Matzes exemplify Aggie service and support

Accounting ranked 6th in nationwide professor’s survey

Berry earns highest honor in marketing

Spying a good investment

Nearly 70 percent of Aggies pass CPA exam on first try

Inventing F.I.R.E.

Donnell earns real estate industry achievement award

We’ve got top 5

Exchange student leads soccer team to nationals

Students earn high returns in inter-university trading competition

Shankar tops in research, again

Three times the merit

Cadets join Corps honor society

Students compete in IT-related case competition

Students meet with Mays

Donors

Matzes exemplify Aggie service and support

Texas A&M has long been known for the spirit of support, generosity and service found in its graduates. One Aggie couple has been actively working for more than a decade to embody each of those values, setting an incredible goal to contribute 5,000 hours of service and $1 million to their alma mater.

Nearly 4,000 hours of committee work, mentorship and class lectures, and $900,000 later, Jack ’71 and Nancy ’73 Matz are close to that goal—and threatening to set another.

Their most recent commitment, a $600,000 planned gift called the Jack ’71 and Nancy ’73 Matz Scholarship Matching Fund, establishes scholarship programs for units throughout Texas A&M and the Texas A&M Health Science Center’s College of Medicine. Among those is a $250,000 gift in support of students at Mays Business School.

“Jack and Nancy Matz truly set a high bar for other Aggies,” said Mays Dean Jerry Strawser. “They are true examples of giving time, talent and treasure to assist Texas A&M University. Their interest in meeting and mentoring students who have benefited from their generous giving simply adds to the richness of what they do for our school.”

The Matzes’ contributions have always run deeper than the financial support that is the lifeblood of every successful component at the university. The Matzes spend about a week out of each month in College Station, leading efforts to guide and develop programs at Texas A&M.

The top-ranked business school is a natural recipient of the couple’s energy and support, management graduate Jack Matz explains: Mays has rapidly moved to the front of the pack, cracking the top 50 or 25 in major rankings around the world including the standby U.S. News & World Report.

“What Texas A&M and places like the Mays Business School provide is a very well-rounded, very hard-working, conservative look at business and education where ethics and morals are paramount to success,” he says. “Long before it became fashionable, A&M had an honor code and the respect of its students. Mays has really figured out a way to incorporate that throughout the mission of its disciplines.”

The Matzes’ story has long been an Aggie story: they first met at Texas A&M in 1970.
They married in 1972 at All Faith’s Chapel on campus and spent the next 34 years raising two children, Catherine ’03 and Christina ’09, and traveling the world. They built an incredible portfolio of entrepreneurial ventures, watching six of the businesses Jack launched go public in the U.S., Canada and Europe. Jack was recognized by the U.S. House of Representatives for his work opening the business market in Russia immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the late 90s, Jack retired from corporate life, founding consulting firm Strategic Growth in McKinney, Texas, to harness his expertise in public growth capital fund raising, developing growth strategies and identifying emerging business opportunities. Nancy is founder and president of her own nationally recognized software corporation, McKinney-based Dynamic Energy Systems, Inc. In 2005, Dynamic Energy was named among the top 100 fastest-growing Aggie owned businesses in the world as part of the inaugural Aggie 100.

— Sommer Hamilton

Programs

Accounting ranked 6th in nationwide professor’s survey

The Department of Accounting scored two 6th-place nationwide rankings for the quality of its undergraduate and graduate degree programs, according to the Public Accounting Report’s 25th Annual Professor’s Survey, released in November.

That’s a bump up for both programs over previous Public Accounting Report findings, which put the graduate program at 8th in the nation and the undergraduate degree at 7th in 2005. The annual peer-institution survey gauges the strengths and qualities of U.S. accounting programs based on the responses of accounting professors nationwide. Mays’ programs have shown a steady climb in the peer survey: in 2004, the BBA program was ranked 13th and the master’s program had just secured a spot in the top 10.

“It is really gratifying to be ranked so high by our peers in the academic world,” says James Benjamin, Andersen Professor and head of the accounting department. “It is also important for the reputation of our program, as the Public Accounting Report rankings are widely discussed in the accounting profession.”

— Sommer Hamilton

Faculty

Berry earns highest honor in marketing

Distinguished Professor of Marketing Leonard L. Berry has been named the 2007 American Marketing Association/Irwin/McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator, joining a who’s who in the history of marketing researchers. The award is considered the highest honor bestowed in the discipline.

