Donors

Dawsons endow fellowship

When G. Steven Dawson ’80 transferred to Texas A&M in 1978, he had no way of knowing he was on the verge of much more than a new and different college experience. That same year he met Deanna Farish ’80, another junior transfer student. He was majoring in accounting, she was majoring in marketing. They became friends, he briefly dated her roommate and, after a respectable period of time, he asked her out.

The couple who met as transfer students has since married, settled in Sugar Land and had four children. Now the Dawsons have embarked on yet another joint venture: pledging $300,000 for a fellowship. It will support the research, teaching, service and professional development of a faculty member in Mays' real estate program.

“Texas A&M played an important role in shaping our lives, values and relationships,” Steve Dawson said. “We want to return the favor and believe that the One Spirit One Vision Campaign is an excellent opportunity to make a meaningful impact. We want to see Texas A&M and its real estate degree programs continue to rise in prominence and stature nationally.”

For 13 years, Steve Dawson served as chief financial officer of Houston-based Camden Property Trust, one of the largest multifamily housing companies in the United States. He is now a private investor who serves on the boards of directors of six public real estate investment trusts and is involved in private equity initiatives.

Deanna Dawson is a homemaker and community volunteer. Both she and Steve formerly served on the board of His Grace Foundation, which provides support for cancer patients and their families at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.

The Dawsons’ oldest son, Tyler ’08, is a Texas A&M sophomore majoring in finance. Steve Dawson hopes Tyler will take away as much from the Aggie experience as he did: “It was one of the best times of my life and it has served me well.”

— Staff Reports

Programs

MBA ranks first in job placement

Mays ranks first in the nation when it comes to placing MBA candidates after graduation, according to the London-based Financial Times’ annual rankings of the top 100 business schools on the globe. With 97 percent of MBAs at work within three months of earning their degrees, Mays is tied for first place in the U.S. and comes in tied for third place worldwide.

In other indicators key to MBA program value, Mays came in second among all schools in the U.S. for value-for-money.

Overall, Mays is ranked 85th in the world in the 2006 Financial Times survey, up from 88th in 2005. That puts Mays at 54th among all U.S. programs, also an increase from 55th place last year.

The MBA curriculum emphasizes core business principles along with strategic thinking, business communications, teamwork, ethics, character and leadership.

“We are truly delighted with the continued success of our graduates in the market place,” says Associate Dean Bala Shetty. “Our focus on recruiting excellent students, providing them with many development opportunities and assigning outstanding faculty in Mays to teach them appears to be paying dividends.”

— Sommer Hamilton

Faculty

Conant named Department of Marketing head

Marketing Professor Jeffrey Conant will become head of the Department of Marketing this August, assuming an expansive role held by Distinguished Professor Rajan Varadarajan for a decade.

Conant, one of the most frequent contributors to the literature on the scholarship of teaching and learning in marketing, is also a Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence and Eppright University Professor in Undergraduate Teaching Excellence.

“We look forward to having Jeff as part of our leadership team at Mays,” says Dean Jerry Strawser. “We will draw upon his energy, enthusiasm and vision to continue to enhance the research, teaching and outreach activities of the Department of Marketing.”

Conant first joined Mays’ marketing faculty in 1986.

He is well known for his work on marketing strategy and research that delves into the elements of effective teaching, work he first started with colleagues in 1988 to provide insights into how marketing's top teachers practice their craft. He has received more than a dozen awards for teaching at both the undergraduate and master's levels, where he is an MBA core faculty member and PhD seminar leader.

Conant is also a noted scholar, receiving the Journal of Marketing Education's Outstanding Article of the Year Award three times. In 1994, he received the ultimate Aggie student-appreciation honor when a Texas A&M Fish Camp was named Camp Conant in his honor.

“The marketing department at Texas A&M has a rich history and a bright and exciting future,” Conant said. “Our faculty and staff have a shared commitment to excellence.”

Thirty-year veteran professor Varadarajan, the Ford Chair in Marketing and E-Commerce, has led a growing department of marketing researchers since 1996. Varadarajan led Mays in hosting the Academy of Marketing Science’s faculty consortium in 2001 and doctoral consortium in 2004, signature events that showcased marketing resources at Mays and brought the top faculty and brightest doctoral candidates to Texas A&M’s doorstep.

“Serving as department head for the past 10 years has been a professional and personal growth experience for me,” Varadarajan says, pointing to opportunities to develop marketing faculty and help outline the academic direction of the discipline through revisions in course and teaching emphasis.

Varadarajan, known affectionately as “Dr. Rajan” in the halls of Mays, will continue his voluminous research and teaching activities in marketing. The former editor of both the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science first joined Mays from the State University of New York in 1981.

