both during and after his PhD studies, working as a consultant for a number of major corporations. But at least as important, it prepared him to engage his students in dynamic relationships with the industries that will hire them once they leave Iowa State.

“This is a perfect discipline for that kind of symbiotic relationship between academics and industry,” Watson says. “But it’s also perfect for students. If I can get them into those

• Kevin Watson

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plants, have them do a couple days of hands on, come back and teach with that—and then have QING HU, CHAIR OF them go back and DEPARTMENT OF .

SUPPLY CHAIN AND present to those pracINFORMATION SYSTEMS titioners?” he asks.

“It’s good for the university,” he continues, “because it raises awareness of our students’ capabilities.

It’s good for the students, because they’re seeing decision makers who can actually hire them. It’s good for everybody.”

And while Watson will tell you that industry ties like those he seeks for his students’ benefit are not exceptional in the supply chain field, even areas that are less “hands on” at the undergraduate level are paying dividends in Gerdin classrooms, thanks to the industry experience the college’s new hires bring with them along with their academic credentials.

IT’S G O O D F O R T H E U N I V E RSITY B E CAU S E I T R A I S E S AWA R E N E S S O F O U R S T U DENT S ’ CA PA B I L I T I E S . I T ’ S GOO D F O R T H E S T U D E N T S , BECAU S E T H E Y ’ R E S E E I N G DECI S I O N M A K E R S W H O CAN AC T UA L LY H I R E T H E M .

Indeed, in addition to linking students up with their futures in the form of potential employers, faculty industrial savvy can even serve to link them up with their own history and unfolding experience. Take assistant finance professor Ginka Borisova, whose personal experience growing up in a former Communist society transitioning to a market economy, coupled with her significant experience in the corporate privatization process before going for her PhD, gives her a unique platform from which to give her students extraordinary insights into their own lived experience.

“I get to give the students examples from the companies I am working with, but I also get to share what I experienced as far as the privatization process goes,” Borisova observes. “I get to bring that into the classroom to students who don’t know what privatization is.

“But,” she adds, “a lot of my Chinese students know exactly what I am talking about because it’s happening right now in China.”

A VA L U E - A D D E D P R O P O S I T I O N Whether it’s the hands-on opportunities Watson gives his students or the insights into their own lived experience Borisova gives hers, the immersion into industry that preceded the “purely” academic focus of these new hires during their PhD programs

• Kevin Watson

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PROSPECTUS

F O R P E O P L E W H O WA N T T O B E A G R E AT C L A S S R O O M T E A C H E R A N D E D U C AT O R — A N D A L S O A G R E AT RESEARCHER AND S C H O L A R — YO U H AV E T O H AV E S O M E R E A L WORLD EXPERIENCE. • Qing Hu

is, inarguably, a value-added proposition for the college and all its stakeholders.

“For people who want to be a great classroom teacher and educator—and also a great researcher and scholar—you have to have some real-world experience,” Qing Hu stresses.

“The industry experience,” Labh Hira adds, “makes for a much more meaningful and relevant educational experience.” ■

I ’ V E A LWAYS F O U N D T H AT K I N D O F E X P E R I E N C E VA L U ABLE IN TERMS OF BEING ABLE TO SEE PROBLEMS FROM THE SIDE OF THE ACADEMIC AS WELL AS THE SIDE OF THE PRACTITIONER. • Terry Childers

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C H A N G I N G FA C E S , TRADING PLACES The College Prepares to Take On the World Let’s make this clear from the start: staff members in the Union Pacific Undergraduate Programs Office in the College of Business did not simply walk in one spring morning in 2010 to discover that nearly 400 Chinese undergraduates would be enrolling that fall.

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till, you’d be excused for expecting a deer-in-the-headlights look from college officials. After all, given the college enrolled only 20 undergraduates from the People’s Republic as recently as 2003, the exponential leap in Chinese enrollment between then and now left more than a few veteran hands breathless at the scope and speed of the change.

As the tongue-in-cheek ad to the right suggests, it’s not that American academics didn’t see it coming. And, by the way, that teaser wasn’t pulled from thin air, but was based on a figure offered by the late Lu Fuyuan, then China’s vice minister of education. But the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business was, like Lu himself,

T H E C O L L E G E E N R O L L E D O N LY 2 0 U N D E R G R A D UAT E S F R O M C H I N A A S R E C E N T LY A S 2 0 0 3 .

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HELP WANTED seeks 1.4 million MBA Large, developing country rnment bureaucracies, stategraduates to manage gove t ventures. Understanding of owned enterprises and join st. Untapped opportunities international markets a mu await successful applicants.

NEWSLINE, AACSB INTERNATIONAL, 1998

anticipating a crush of graduate students enrolling in American institutions, not undergraduates.

What’s more, where in the late 1990s educators on both sides of the Pacific thought those 1.4 million managers would be trained largely in America, even that assumption has been turned on its head: a nation that lays high-speed rail lines and erects entire cities in the space of a

few years today has similar ambitions to open dozens of world-class, American-style management schools, many of them fully prepared to enroll those 400 young Chinese just starting out at Iowa State.

And they’ll do it the same way they’ve built China’s 21st-century infrastructure to date: they’ll spend the money, and they’ll make it happen.

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JING ZHANG, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT, KNOWS WHAT A VALUABLE COMMODITY HER PHD AND AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IS IN HER NATIVE CHINA.

AN AMERICAN FIVE-YEAR PLAN Although anyone who has paid attention to world affairs the past 20 years knows better than to underestimate China, American b-school leaders can relax: the United States is still the mecca of business education for China and the rest of the world,

LIKE C H I N A , T H E R E S T O F T H E WOR L D I S R E - E N G I N E E R I N G ITS B U S I N E S S E D U CAT I O N INFR A S T R U C T U R E TO M O D E L THE A M E R I CA N S TA N DA R D. IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY

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and looks to remain so for the foreseeable future.

But like China, the rest of the world is re-engineering its business education infrastructure to model the American standard. And as economies in China, India, and elsewhere expand, it’s not hard to foresee the day when the flood of foreign students—and their tuition dollars— slows, if not to a trickle, then at least a stream more modest than today’s.