The award recognizes Berry for his exemplary and sustained research, teaching and service. It also marks the first time in the 20-year history of the award that a Texas A&M Mays Business School marketing faculty member has been honored. Berry, also the M.B. Zale Chair in Retailing and Marketing Leadership, will be honored in February at the American Marketing Association Winter Educators’ Conference in San Diego.

Berry has devoted his career to services marketing and approaching business from the customers' perspective. His current research focuses on the healthcare industry and service innovation. In 2001 and 2002, he immersed himself in a six-month research sabbatical at the Mayo Clinic to study healthcare service hands on. He continues research to uncover how to improve the kinds of services that are marketed, along with their quality, to enhance business performance and quality of life.

"I want to use my background and skills I've gained in my career as a services researcher to develop new models for improving the quality and effectiveness of healthcare service and reducing its cost," he says.

— Staff Reports

Donors

Spying a good investment

Texas A&M accounting cum laude graduate David C. Fleig knows a good investment when he sees one.  With three decades of mortgage banking industry experience behind him, this successful Aggie is planning his own investment in Mays Business School with a gift valued at $100,000.

Fleig’s donation creates the David C. Fleig ’78 Fund in support of the strength and development of Mays’ faculty, students and programs.

“David’s generous gift allows us to continue to support excellence across our programs,” said Mays Dean Jerry Strawser. “It is only through the generous support of donors like David that we are able to provide our students with the unique learning experiences for which we are known.”

Fleig is a 1978 cum laude graduate of Texas A&M with a BBA in accounting. He was president of the Texas A&M Chapter of Beta Alpha Psi his senior year in Aggieland. Today, he is president of Sugar Land-based Access Lending, a nationwide specialty finance company he founded in 1997 to support the residential mortgage origination industry. Access became part of New Century Financial (NYSE:NEW) in February 2006.

Prior to founding Access, Fleig co-owned and operated First Nationwide Mortgage Partnership. At its peak, the partnership owned a $5 billion mortgage servicing portfolio and had total assets of more than $50 million. Fleig was also previously COO of Thornburg Funding Corporation, which later became an NYSE real estate investment trust, and was CFO of a middle market mortgage banking firm.  He started his career in Ernst & Young’s national mortgage banking practice area, where he spent nine years.

— Staff Reports

Programs

Nearly 70 percent of Aggies pass CPA exam on first try

Mays graduates sitting for the challenging CPA exam made taking the test look just a little easier in 2005: They were ranked 6th in the nation with a 68.2 percent passing rate for first-time candidates without advanced degrees. 

The rankings are tallied by the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy as part of its 2006 edition of Candidate Performance of the Uniform CPA Examination. The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, the University of Iowa, UNC-Chapel Hill and the University of Wisconsin at both Whitewater and Madison round out the top 5 ahead of Texas A&M’s Mays Business School graduates.

The Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination assures that entrants to the accounting profession have demonstrated the entry-level knowledge and skills necessary to protect the public interest in a rapidly changing business and financial environment. The computer-based exam measures an accountant’s working knowledge of auditing, financial accounting and reporting, business environments and regulation.

Students typically celebrate if they pass all parts the first time they take the notoriously difficult exam, which certifies accountants to provide public attestation and auditing opinions on financial states of publicly traded companies. In addition to public practice, CPAs work as everything from Fortune 500 chief financial officers to advisors and consultants for businesses and organizations.

In a separate measure of Mays accountants’ success on the CPA exam, Mays graduates continued to best the state’s average performance on all parts of the CPA exam in this year’s third quarter, from July to September 2006. Aggie business graduates passed the auditing portion at a rate of 65 percent (compared to the Texas statewide average of 51 percent); 81 percent in business environment and concepts (compared to 50 percent); 64 percent in financial accounting and reporting (compared to 52 percent); and 72 percent in regulation (in relation to the statewide average of 49 percent).

Mays BBA and master’s accounting graduate Christopher Simpson ’05, now in lead tax services at Deloitte’s Dallas tax office, also earned a 2006 special award for outstanding achievement on the CPA exam from the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy. The award means Simpson earned one of the top 10 highest cumulative scores in Texas in the past year on his first try on the CPA exam.

“Success on the national exam is particularly important for our program since approximately 90 percent of our graduates begin their careers with major public accounting firms,” says Andersen Professor James Benjamin, head of Mays’ accounting department. “I believe that our consistent performance on the CPA exam results from the combination of bright, highly motivated students, a dedicated faculty, and a rigorous, contemporary academic program.”