— Sommer Hamilton

A&M News

Gates talks tuition, tenure and A&M's future

In a mid-year note to the Texas A&M community, President Robert M. Gates outlines university initiatives and updates progress on everything from the One Spirit One Vision Campaign to construction plans and faculty reinvestment.

Among the key changes discussed are a requested 6 percent tuition increase and $99 energy fee for each student to cover a $32.3 million budget shortfall for FY 2007. Find out more at http://our-news.tamu.edu/newsmanager/templates/?a=2148&z=15.

— Staff Reports

Faculty

Berry lauded by Academy of Marketing Science

Leonard Berry Leonard L. Berry, Distinguished Professor of Marketing and M.B. Zale Chair in Retailing and Marketing Leadership, will receive the 2006 Academy of Marketing Science Outstanding Teacher Award. He will be one of three recipients recognized for the award at the 2006 Academy of Marketing Science annual conference in May.

“Len enjoys a stellar reputation for excellence in teaching at Texas A&M
University,” says Rajan Varadarajan, head of marketing. “He is a role model — a distinguished scholar who excels in research, teaching and service — worthy of emulation."

Berry will also be inducted as Distinguished Fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science at the conference. He is one of only two being honored with this distinction this year. No more than 3 percent of all active members of the academy can receive this designation.

Berry has received other national awards, including the Outstanding Marketing Educator Award and the Pinnacle Award for Marketing Educator of the Year, both in 2000. He is also the founding director of the Center of Retailing Studies at Mays. In 2001, Berry embarked upon a lengthy research project as a scholar-in-residence at the Mayo Clinic to gain insight on service in the healthcare industry.

"I consider teaching a privilege and always enter my classroom well-prepared and excited,” Berry says. “My students know they have a teacher who cares."

— Tiffany Tyer

Students

Mays launches student blogs

Five Mays undergraduates are writing about their college experiences for an audience of prospective high school and transfer students in web logs (blogs) launched this spring.

The students will write at least once a month, dishing about such topics as campus life, classes, financial aid and student organizations. Their style is informal, intended for the web-savvy generation as it conducts its college search. The new approach to recruiting allows potential students to learn, through the words and stories of current students, just what college life and life in the business school is like.

Visit the blog at http://maysbschool.tamu.edu/blog/.

—Staff Reports

Students

Srivastava earns Deloitte Fellowship

Accounting PhD candidate Anup Srivastava is one of 10 doctoral scholars in the nation this year to be awarded a $25,000 Deloitte Foundation Fellowship. Srivastava was among applicants from 100 universities across the United States who vied for $5,000 in support during a final year of course work and another $20,000 funding for dissertation work.

The Deloitte Fellowship program, part of the non-profit arm of accounting services firm Deloitte & Touche, has provided financial support to outstanding students in doctoral accounting since 1956. Past Fellows include Mays accounting professors Anwer Ahmed, Mary Lea McAnally and Linda Myers.

Srivastava's dissertation examines the role of executive stock-based compensation on financial reports of public companies. His research on the relationship between CEO stock options and accounting misstatements, conducted with Mays Accounting Professor Edward Swanson and 2004 PhD graduate Jap Efendi, was featured in Business Week Online, CFO Magazine, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal’s Career Journal.

— Sommer Hamilton

Faculty

Loudder named Regents Professor

Martha Loudder Associate Dean Martha L. Loudder was named a Texas A&M University System Regents Professor at the Board of Regents meeting in January. With the title comes a $9,000 stipend.

Loudder was also recently honored as the 2005 Texas Society of CPAs Outstanding Accounting Educator and was named to a 2005 Texas A&M Presidential Professorship for Excellence in Teaching by A&M President Robert M. Gates.

For more on the Regents’ award, see: http://tamusystem.tamu.edu/news/releases/2006/2006_01_26_01.html.

— Staff Reports

Programs

ACCT hosts first-ever Lone Star Research Conference

More than 70 accounting faculty members and doctoral students from the major research schools in Texas gathered at Mays in February for a pow-wow envisioned by one of our newest accounting professors, Anwer Ahmed.

The inaugural Lone Star Accounting Research Conference hosted researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, UT-Dallas, SMU, Rice, University of Houston and A&M. The conference, co-hosted by Mays and the Department of Accounting, allowed accounting faculty to present research, gain peer feedback and explore mutual interests. It exposed PhD students to cutting-edge research as well as prospective employers.

The conference is expected to rotate among the Texas schools each year.