So to forge the future, you strike when the iron is hot. “The college is moving huge into the globalization idea. We just finished a five-year strategic plan,” says Management and Marketing Department Chair Tom Chacko. “We’ve talked about it before, but now one of the five goals is globalization of the college, education-wise and student-wise.”

Those 400 Chinese students are part of the plan, as are the foreignborn faculty and PhD students who will teach them and their 2,800 American classmates. But aware of the fast-changing situation overseas, college leaders aren’t waiting for the world to come to Ames. Just last December, Raisbeck Endowed Dean Labh Hira and Supply Chain and Information Systems Department Chair Qing Hu visited five top Chinese universities to open discussions on expanded exchanges of both faculty and students.

PROSPECTUS

“They are eager to cooperate with us,” Hu remarks. “They want to learn from us, and we benefit from having those faculty members and doctoral students coming over.”

Still, neither Hu nor Hira has any illusions about the ultimate goals of the Chinese or any other nation seeking to elevate its educational infrastructure. China, Hu observes, knows that the fastest way to build world-class business faculties is to pluck away top scholars already in leading American universities.

“They put them back into Chinese universities,” Hu continues, “let them become deans and department chairs, key professors, directors of research laboratories and centers, and give them tons of research funding and research support.”

Call it “reverse poaching” if you wish, but Hu only smiles at the suggestion. After all, “poaching” talent is common in both academia and business, simple market dynamics that brought all that top Chinese

THE CHINESE WANT TO LEARN FROM US, AND WE CAN ALSO BENEFIT FROM HAVING THOSE FACULTY MEMBERS AND DOCTORAL STUDENTS COMING OVER. • Qing Hu

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ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT TOYIN CLOTTEY’S PROFESSORS IN GHANA WERE EDUCATED IN THE UNITED STATES OR UNITED KINGDOM.

talent—including Hu himself— to the United States in the first place.

Yet Hu sees the world taking its game to the next level beyond merely repatriating its own.

“Down the road—and I see this happening in three to five years,” Hu says, “Chinese universities will try to get top scholars from American institutions regardless of nationality.”

CHINA RETOOLS ITS SCHOOLS According to Jing Zhang, that’s happening already: she has been “approached” personally by colleagues in China about returning.

And though she doesn’t hold an

A N D I F YO U H AV E A PHD FROM A TOP AMERICAN UNIVERSITY? E V E N B E T T E R .”

• Jing Zhang

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American PhD, her several years at Iowa State, together with an impressive list of publications in peer-reviewed journals, makes her an eminently “poachable” commodity.

“I know the professors in the universities,” Zhang says. “The government really wants to push that. They look for work experience. And if you have a PhD from a top American university? Even better.”

According to Zhang, Beijing’s Tsinghua University—easily one of the best schools in the nation—has had no fewer than 40 new scholars join their business faculty in the past four years.

All but one, she says, hold American PhDs. What’s more, Tsinghua’s b-school has gotten a jumpstart on Americans themselves teaching in Chinese universities, already boasting three leading American-born faculty members.

Whether native or foreign, this rapid infusion of American-

educated talent into China’s schools represents a kind of “shock therapy” for a curriculum that had become ossified and inflexible over decades of education based on Marxist social and economic dogma. Zhang acknowledges that her own education in the 1990s at Beijing’s Renmin University left her unprepared for the rigors of the westernstyle curriculum at the National University of Singapore, where she earned her PhD. “It was a big shock, initially,” Zhang recalls, “I found it hard to understand why they needed so many formulas and mathematics to do this research—and I’m a figure person! I picked it up fast, but that was still a pretty big learning curve.

“Now,” she adds, “most of the business schools are doing this methodology and way of doing research.”

But it’s not just China. If you think the radical divide in methodology Zhang cites is due to “cultural” differences between East and West—or even between Marxist and capitalist systems, for that matter—Andreas Schwab has news for you.

Until recently, Schwab says, even German universities focused more on “theoretical” narratives to describe the way business worked, paying less attention to the quantitative, empirical methods favored by American schools.

But that has changed dramatically, due,

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unsurprisingly, to market forces unleashed by surging globalization. Over the last couple of years alone, he notes, German scholars have completely ANDREAS SCHWAB, .

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR reversed course, and OF MANAGEMENT instead of German publications, now direct their research and efforts toward publication in U.S. “A-level” journals.

“That means Germans are orienting themselves toward interacting with international scholars and international schools,” says Schwab. “Thereby these bridges get developed, which,” he admits, “probably should have been developed a long time ago.”

‘A S L O W E R P R O C E S S ’ Whether to supercharge their nations’ surging economies or simply to help maintain their countries’ status as trading leaders, business schools across the globe will continue to adopt the American model of education. Scholars will cross international borders, and one can even anticipate a time when the faces and voices of American faculty in top schools in Beijing, Berlin, or New Delhi are as common as the Chinese, German, and Indian scholars energizing business education at Iowa State today.

But as global trade increases and international barriers fall, does a rising economic tide lift all boats, educationally speaking? It’s one thing for America and other western nations to “poach” the best and brightest from China and India, countries that either now or in the near future can afford to “poach” that talent back. But what of those nations without the economic momentum of a China or India, let alone the historical prowess and privilege of a Germany or the United States?

As a young faculty member on his first appointment, Toyin Clottey has no reservations at all about making his career in the United States rather than his homeland of Ghana.

Although politically stable and relatively prosperous compared to many of its West African neighbors—the discovery of massive oil reserves in 2007 is expected to bring significant income to the country starting this year—Ghana’s university system does not offer a business PhD, let alone anything comparable to the opportunities of more developed countries.

“There are a lot of bright people back home,” Clottey observes. “If Ghana could train its brightest as well—and there’s some push toward that—then they wouldn’t need to go elsewhere. But if they’re not given the education and the other things that go with it, there’s only so much you can do.”

While grateful for the opportunity to teach and do research in the United States, as things stand currently in his homeland, Clottey can only envy the career choices available to his Chinese colleagues in both China and the United States. And while he finds the idea of helping to build his homeland’s educational infrastructure appealing, for now at least that’s best done working on his own career in the United States.

