Dean's Message

Welcome to the Smeal College of Business.

The past semester has been a busy one for all of us here at Smeal. We welcomed another class to our growing alumni network, initiated a new guest speaker program, and held events on both coasts to meet the college's friends and alumni who are scattered around the country.

On recent trips to Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, San Jose, and Washington, its been a great pleasure for me to see the Penn State spirit going strong throughout our alumni network. And I believe our alumni and friends in these cities were pleased to hear about some of the things were doing at Smeal. This summer, I'll be visiting Austin and Dallas, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina.

One of the things I talk about on these trips is our new guest speaker program, Leadership in Focus: Executive Insights. We started the program in the middle of the semester, and we've already hosted some major players from corporate America to interact with students and faculty. This semester, we welcomed James Turley, chairman and chief executive officer of Ernst & Young, and Art Rooney II, president of the Pittsburgh Steelers, among others.

In March, BusinessWeek released its second annual rankings of undergraduate business programs and ranked Smeal as the 13th publicly supported program in the nation. Recruiters surveyed by BusinessWeek ranked our undergraduate program sixth overall nationally. In other rankings, Financial Times ranked the Smeal MBA Program as the 10th public program in the country and U.S. News & World Report ranked us 17th among publics.

Our first-year MBA students spent a week overseas this semester for the global immersion portion of the MBA program. This required international business experience, launched in 2004, offers students firsthand exposure to the international economy and the particular challenges and opportunities of doing business in another culture. This year, students spent a week in Santiago, Chile; Shanghai, China; Istanbul, Turkey; or San Francisco, the latter for international students. Second-year students in the Smeal Executive MBA Program visited Ireland.

Our MBA students aren't the only ones traveling. Undergraduates in the student organization Students in Free Enterprise spent a week in Chile on an international service trip. They taught personal finance, American business customs, and the English language to Chilean students, and studied the Chilean economy with Jorge Rodrz-Grossi, the country's former minister of economy and energy.

Back on campus, junior Alex Herman took first place in the college's seventh annual chief executive simulation competition, The Next CEO. Herman acted as the CEO of Lockheed Martin, answering questions about how his company is responding to a number of international trends and issues, including climate change and national security. The contest, formerly called Smeal Survivor, is the result of a partnership between Smeal and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

In faculty news, Hans Baumgartner, professor of marketing and Charles and Lillian Binder faculty fellow, has been named chair of the Department of Marketing, a position he's held in interim since July 1. Bill Ross, professor of marketing, will replace Hans as director of our Ph.D. Program. Dan Guide, associate professor of operations and supply chain management, recently won the award for best teaching case study in production and operations management from the European Case Clearing House. And Robert Macy, clinical assistant professor of entrepreneurship, received the Extraordinary Educator award from the U.S. Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

Smeal's eBusiness Research Center, which studies the impact of information and communications technologies on global business, has changed its name to the Center for Digital Transformation to more accurately reflect its research focus. The Center for Global Business Studies (CGBS) is in the midst of publishing a series of 12 papers on international trends affecting business. The first paper examined the effect of business and industry on Earth's ecology. Other topics include demography, disease, economic integration, and international conflict.

I visited the Washington area recently with Pat Cataldo, associate dean for executive education, to discuss leadership development and future trends in executive education with D.C.-area executives. Business leaders from Capital One, Gallup, Fannie Mae, Liberty Mutual, and the U.S. Coast Guard joined Pat and me to talk about what's ahead in executive education and what skills, services, and delivery methods executive education providers should be planning for the future. The discussion has helped Pat and his colleagues in Penn State Executive Programs to better anticipate the needs of their future clients.

Some sad news: We recently said goodbye to two Smeal icons. In January, we lost Bob Bear Koehler, associate professor emeritus of accounting and one of Smeal's most beloved faculty members since 1963. The next month we learned of the passing of Eugene Kelley, Smeal dean emeritus. Both Bear and Gene indelibly influenced the college and their legacies will continue to do so for years to come.

Smeal alumna Martha Jordan 76 has replaced Ric Struthers 77 as chairman of the Smeal Board of Visitors. Additionally, Martha, who is a partner in the law firm of Latham & Watkins LLP, served as commencement speaker at this years graduation ceremony. And Jeffrey Malehorn 82, president and chief executive officer of GE Healthcare Financial Services, delivered the keynote address at this years MBA Pre-commencement Celebratory Ceremony recognizing the MBA class of 2007.

Sixty-four MBA students and 1,066 undergraduates received Smeal degrees at the end of the spring semester. This fall, we'll welcome to campus the MBA class of 2009 and the undergraduate class of 2011. In the meantime, all of us at Smeal will continue to strive for excellence in all that we do.

Feel free to contact me with any thoughts or questions via e-mail at deansoffice@smeal.psu.edu.

Sincerely,

James B. Thomas

Undergraduate Business Majors
http://www.smeal.psu.edu/uprog/majors

MBA Program Information
http://www.smeal.psu.edu/mba/academic

Smeal Undergraduate Advising
http://www.smeal.psu.edu/uprog/services/advising/index.html

Smeal Corporate Relations Office
http://www.smeal.psu.edu/uprog/career

Business Student Clubs and Organizations
http://www.smeal.psu.edu/uprog/studlife/studorgs

Penn State Student Clubs and Organizations
http://www.sa.psu.edu/usa/stuorg.shtml