— Staff Reports

Faculty

Dean wins First Edition Award

Dean Jerry Strawser’s co-authored 2004 text, “Auditing & Assurance Services,” was named the Outstanding First Edition of the Year Award from McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

The book, written with Tim Louwers, Robert Ramsay and David Sinason, is a market leader in coverage of fraud. It covers the creation of the Public Companies Accounting Oversight Board and the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and provides an in-depth discussion of ethics and moral reasoning.

— Staff Reports

Students

Thousands attend career fairs

A student visits with recruiters from Enterprise Rent-A-Car during the Retailing Career Fair in February. A record 40 companies came to Mays to recruit in the 8th annual career fair.

Starbucks is looking for 39 store managers and will need skilled staff for the 150 stores it expects to open in the greater Houston area over the next three years. That’s just one reason Starbucks recruiters descended on Mays for the first time at this spring’s Retailing Career Fair.

The other? “We knew to expect this, but the students are professional and their questions for us are very poignant. They understand what we do and are finding out how they can fit it,” says Starbucks recruiting coordinator Heather Russell.

The Retailing Career Fair hosted a record 40 companies this February, the same month the Business Student Council brought 122 businesses and their recruiters to campus.

Senior management major Sharon McGowen said the Business Student Council Career Fair was a great starting point for her job search. “Companies are looking for applicants in my major, which helps a lot. It’s a big reassurance.”

H-E-B has been attending Mays’ career fairs for more than 10 years. Senior Human Resource Manager Andrea Sharayha says the company’s A&M alumni employees have proven track records and move up within the company. She also says that H-E-B appreciates the values that Aggie graduates bring to the job.

Another H-E-B recruiter, Unit Director Rich White, summed it up with a smile. “Who wouldn’t want an Aggie working for them?”

— Tiffany Tyer, Staff Reports

Students

MBA team advances in global challenge

MBA students Rajnish Srivastava, Sivakumar Ingersoll, Pardeep Duggal and Amitoj Arya have entered the third round, joining a field of 24 teams from an original pool of 600, in the National University of Singapore’s Global MBA Challenge.

If they advance in the third round, the team members will take their business case analysis to Singapore. There, they will present their findings and business plans to the CEO/top management team of their chosen company in addition to a panel of leading industry experts.

The NUS Business School competition is a hybrid of a business plan and business case competition. Students develop an actionable business plan that can be used by their case company to enter/expand into a target market.

— Staff Reports

Faculty

Smith wins Technology in Teaching Award

Accounting Professor L. Murphy Smith received one of two university-wide Assessing Technology in Teaching Awards at the Texas A&M Assessment Conference in late February. His project assesses student learning outcomes in the use of auditing expert systems. The award includes a $1,500 prize from the Office of Distance Learning.

A manuscript detailing his learning outcomes project has also been accepted for publication in Accounting Education, an international journal published in the UK. Smith pioneered use of expert systems in accounting and was previously awarded the Outstanding Educator Award from the American Accounting Association’s Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies section.

— Staff Reports

Centers

Women in IT: Balancing work and life

Panel members Elizabeth Hardy and Jenni Ritchie of ConocoPhillips, and Lori Williamson and Aga Webb of Dell, discuss issues facing women in the IT field.

The balance point between work, down-time and life responsibilities is constantly changing, but women must be prepared to find an equilibrium as they advance in their careers. That’s the message a panel of seven leading women in information technology shared with 75 students during the Center for the Management of Information System’s annual Women in Information Technology conference.

Though IT workers can expect more flexible work schedules, you have to earn flex-time by first proving you can work hard, said the top IT executives from ConocoPhillips, Dell and Texas Instruments who gathered in February.

“I have to let everybody know that this is my life and there’s going to be peak times at work when I’m there at all hours,” said Kim Harrison, project execution manager for Texas Instruments’ enterprise applications wing. “But there’s also going to be times when I’ve got to get home and have dinner with my son before his bedtime.”

Panel members stressed prioritizing work tasks — because, says Dell’s Global IT Director Aga Webb, you can’t tune out of a meeting like you sometimes can in college classes. They also stressed life-long learning skills to keep your mind refreshed and always having some “me” time, whether that’s a hobby or work-out time.

The Women in IT forum encourages female students to pursue a career in the IT field by sharing the opportunities and rewards in the industry. It also provides women in the IT industry a forum for networking and developing mentoring relationships. Students spent the day sitting side-by-side with corporate IT representatives and discussed real-life issues in workshops.

The Center for the Management of Information Systems and conference sponsors Dell, ConocoPhillips and Texas Instruments also sponsored five scholarships for student participants, randomly chosen from among the attendees. Those winners are: Dinara Yunusova, Elizabeth Gillespie and Tiffany Seaman from Mays and Paviflle Benson and Erin Jones from Prairie View A&M.

— Sommer Hamilton