“Where does someone who wants to make a contribution go?” Clottey asks. “All of the professors I had back in Ghana were schooled either in the U.K. or the U.S. But all the professors I had were a lot older, and not all of them came back straightaway; it was after some time.”

Clottey smiles, then adds, “It’s just a slower process than in China.”

B R E A C H I N G C U LT U R A L B A R R I E R S Walk into the College of Business tomorrow and you can see 400 young Chinese faces where a few years ago there were only 20. Perhaps one day you’ll see 400 African faces in those seats, some perhaps from Toyin Clottey’s homeland. For now,

WHERE DOES SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO MAKE A CONTRIBUTION GO? • Toyin Clottey

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I F W E WA N T TO M A I N TA I N O U R S TAT U S A S O N E O F T H E LEADING RESEARCH AND T E AC H I N G I N S T I T U T I O N S I N T H E C O U N T RY … W E H AV E TO G O G L O BA L .

• Qing Hu

though, the globalization of business education remains largely a twoway affair between Asia and the West, with the United States and China as dominant partners.

It’s a start—both for China and for us. But even here, obstacles remain.

The Chinese students, faculty say, tend to cluster among themselves, so instructors employ strategies that place them in project teams with their American peers. Products of the more formal teaching style still common in Chinese K–12 classrooms, they are reluctant to speak up in class, to offer their own or challenge their classmates’ opinions—let alone their instructors’.

Combined with vocational pressures from home, that ingrained deference to perceived authority steers most of these students toward majors in accounting and finance, notes Jing Zhang, and away from the “softer” skills needed to succeed in management and marketing—few native Chinese

20

students, she says, enroll in her management courses.

That isn’t the case, however, for Zhang’s colleague in accounting, Qian Wang, who was surprised to find last semester that in one of her course sections Chinese undergrads represented 25 percent of enrolled students and fully one-third in her other section. Besides her knowledge, Wang says, the students have used her experience as a resource to help them navigate the unfamiliar waters of American academic life, including advice on graduate education in the United States and letters of recommendation.

“I’m young, and they know I came here myself only five or six years ago,” Wang says. “So we have a very similar background.” ‘ W E H AV E T O G O G L O B A L’ If, as Qing Hu observes, it’s only a short time before American-born faculty start teaching in Chinese b-school labs and classrooms, perhaps then American students will follow, bringing with them their own cultural challenges for their Chinese and American instructors to break down.

For now, though, the benefits of broader exposure—difficult though it may be at times—seemingly lie with the Chinese.

Still, college leaders say, Iowa State must press whatever advantage

it can find in reaching out to China.

On the one hand, Hu insists, the college has no choice in the matter if it wishes to remain relevant, let alone strong, in the 21st century.

“If,” Hu asks, “we want to maintain our status as one of the leading research and teaching institutions in the country—and if high school graduates in the state are declining over the next 10 or 15 years, the population shrinking, and our neighboring states have a similar situation—how can we maintain our leadership position in research and education? We have to go global.”

And while the Chinese students bring obvious financial benefits to the college, simply exposing American undergraduates to their future colleagues and competitors over the course of four years gives them insights and connections they can ill afford to be without as they forge their careers.

“The companies realized this years ago,” says Hu: “if you have no global strategy, then you have no strategy, no matter what company you are. And eventually it evolves as, if you don’t have a China strategy, you don’t have a strategy.”

As he and other leaders in the college look to its future, Qing Hu will assure you: Iowa State has a strategy. ■

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$ $$

$$ $ The

Quest forFinancial ‘Virtue’{ } ISU Honors Students .

Tackle Personal .

Financial Planning

IF, AS THE OLD SAYING GOES, THE SHOEMAKER’S CHILDREN GO BAREFOOT, THEN WHAT OF THE FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING WHIZ WHO CAN’T BALANCE HER OWN CHECKBOOK?

TOM COATES, CEO OF CONSUMER CREDIT OF DES MOINES, IS A FAMILIAR PRESENCE IN THE FIGHT TO EDUCATE CONSUMERS ABOUT PERSONAL FINANCE. HE VISITED AN HONORS SEMINAR EARLIER THIS SPRING.

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CALL IT A PROVERB FOR THE MODERN AGE, but Lecturer in Finance Shoba Premkumar will tell you the notion has more than a little currency for Americans in general these days, and students in particular.

“For instance, a lot of students might know about corporate finance, about stock and bond valuations generally,” Premkumar says. “But very few actually apply this knowledge to their personal lives.”

It’s the same with just about everything in their personal finances—especially the assumption of debt. That’s why Premkumar coordinated a one-credit seminar on the topic this semester for 20 students in the Iowa State Honors Program, including students from majors across the university, not just from the College of Business.

For six weeks, the students benefitted from the advice and perspectives of a number of industry experts in personal finances. These included people such as Doug Borkowski, director of ISU’s Financial Counseling Clinic; Chad Olson, assistant director of the ISU Office of Financial Aid; Jake Zehr of TIAA-CREF retirement services; Mitch Peterson of Stifel Nicolaus brokerage and investments; Rick Reger of American National Insurance Co.; and Tom Coates, CEO of Consumer Credit of Des Moines.

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The Quest for Financial

{

}

A number who came actually opened an IRA because of it. It helped them think in terms of long-term planning.

• Shoba Premkumar

B E A R I N G A H E AV Y L O A D Over the course of the seminar, Premkumar and her personal finance pros walked the students through a number of issues impacting them both now and in the future. In her experience, Premkumar says, students are quite receptive to topics such as insurance, even though for most of them that’s an area largely covered by their parents’ policies. And although their own retirements are, quite literally, nearly a lifetime away, students found even retirement planning a compelling subject.

“You’d be surprised,” Premkumar says. “A lot of students thought it was very valuable, and a number who came actually opened an IRA because of it. It helped them think in terms of long-term planning.”

Still, long-term planning is critically dependent on near-term decisions and behavior. It was therefore unsurprising that subjects such as student loans and credit card debt loomed large in the discussions. Student loans are an especially relevant issue at Iowa State, where the average indebtedness of students is nearly $30,000 by the time they leave Ames—one of the highest debt loads in the nation. While there may be several factors contributing to that unenviable distinction, Premkumar doesn’t hesitate to point the finger at one in particular.