— Sommer Hamilton

Students

Inventing F.I.R.E.

MBA students Bill Attar, Pat Gosselin, Marie Hollinger and our first-ever MBA/MD student Delip Patel joined forces with a team of student engineers to take 3rd place in the University of Texas’ 2006 Idea to Product or “I2P” International Competition in November.

In work overseen and organized by the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship (CNVE), the MBAs fleshed out business applications and commercialization potential for F.I.R.E., “First Incident Response Equipment,” which uses radio frequency and sensors to communicate with first responders in an emergency situation. R.J. Hegedus, Andrew Arnold, Michael Edgar and Michael Water, all engineering technology majors in Texas A&M’s Dwight Look College of Engineering, developed the technology during a senior capstone course.

The Texas A&M team finished behind student teams from Imperial College London and Dublin, Ireland’s Trinity College. Over the course of the next two months, the engineering students and MBAs will develop a full business plan complete with financial projections to submit to this spring’s biggest new venture challenges: the Big XII New Venture Competition and Rice Business Plan Competition.

“If you build it, customers don’t necessarily come,” said CNVE Director Richard Scruggs ’77. “The combination of a good product and sound business plan brings success. In this collaboration, we want everyone to learn from each other so that everyone has ownership in the product and the process.”

This is the second year win for a CNVE-coached project: Biomedical engineering PhD student Saurabh Biswas won $10,000 to help further the commercialization of a colon cancer early-warning technology when he took 1st place in the Idea to Product challenge in 2005. Biswas went on to win the first-ever BigXII New Venture title and placed fifth in the Rice Competition in early 2006.

— Staff Reports

Faculty

Donnell earns real estate industry achievement award

Cydney Donnell ‘81, director of real estate programs at Mays, was chosen for the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts’ 2006 Industry Achievement Award for her career’s work promoting real estate trusts and investment advantages. She is the first woman to ever receive the award.

The award was created to honor professionals who have contributed to the real estate industry and to the programs of the national association. Real estate investment trusts, known as REITs, pool funding from multiple investors to purchase and manage income properties such as multifamily housing and retail centers. REITs are traded on major exchanges, just like stocks.

Donnell, a 1981 Texas A&M finance graduate, has been one of the REIT industry’s strongest advocates in the investment community. She personally campaigned for the investment advantages of REITs among the leaders of major European institutions. From 1986 until 2003, she worked with European Investors, Inc, one of the first firms to offer dedicated REIT funds. She was principal, managing partner and eventually chair of European Investors’ investment committee and head of its real estate securities group.

Donnell’s advocacy of REITs wasn’t limited to Europe. She also spent time on Capitol Hill making sure the industry’s agenda was heard. “Her contributions in meetings with congressional leaders and their staffs were always invaluable, because Cydney was telling the REIT story from an investor’s point of view,” said Steven A. Wechsler, president and CEO of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. “And that was incredibly compelling.”

This isn’t the first major industry recognition for Donnell: She was also voted one of the Association of Real Estate Women's 100 Women Real Estate Leaders for the 21st Century.

—Staff Reports

Faculty

We’ve got top 5

An interdisciplinary article from Mays’ finance and accounting departments is among the top 5 on a list of the top 25 articles downloaded in the Journal of Corporate Finance.

The article, “The Interaction Among Multiple Governance Mechanisms in Young Newly Public Firms,” appeared in the journal in June 2006 and is the third most-downloaded in the journal’s records. It is co-authored by Associate Professor of Finance L. Paige Fields, Associate Professor of Accounting Mike S. Wilkins and former finance PhD student Tammy Berry ’00.

Journals and social science networks keep track of number of downloads as a measure of how much interest a paper generates among readers and subscribers.

— Staff Reports

Students

Exchange student leads soccer team to nationals

Anders Enevoldsen is tackling excellence in the classroom and on the football field—European football, that is. Attending Mays Business School this fall as an exchange student from the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, Enevoldsen also specialized in helping the Texas A&M’s men’s club soccer team dominate regionals and earn a bid to the NIRSA Championship Tournament at Arizona State University.

When Enevoldsen arrived in College Station this August, he didn’t know the place or the people who lived here. But like most from Europe, he did know the game of soccer. So when he saw a flier to try out for the men’s club soccer team, he took a shot, scoring a spot as an inner mid fielder and a team of friends.

“I made a lot of new friends who introduced me to new friends…so by playing soccer with them, I got a way in the social circle,” he explains.

The team made it to the quarterfinals at the NRISA Championships in Tempe, Arizona, losing to Ohio.