“Their financial aid packages are awarded to them,” Premkumar notes, “and they have them available on AccessPlus (Iowa State’s online clearinghouse for student accounts). So they can withdraw the money and use it for tuition or any other living expense. And the fact that the money is available and easily accessible puts temptation in their way.”

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TRAPPED IN A VICIOUS CYCLE But the misuse of financial aid isn’t the only temptation students face: at least as pernicious is the easy availability

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‘Virtue’

of credit cards on campuses, as card issuers scramble to land young prospects newly empowered to assume debt without co-signers for the first time in their lives. And though the financial crisis and recession of the past several years has led issuers to trim back their solicitations, many students still manage to leave campus—sometimes prematurely—bearing heavy loads of consumer debt.

That’s a subject Tom Coates has been wrestling with over nearly a quarter century in the consumer credit business. “I asked as we started the class how many had credit cards,” Coates recalls. “The majority—at least two-thirds—had cards.

“Now, if we look at statistics,” Coates continues, “by the time they’re juniors and seniors, college students have a few thousand dollars charged up on their credit cards in addition to their student loans and car loans and other things they have. That makes it very difficult in today’s economy.”

It’s bad enough, Coates says, to carry that debt burden on top of student loans after graduation into a good job market; but, he warns, it can be positively disastrous in a weak market like the one we’re in today. The combination of heavy debt and poor job prospects often forces the newly graduated back into their parents’ homes, at least temporarily.

And if that debt burden gets too onerous?

“Often students drop out of college and get a job just because they incurred so much debt on the credit cards that these payments couldn’t be deferred,” Coates says. “And by running and defaulting on those other debts, it can disqualify them for other student loans they might need to finish up.”

Not only that, the vicious cycle of debt, default, and deferment of their educations can damage credit scores so badly that students may never be able to land the kinds of jobs they’d need to get out of those holes, given the increased use of credit scores by employers in screening applicants. And with the federal government cutting

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If we look at statistics, by the time they’re juniors and seniors, college students have a few thousand dollars charged up on their credit cards.

• Tom Coates

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The Quest for Financial

subsidies, even if they were inclined to return to school, private lenders are far less forgiving of bad credit, especially after the recent financial crisis that was caused in no small part by questionable loans.

E M B R A C I N G A ‘ V I R T U O U S ’ A LT E R N AT I V E Those are bleak scenarios, to be sure. Fortunately, though, they describe the behavior and resulting outcomes of a minority of students—and personal finance pros like Coates and Premkumar mean to keep it that way. That involves getting students to invest their futures in a “virtuous cycle” of personal thrift and responsibility, a phenomenon, Coates observes, that is already happening in the general population.

“When we started Consumer Credit in 1987,” Coates says, “we as a nation had 100 billion in credit card debt.

By 2008—the year of the crash—we had touched a trillion in revolving debt that people were paying interest on—a tenfold increase.

“But for the last 10 quarters,” he continues, “we’ve actually seen people paying down their debts: we’re now down to about $800 billion. And we’ve never seen this concerted effort to pay down consumer debt and at the same time come back and ramp up private savings to a more acceptable level. In 2006 to 2008, we saw negative personal savings in this country; we’re now back up to a 5 to 6 percent level of personal savings.”

SHOBA PREMKUMAR, LECTURER IN FINANCE, OFFERED A SEMINAR ON PERSONAL FINANCE TO IOWA STATE HONORS STUDENTS. A YEAR AGO SHE OFFERED A SIMILAR SEMINAR TO THE CAMPUS AND AMES COMMUNITIES.

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{

}

Small changes can have big impacts in their budgets. Like waiting to see a movie at the dollar theater instead of paying $7 or $8 dollars every week to go to the movies.

• Shoba Premkumar

Another tool for driving the need for long-range planning home to students, Coates adds, is currently in development by the Iowa Student Loan Liquidity Corporation, a nonprofit provider of student loan services to Iowa families. In that program, he says, lenders would sit down with students at the point of first borrowing, analyze the professional field they seek to enter, and project their future earnings over the term of repayment of the loan. In this manner, students would have a more realistic picture of their financial futures post-college and could adjust their borrowing and even vocational plans accordingly.

P R I VAT E G O O D S , P U B L I C B E N E F I T S Still, as critical as student debt may be—whether in the form of education loans, car loans, or credit cards—it’s just one piece of a lifelong puzzle that, the earlier they start, the sooner students will master. And in that regard, says Premkumar, even the seemingly most inconsequential decisions now can make a big difference later in students’ lives.

“I emphasize to students how small changes can have big impacts in their budgets,” Premkumar stresses. “Like waiting to see a movie at the dollar theater instead of paying $7 or $8 dollars every week to go to the movies.

Or spending more time cooking at home rather than going to restaurants.

“I’m bringing it to a personal level,” she says, and adds, “When I teach corporate finance, it’s different.”

And it’s not just personal virtue—let alone personal finances—that’s at stake in all this, Premkumar notes: everyone does better when students are conscientious stewards of their personal finances.

“If each individual makes responsible decisions,” she says, “not only is it good for them individually, but it’s good also for the entire economy. Even if they take small measures, it results in good future consequences.” ■

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LAUNCH PAD FOR HERE’S A CONUNDRUM: HOW DO YOU GET BEYOND THE BASICS, .

WHEN YOU CAN’T AGREE WHAT THE BASICS ARE IN THE FIRST PLACE?

J

ust about any academic major at Iowa State has some means of “introducing” students to their field of study. Typically, this will involve an “introductory” course that grounds students in the broad fundamentals of their discipline before they narrow their focus through specialization.

But just what constitutes those “fundamentals” in a field as all encompassing as “business” is open to debate. Would an introductory course focus on basic knowledge and skill sets common to all majors in the College of Business? And, if so, just what are those?

THE DISCONNECT FOR BUSINESS STUDENTS IS THAT THEY’D COME INTO PRE-BUSINESS AND TAKE COURSES OUTSIDE THE COLLEGE—ALL THOSE GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS.

* ANN COPPERNOLL 24

Would it involve a historical overview of “business” as practiced through the ages? (Good luck with that!) Would it simply offer an overview of each of the eight majors offered by the college, so students had the information they needed to make informed choices?

More? Less? All of the above?

A BRIEF HISTORY According to Senior Lecturer Scott Elston, who coordinates the new Intro to Business curriculum, the college had an introductory class as recently as 20 years ago, but it fell out of vogue as community colleges began offering similar courses.

“My sense is that somehow it didn’t meet the academic rigor at that time that business schools wanted to promote,” Elston recalls. “It seemed to be more practitioner-oriented than ‘academic’.”

As a fledgling unit that had been only recently accredited, “academic rigor” centered on the six developing

major areas of study was what the new College of Business was all about. So instead of an intro to “business,” students instead would get the more specific— and, presumably, more “rigorous”— exposure to their particular fields after declaring their majors.

Oh, there were still general, collegewide introductory courses, says Director of Undergraduate Programs Ann Coppernoll. There was “Business 101,” an orientation course that focused primarily on the “business” of being a business major—course sequences, requirements, advisers, etc.

And then there was “BusAd 201,” in which working professionals would give undeclared business majors an overview of particular vocational fields—say, supply chain or accounting.

“For a number of years in this course,” Coppernoll observes, “they would talk about all of the functional areas of business, and how the coursework the students were taking was applied. But the disconnect for busi-

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LEARNING

BUSAD 250 GETS STUDENTS .

OFF THE GROUND FLOOR—.

EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT .

BUSINESS MAJORS

SCOTT ELSTON, SENIOR LECTURER AND COORDINATOR OF THE NEW INTRO TO BUSINESS CURRICULUM, AIMS TO GIVE FLEDGLING BUSINESS STUDENTS THE “BIG PICTURE” PERSPECTIVE ON THE BUSINESS WORLD.

ness students is that they’d come into pre-business and take courses outside the college—all those general education requirements.”

In other words, discussing with students the practical application of specialized knowledge they had yet to acquire seemed, well, just a little like putting the professional cart before the educational horse.

BREAKING THROUGH BOUNDARIES So, faced with the challenge of past efforts that were too fundamental, too fragmented, or just too premature in a student’s undergraduate career, college faculty and staff went back to the

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drawing board to design a course that would give all business majors a common experience and orientation before they steered themselves into their particular majors—but that wouldn’t jump the academic gun by presuming knowledge they had yet to acquire.

“This version gives students a ‘big picture’ perspective on the business world,” Elston says. “It exposes them to how those functional areas—not only their individual roles—work together to achieve business objectives.

“That’s the difference,” adds Elston, “the evolutionary step this has taken.

We’re trying to reduce these boundaries in a pre-business experience. Then,

PROSPECTUS

THIS EXPOSES STUDENTS TO HOW THOSE FUNCTIONAL AREAS—NOT ONLY THEIR INDIVIDUAL ROLES— WORK TOGETHER TO ACHIEVE BUSINESS OBJECTIVES.

* SCOTT ELSTON after they go into the professional program and pursue their specialization, they’re not seeing it totally new for the first time when it comes together in the capstone course.”

Still, Elston and Coppernoll want to make it clear that the new BusAd 250 introductory course is not a substitute for these other efforts, but rather a complement to them. Students still need the insights these other approaches offer, Coppernoll says.

“So, in sequence,” she continues, “they learn about the functions of business; they learn about careers in business and how to get a job; and they are also required to figure out

25

LAUNCH PAD FOR LEARNING

STUDENTS MAKE PRESENTATIONS TO THEIR CLASSES IN THE FORM OF A “SHAREHOLDERS REPORT” THAT CAPS THEIR MANAGEMENT TENURES, REVIEWING THE RESULTS .

OF THEIR DECISIONS. how everything fits together—it’s a continuum of coursework.”

In fact, Elston notes, most students taking the course to date—it was first offered in the spring 2010 term—have already decided what their majors will be, though some may change their minds as a result of taking the course.

So instead of offering a menu of majors from which pre-business students can select, then, BusAd 250 seeks to give students a more integrated view of how business actually works by exposing them to the ways in which the various disciplines interact in a realistic business project.

A TEAM EFFORT Using a format in which they form company “teams,” Elston says, students engage in a hands-on simulation in the electronics sensor industry for an eight-week period that represents

26

ANN COPPERNOLL, DIRECTOR OF UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS, ADVISES AMINATA DABO, SENIOR IN ACCOUNTING.

eight years in the life of the enterprise. Each team is responsible for designing, pricing, and marketing— in fact, for every aspect of its business and product.

“They can buy productive capacity,” Elston says. “They can adjust their plant in terms of technology in order to make it more efficient. They have to decide how they’re going to finance it, whether they’re going to use stock, debt, current cash flow— all of that. And they get to see the results of their decisions in financial terms on a weekly basis and debrief their decision processes.”

Elston, who has taught all of the course sections to date, leaves the structure of the teams up to the students themselves. That may include electing functions by specialty—say, a director of research and development, a finance specialist, a supply chain manager, and a marketer. Or, given the unlikelihood of, say, equal numbers of prospective accountants and marketers, it may mean simply allowing everyone on a team to be generalists, jointly

responsible for all decisions. Elston’s only requirement, he says, is that teams embrace the greatest diversity possible—as that, too, reflects the real world of work they will one day enter.

At the end of the course, students make presentations to their classes in the form of a “shareholders report” that caps their “eight-year” management tenures, reviewing the results of their decisions. In addition to tying everything together, Elston says, it gives the students one of their first opportunities to develop the kinds of communication and presentation skills they’ll need to succeed in the real world of business.

EVEN STUDENTS WHO THINK THEY ALREADY KNOW WHAT THEY WANT TO DO CAN TEST THEIR DECISIONS IN A REALWORLD SIMULATION BEFORE PLUNGING HEADLONG INTO .

THEIR MAJORS.

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“Hopefully,” Elston adds, “there’s this good flow from the practical side into the more academic side of each one of these areas as well.”

‘NEVER GIVE UP’ Reaction to the new requirement has generally been favorable, Coppernoll notes, as most students enrolling are coming in on the new course catalog, so haven’t had to change their expectations. In any event, she adds, “The students I’ve talked to about the class seem to really like it.”