Aside from his stardom on the field, Evenoldsen will graduate from Copenhagen Business School in May 2007 after only three years—a standard in Denmark. The timing isn’t the only difference between the two countries’ approaches, he said: The teaching style is also fairly different. “There is a more practical approach in the business school here,” he says. “There’s not as many real-life cases in Denmark, it’s more logic.”

The idea of the “Aggie family” lured Evenoldsen to Texas A&M. School and life activities are very separated in Denmark, he said: each day, you go to class and then you go home to study.

“I chose Texas A&M because I wanted the college experience, with spirit,” he said.

— Ashley N. Coker

Programs

Students earn high returns in inter-university trading competition

Ninety students from a dozen universities wrapped up their final trades in style, with some earning returns higher than 50 percent in the Texas A&M Inter-University Financial Trading Competition hosted this fall by Mays’ Reliant Energy Securities & Commodities Trading Center.

Students from such schools as Penn State, the University of Toronto and Texas A&M competed individually from their schools in October, mock trading in two sessions over the course of the month on a Global Forex Trading (GFT) platform that streams live price data for 60 foreign exchange pairings. They were each granted $50,000 in mock accounts to execute trades and had to factor in real-world news events that affected the foreign exchange market as part of their trading strategy.

Just like traders in the real world, prize money is distributed according to performance—winnings are based on a student’s percentage return in relation to first place in each division. Undergraduate and graduate divisions each split $3,000. Top winners in the undergraduate division included Penn State’s Bret Crell, Toronto’s Shenguan Yang and Villanova’s Aaron Juratovac. Top winners in the graduate division are Alexander Dean of Fairfield, Arpit Sheth of Renssalaer Polytechnic and Tai Hong (Steven) Leung from Toronto.

Now in its second year, the inter-university competition grew from a field of six schools and 30 students finishing the competition in 2005 to 14 participating schools and 90 students this year. GFT’s trading software allows students to trade in the same environment as hedge fund managers and other professional traders who trade currencies to profit from fluctuating foreign exchange rates.

The international competition, organized by professors in Mays’ Reliant Trading Center, develops skills of undergraduate and graduate students interested in fundamental trading, technical trading and foreign exchange rates.

“We’re succeeding at enabling students to trade with confidence,” says Detlef Hallermann, organizer and program leader for Mays’ Reliant Energy Securities and Commodities Trading Center.

— Sommer Hamilton

Faculty

Shankar tops in research, again

Brandon C. Coleman, Jr. ’78 Chair in Marketing Venkatesh Shankar has the second most cited article in two years of the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, from 2003 to 2005.

“On the Efficiency of Internet Markets for Consumer Goods,” co-authored with Brian T. Ratchford and Xing Pan in spring 2003, was the lead article for its issue. It’s rating as second most-cited for its time period means fellow researchers were not only interested in the paper’s findings, but included its findings as a starting point

This isn’t the first time Shankar has made news this year: in October, he was named among the top 20 area editors of Marketing Science during the last two and four years. And this spring, a winter 2006 Sloan Management Review article he co-authored with several top Mays marketing faculty was among the top 10 most popular articles to appear in the highly-regarded journal.

— Staff Reports

Staff

Three times the merit

Mays can lay claim to three Texas A&M President’s Meritorious Service Award Winners for 2006. The university president presents the awards annually to recognize 20 of the university’s top employees and a team in honor of their dedication to work and the people around them.

Winners this year are:

• Marketing Administrative Assistant Glenda Bessler, who’s spent two decades assisting Distinguished Professor of Marketing Leonard L. Berry
• Career Services Coordinator Jodee Bailey, who won the team award as part of the Career Center coordinators group. Though Bailey is officially a Career Center employee, she’s housed in the Undergraduate Programs Office and for the past two years she’s helped Mays undergraduates prepare to go after the jobs and opportunities they desire.
• Patricia Walker, team leader of Wehner Crew K (janitorial). Walker is on a winning streak: She and Crew K won the team award in 2005.

This marks two years in a row for Mays wins. In 2005, Center for Executive Development Administrative Assistant Pam Curry, along with Crew K, were honorees.

— Staff Reports

Students

Cadets join Corps honor society

A dozen business students and Corps of Cadets members were inducted into the 26-year-old Gen. Ormand R. Simpson Corps Honor Society in November. The society is open to cadets whose academic potential and general personal conduct reflect credit upon both the Corps and Texas A&M.