Count Alexandre Andrade among those enthusiasts. Though initially frustrated at having to take “another ‘required’ course,” the sophomore double major in management and international business became a convert. “My opinion changed a bit because I got to meet Scott,” says Andrade, who has stayed in touch with Elston since finishing the course last year.

“Also, I enjoyed the virtual business project we did,” Andrade continues. “It gave me a lot of insight on how numbers affect a business. The rest of the material was interesting, but it didn’t switch my decision of major and minor.

If anything, it supported my decision.”

And that, Elston would say, is one of the desired outcomes: namely, that

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even students who think they already know what they want to do can benefit by testing their decisions in a realworld simulation before plunging headlong into their majors. By seeing in practical terms how a given business function works as part of a system comprehending many functions, students will enter their majors with an orientation to their subjects they just can’t get from books alone.

In Andrade’s case, that bonus included an introduction to the realworld consequences not only of executive decision making, but also of the failure to act—and the value of resilience in adversity.

“One night we forgot to submit our changes, and the whole company overflowed with unsold inventory,” Andrade recalls. “I was upset, but right after that, my team and I soared above everyone except for one team and placed second. It gave me the idea to just keep going and never give up. That’s something I didn’t realize I would get from the course.”

A BENEFIT FOR ALL That sort of lesson, Coppernoll says, helps not only business students like Andrade, but anyone at Iowa State who might benefit from a rigorous

PROSPECTUS

EVEN IF STUDENTS CHOOSE NOT TO BE A BUSINESS MAJOR, THEY CAN STILL HAVE AN IDEA HOW BUSINESS AFFECTS SOMEBODY IN AGRICULTURE OR ARCHITECTURE.

* ANN COPPERNOLL introduction to business—and that’s just about everyone at Iowa State.

“In fact,” she observes, “the course is even available for non-business majors. So, for that student who could be in another area but might be interested in business—and for those open-option students who don’t know where they want to go—this might be a good class for them to take.

“We’re looking to broaden the perspectives of students outside of the college,” she adds. “So even if they choose not to be a major, they can still have an idea how business affects somebody in agriculture or architecture who might have their own firm— it’s not a finite group of people who might be interested.” ■

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B R I EFS

Back to Back Champs: ISU MBA Team Wins Again A team of Iowa State University MBA students took first place in the fifth annual Big 12 MBA Case Competition at the I received great education from professors who gave us the opportunity to gain experience by having us present in class.

—RYAN KENT

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University of Colorado-Boulder Leeds School of Business on April 1–2. It was the second straight year Iowa State took top honors in the competition.

Iowa State’s Ryan Kent (Ft. Dodge, Iowa) was selected as an “Outstanding Presenter” at this year’s competition. Other ISU team members were Dan Hinz (Corning, Iowa)—a returnee from last year’s winning team—Steve Harris (Cedar Falls, Iowa) and Akmal Mirsadikov (Tashkent, Uzbekistan).

“It is a team sport and the reason that I was able to succeed is because my team was so supportive,” said Kent, who earned his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Iowa State in 2007. “We were all able to leverage our individual strengths, while still unifying as a team.”

“I also was well prepared, both through the MBA program and as an undergrad in the engineering program,” he continued. “I received great education from professors who gave us the opportunity to gain experience by having us present in class.”

Professor of Finance Roger Stover and Assistant Professor of Management Andreas Schwab served as the faculty advisers to the Iowa State team. Ron Ackerman, director of graduate admissions at ISU’s College of Business, was also a staff adviser.

In the competition, student teams were presented a Harvard-style general business policy/ strategic management case on Friday evening to provide the best strategy for the speed-dating company HurryDate, which had seen its prospects for growth stall amid intensified competition within the dating industry.

“That [type of case] is certainly not what we expected,” Kent said. “Usually we anticipate

LEFT TO RIGHT: STEVE HARRIS, DAN HINZ, AKMAL MIRSADIKOV, AND RYAN KENT

cases involving larger companies that are in the news. But at the same time, that made it challenging because it was a case you didn’t prepare for, so you had to do some more analysis and research. It also forced you to put a lot of creative thought into the solution.”

Team members worked through the night Friday to analyze the case and prepare their recommendations. On Saturday morning, teams presented their recommendations to a panel of business executives, who role-played as the company’s board of directors while serving as judges. Presentations were limited to 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of questions from the judges. The top team from each of the three divisions advanced to the final round on Saturday afternoon when they presented again to a new panel of judges.

“I saw all three final teams and I think what it came down to in the end was how well our students sold their argument to the judges,” Ackerman said. “Because our students know how to present well, they’re very convincing that their approach is the correct approach.”

Baylor University and the University of Missouri finished second and third respectively in the competition, which included teams representing all but one of the Big 12 Conference schools. ■

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Iowa State University’s MBA program was third in a recent U.S.News & World Report ranking linking the nation’s full-time MBA programs with career placement success. According to the ranking, 96.3 percent of Iowa State’s MBA graduates were employed within three months of graduation.

The ranking was based on data collected for U.S.News & World Report’s annual graduate school rankings.

“We’re very proud of our placement rates,” said Labh Hira, Raisbeck Endowed Dean. “It speaks highly of three important things: the value of an Iowa State MBA, the preparation of our graduates to enter the workforce, and the hard work of our graduate programs staff.”

Mark Peterson, director of graduate career services, cites these reasons for the program’s career placement success:

recruitment and marketing at Iowa State. “We consider whether each applicant is at a point that the MBA can make the most impact in their careers. We also work on professional development from orientation through graduation.”

In a story about the ranking, author Brian Burnsed reports that among the 141 business MBA programs that provided U.S.News & World Report data, an average of 73 percent of their graduates found jobs within three months of graduation.

“MBA graduates have typically had a high level of success finding work, and U.S.News’ own data indicates that the hiring market for business graduates is improving after enduring a lull throughout the recent recession,” Burnsed wrote. “Examining a business program’s job placement rates within three months of graduation is an effective means of discerning whether your diligent work will pay off in the near term.” ■

• The staff works hard to develop and maintain strong relationships with recruiters and hiring authorities at key organizations that will recruit their candidates through both good times and bad.

• A large percentage of their candidates have technical, engineering, or IT backgrounds, and in spite of the recent tough economy, those candidates have remained in demand.

• The staff works closely with organizations on their internship recruiting.

• Iowa State MBA candidates are well prepared to demonstrate in the interview room that they are the best candidates for the job.

KNOW SOME GOOD MBA C A N D I D AT E S ? R E F E R T H E M

“We are very career-focused in the MBA program,” said Jenny Reitano, director of MBA

We will publicly thank all of those who help to Continue the

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B R I EFS

ISU MBA Ranks Third Nationally in Job Placement Success

MARK PETERSON, DIRECTOR OF GRADUATE CAREER SERVICES

As graduates of the ISU MBA, you possess the same traits we admire in our students: determination, dedication, and drive. We invite you to be ambassadors of the ISU MBA . program and participate in our “Continuing the Tradition” referral campaign. Help strengthen the brand of the ISU .

MBA program by identifying potential students you know . will excel in the classroom and succeed in the workplace.

If you know someone who might be a good fit, email that

individual’s name to the ISU MBA office at busgrad@iastate. edu and we’ll take it from there. That prospective MBA candidate can also indicate that they are a Continuing the Tradition referral by mentioning your name on their MBA application.

There is no limit to the number of referrals you can submit.

Tradition in Prospectus.

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B R I EFS

ISU President Geoffroy to Step Down Iowa State University President Gregory Geoffroy announced on March 25 his intention to leave his post no later than July 31, 2012. He will remain president until a successor is named.

Geoffroy, who is approaching his 10th anniversary as ISU’s top administrator, cited the accomplishment of key goals and a desire to spend more time with his family as primary factors in his decision.

“It’s been such a pleasure to be associated with so many talented and dedicated individuals within and outside the university. The Iowa State family is, and will always be, a special part of my life,” Geoffroy said.

“Both professionally and personally, it’s been a real pleasure to work with Dr. Geoffroy,” said Board of Regents President David Miles. “He is one of the truly outstanding university presidents in the nation. He will leave an impressive legacy at Iowa State.”

Geoffroy became the 14th president of Iowa State University on July 1, 2001. He had served as senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Maryland, College Park, and its interim president in 1998. He also served in several key positions at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, from 1974 to 1989.

At Iowa State, President Geoffroy focused on recruiting and retaining top faculty, staff, and students; private fundraising to support faculty positions and student scholarships; and sustaining and advancing Iowa’s position in the growing bioeconomy.

Under Geoffroy’s leadership, Iowa State set records in fundraising, enrollment, and external funding. Campaign Iowa State surpassed its $800 million goal, and student enrollment soared to a record 28,682 students in fall 2010. His goal of doubling the number of endowed faculty positions at Iowa State, from 75 to 150, also was met in 2010. More than 20 major building projects have been completed during his tenure, including the Gerdin Business Building.

F A C U LT Y A N D S TA F F N E W S Terry Childers, Dean’s

comes to the ISU Foundation from

Administration at

Chair in Marketing, .

Emory University in Atlanta.

Soochow University in

has been awarded .

Taiwan and teaches

the Society for

Melissa Phillips is the college’s new

logistics and opera-

Marketing Advances

senior director of development. She

tions management.

Distinguished Scholar Award for .

joined the ISU Foundation in October

2011. He will keynote the Society .

after working for the University of

Meredith Williams

for Marketing Advances conference .

Pennsylvania’s regional office in .

was recently hired as

in Memphis this November.

Los Angeles and the Marshall School

a recruiting coordina-

of Business at the University of

tor in the Raisbeck

Joli Hummel is the

Southern California.

Career Services

college’s new develop-

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Center. She earned her bachelor’s .

ment coordinator. She

Shong-lee Su is a visiting Fulbright

and master of arts degrees from .

earned her MBA from

Scholar from Taiwan. He is a professor

the University of Northern Iowa.

Belmont University and

in the Department of Business

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DEVELO PM ENT

The Right Move I am thrilled to join Iowa State University, particularly the College of Business. When considering my move from California to Iowa, I sought advice from a former colleague and boss who is an alumna of Iowa State. She, like many others I have come in contact with over the past few months, boasted that her time spent in Ames was the best of her life.

That made my decision easy, and it has proven to be the right one. Everyone has made me feel so welcome.

My arrival to Iowa State comes just as Campaign Iowa State winds down. Our college’s generous alumni and friends have shown their compassion, loyalty, and spirit for Iowa State in many ways, which have enabled us to reach our goals and beyond. But we must look ahead and identify our future priorities.

A key area of focus is building on our growth in student scholarships, which are more critical now than ever. A recent report on CNN stated that student debt has now surpassed national credit card debt. With the rising costs of tuition, scholarships allow us to attract top students and provide relief for our current student body.

Faculty development is another major priority.

As you can tell from this issue, we have been able to attract some highly talented faculty. They play a pivotal role in student development and the college’s growth. Keeping them here is every bit the challenge as recruiting them, and named faculty positions help us do that.

A third priority is enhancing our unrestricted endowment. This kind of support enables the dean to respond to the college’s greatest needs and advance its strategic mission.

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There are other opportunities that have the potential to propel this college even further and create unique experiences for our students, faculty, and alumni.

A Center for Global Study will provide our students and faculty with international learning and teaching experiences. Put simply, these experiences change lives. They increase self-confidence, self-reliance, and give them the necessary skills to adapt to an ever-changing world.

A Center for Alternative Investments will strengthen an already talented finance faculty, expand the curriculum on alternative investments, and provide our students with expertise in areas that are attractive to potential employers.

Although a relatively young college, we are maturing and building upon a rich history of success. I look forward to working with you as we continue to strive for excellence With Pride and Purpose.

Our college’s generous alumni and friends have shown their compassion, loyalty, and spirit for Iowa State in many ways.

Melissa Phillips is the new senior director of development for the College of Business. She assumes the role previously held by Jeremy Galvin, who was promoted to assistant vice president for development with the ISU Foundation.

Phillips comes to Iowa State from Los Angeles, California, where she worked in development for the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business and the University of Pennsylvania’s Western Regional Office.

She can be reached toll free at 866 419-6768 or by e-mail at melissap@iastate.edu.

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DR . C HA R LES HA NDY

From the Desk of Founding Dean Charles Handy My previous Prospectus column compared the college’s current “student services” with the scarcity of such activity around the time when I started teaching in 1958.