Cadet members of the society can be identified by the blue-and-white citation cord worn on their cadet uniforms.

Business cadets who were inducted for 2006 include:

• Alan Alberts, accounting graduate student
• Chase Gentry, sophomore business major
• John Griffin, sophomore business major
• Matthew Hester, junior business major
• Robert Kimbrough, senior management major
• Cody Miklis, junior finance major
• Justin Partlow, senior management major
• Scott Phillips, sophomore business major
• Robert Poirier, junior business major
• Austin Stobaugh, junior business major
• Michael Thomas, sophomore business major
• John Walker, junior accounting major

— Staff Reports

Students

Students compete in IT-related case competition

Eight teams of future information technology professionals are winners of the 12th annual Center for the Management of Information Systems Case Competition held at Mays this October.

The competition offers MIS students the opportunity to sharpen their analytical, presentation and teamwork skills, says George Fowler, director of the Center for the Management of Information Systems (CMIS). “It challenges teams of undergraduates and graduate students to solve a real business problem posed by a company,” he said.

Solutions produced by the student teams are judged by business professionals, and winners are selected based on the originality, creativity and feasibility of their ideas. This October, students had a week to prepare a proposal for a business continuity and disaster recovery plan for a large energy corporation. Teams competed in separate undergraduate and graduate divisions. The case was prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers. 

“The students and companies involved just loved this year’s problem given the recent history of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita,” Fowler said.  “The situation posed was real world and timely, and the judges were really pleased with the students’ proposed solutions.”

The 2006 competition winners are:

Undergraduate

• 1st place: Ninja Consulting with senior management information systems (MIS) majors Emily David, Eric Bookbinder and Kevin Dunnahoo.
• 2nd place: Foresight Consulting with senior MIS majors Brandon Brickley and Michael Buller and senior marketing and MIS major Erik Hausmann
• 3rd place: Puppy Dog Consulting with senior MIS majors Laura Duncan and Michael Knudson and junior MIS major Scott Perkins
• 4th place: PerfectBox Consulting with senior MIS majors Ashley Baldridge, Robert Black and Sam Mason

Graduate

• 1st place: IT Consulting with MIS graduate students Andrew Rolf, Felipe Torres and Pranay Jaiswal.
• 2nd place: Sans Pareil Consulting with MIS graduate students Bhavani Radhakrishnan, Madan Sundaresan and Srivatsan Parthasarathy
• 3rd place: Shadow Fax Consulting with MIS graduate students Jignasa Desai, Nimish Sheth and Preetam Shetty
• 4th place: Negocio Consulting with graduate MIS majors Arunkumar Kotiedath, Jincy George and Maheshwar Dattatri

Each member of the winning teams received scholarships (1st place - $350; 2nd - $250; 3rd - $150; 4th - $100).   The third place team selected from each room during the first round also received a $50 scholarship. In addition to scholarships, the winners also received gas cards from ExxonMobil (1st - $200; 2nd - $150; 3rd - $100; and 4th - $100) and other corporate mementos.

— Staff Reports

Students

Students meet with Mays

Straight from the horse’s mouth—that’s where you’ll find the information with the most valuable price tag. So when Texas A&M’s Aggie Investment Club sponsored a trip to San Antonio as part of its travel series, being able to hear four successful entrepreneurs speak about their work experiences was an opportunity to jump at. What the students took from the trip was more than a few helpful words of wisdom—they witnessed the truth behind the phrase actions speak louder than words.

When the eight students arrived to their appointment this November with Mays Business School’s namesake Lowry Mays ’57, it wasn’t just his advice that impressed them. Senior finance major Madison Marceau says Mays was working on finalizing a deal for the sale of Clear Channel Communications when he heard that the students had arrived. To the group’s surprise, Mays dropped the call and asked that the students enter his office.

 “He showed amazing commitment and the great Aggie spirit we always hear about,” Marceau said.

AIC travel series director Nichole Ledder, a senior accounting major, seemed to have taken a similar note. “The most valuable information that I learned is to always treat people as you would like to be treated—because people are the most important part of any business.”

In addition to their time with Mays, students also met with Valero CEO Bill Greehey, Lewis Energy president and CEO Rod Lewis, as well as David West ‘90, president and founder of FourW Restaurants.

“All were exceptionally kind and helpful,” Ledder said. “I think that the biggest encouragement came from the fact that all of the men we met with were some of the kindest, most considerate people I have ever met—and they were modest enough to consider themselves ‘ordinary.’”

— Ashley N. Coker