Warren Simons (’65 Industrial Administration) wrote the following: Dr. Handy’s article about student services is right on the money! I can remember an assembly of our freshman class in the old Armory (1960) when the speaker told us ‘to look around at your fellow freshman classmates because by the end of the quarter (some number) would be gone!’

There seemed to be a sense of pride in how many students the school could flunk out. Somewhere along the line I think the school figured out that was not a good way of doing business. But, I made it and I’m proud of it. Looking back, I could have benefited greatly from these student services.

Simons’ comments are both interesting and, I assume, very gratifying to those designing today’s service offerings.

A recent undertaking in student services is the college’s Communication Center, which integrates communication instruction and practice throughout the student’s educational experience. The center was profiled in the fall 2008 Prospectus, which describes the important role played by Sue Ravenscroft, the Roger P. Murphy Professor of Accounting.

Ravenscroft may well be thought of as the center’s founder. Recently, I asked her to provide some specifics on her motivation in starting the center. She replied: Growing up as a child who loved to read and then earning an undergraduate degree in philosophy, I have always cherished and recognized the value of good writing. So when two ISU English faculty first came to the accounting department to ask us to serve

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as one of the test sites for a new program that emphasized developing students’ communication skills, I was eager to work with the pair.

They helped develop a group presentation assignment in a class I was teaching. Finding that initial experience beneficial for my students, I decided to add writing assignments to the course requirements. Brian Hentz, a doctoral student in English, worked with me on a voluntary basis for the first semester. Then Brian and I applied for and won a Miller Grant to pay for Brian to work with a faculty member from each of the College of Business departments to develop communication assignments. Brian and I knew some other forward-looking business colleges had communication centers and continued to press for one at ISU. Alumni, friends of the college, and other faculty generally believe that communication skills are vital to professional success and now ISU has a fledgling Communication Center.

The “fledgling” undertaking now has a director, Abhi Rao. A native of India, Rao has had experience as one of the program’s communication consultants while working on his doctorate in rhetoric and professional communication, which he anticipates receiving by this summer.

Two graduate students working with Rao comprise the program’s current faculty.

Like any new grassroots undertaking, funding is important for the Communication Center’s growth. If you have an interest in supporting this venture, please contact Melissa Phillips at 866 419-6768. It will be a very worthwhile investment. ■

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 1

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SPRING 2011

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WWW.BUSINESS.IASTATE.EDU

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS

Administration Labh S. Hira

Ronald J. Ackerman

Melissa A. Phillips

Raisbeck Endowed Dean

Director, Graduate Admissions

Senior Director of Development

Michael R. Crum

Steven T. Carter

Sridhar Ramaswami

Associate Dean, Graduate Programs

Director, Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship

Director, PhD Program

Danny J. Johnson

Ann J. Coppernoll

Jennifer D. Reitano

Interim Associate Dean, Undergraduate Programs

Director, Undergraduate Programs

Director, MBA Recruitment and Marketing

Thomas I. Chacko

Mary F. Evanson

Daniel J. Ryan

Chair, Department of Management Chair, Department of Marketing

Director of Development

Director, Marketing and Alumni Relations

Frederick H. Dark

James M. Heckmann

Kathryn K. Wieland

Director, Small Business Development Center

Director, Business Career Services

Interim Chair, Department of Accounting Interim Chair, Department of Finance

Qing Hu Chair, Department of Supply Chain . and Information Systems

Soma Mitra Academic Fiscal Officer

Mark S. Peterson Director, Graduate Career Services

Dean’s Advisory Council David J. Kingland ’80, Chair

Mark C. Fisher ‘76

David W. Raisbeck ‘71

President and CEO Kingland Systems

President and CEO United Community Bank

Vice Chairman, Retired Cargill, Inc.

Ronald D. Banse ‘75

Beth E. Ford ‘86

Ann Madden Rice ‘79

Assistant General Auditor Union Pacific Corporation

Executive Vice President, Head of Supply Chain International Flavors and Fragrances Inc.

CEO University of California, Davis Medical Center

Kelley A. Bergstrom ‘65

Russell A. Gerdin

Randal J. Richardson ‘79

President Bergstrom Investment Management, LLC

Chairman and CEO Heartland Express, Inc.

President Vi Living

Steve W. Bergstrom ‘79

Peter H. Gilman ‘86

Steven T. Schuler ‘73

Chairman Arclight Energy Marketing

President and CEO Carbry Capital, Inc.

Executive Vice President and CFO Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines

Gregory S. Churchill ‘80

Craig E. Hansen ‘80

John H. Stafford ‘76

Executive Vice President, International and Service Solutions Rockwell Collins

Senior Vice President, Surety Practice Leader Holmes Murphy

Vice President, Financial Shared Services, Retired General Mills, Inc.

Brenda J. Cushing ‘86

Cara K. Heiden ‘78

Mark E. Stoering ‘84

Executive Vice President and CFO Aviva USA

Co-President Wells Fargo Home Mortgage

G. Steven Dapper ‘69

Daniel J. Houston ‘84

Vice President, Portfolio Strategy . and Business Development Xcel Energy

Founder and Chairman hawkeye | GROUP

President—Retirement, Insurance, and Financial Services Principal Financial Group

John D. DeVries ‘59

Richard N. Jurgens ‘71

CEO, Retired Colorfx

Chairman, CEO, President Hy-Vee, Inc.

Jerald K. Dittmer ‘80

Cheryl G. Krongard ‘77

President and Executive Vice President The HON Company and HNI Corporation

Partner, Retired Apollo Management, LP

Nancy K. Dittmer ‘84

Michael F. McBreen

Managing Director RSM McGladrey, Inc.

President, Global Operations Group Wolverine World Wide, Inc.

David J. Drury ‘66

Craig A. Petermeier ’78

Chairman and CEO, Retired Principal Financial Group

President and CEO, Retired Jacobson Companies

Jane E. Sturgeon ‘85 CEO Barr-Nunn Transportation, Inc.

Jill A. Wagner ‘76 Regional Vice President Frontier Communications Solutions

Mark A. Walker ‘79 Senior Vice President C. H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc.

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