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Briefs
- Sports is Big Business
- MBAs in Asia
- A Checklist of McCombs School Renovations
- A New Way to get an MPA
- BMAS Conference Draws International Scholars
- UT and Austin Partner with Tianjin, China
- McCombs School Passes AACSB Re-Accreditation with Flying Colors
- UT Places 2nd at the Marshall International Case Competition
UT-Austin is the latest university to join a consortium of schools participating in the Sports Management Institute (SMI): an advanced business program designed specifically for the college sports manager.
University athletic departments have long been huge money-makers, yet until the past decade, there were no executive education opportunities for their managers. Coaches and managers coming up through the ranks into executive positions found themselves poorly trained to take on the increasingly complex business issues of a multi-million dollar enterprise, with no opportunities for obtaining a tailored education.
Students taking the executive program—who now include mid-career executives in professional sports as well as college-level managers—learn business strategy, marketing, financial management, how to deal with the media, legal issues, and the implications of Title IX.
The SMI faculty is a well-rounded mix of renowned business school faculty and top-level practitioners who bring both academic and real-world perspectives. Discussion leaders have included Mike McCaskey, President and CEO, Chicago Bears; Steve Schanwald, VP Marketing and Broadcasting, Chicago Bulls; and David Gavit, President, NCAA Foundation.
The McCombs School hosted its first seven-day, in-residence course for SMI participants in January. “I can honestly say this has been the most meaningful, thought-provoking, and empowering investment I could have made in my professional career,” said Tim McMurray an athletics development officer at Southwest Texas State University, following the UT seminar. “From the instruction, training, and networking that comes out of the SMI experience, it is the total package for athletic management.”
As part of the McCombs School’s work to internationalize the student body, 45 MBA students toured Thailand and Malaysia over the winter break. The trip, called the Ford Asia Study Tour because of its generous sponsorship by the Ford Motor Company, is the first of what administrators hope will be an annual educational event.
“Through experiences like this,” said Phil Zerrillo, Associate Dean of the MBA Program, “students have an opportunity to see what parts of their U.S. centric business models are and are not portable.” Zerrillo and MBA Program Assistant Dean Britt Freund accompanied the students.
Hosted by Thammasat University in Bangkok, a UT international partner school where Zerrillo teaches in the Master of Science in Marketing Program, students saw both commercial and cultural sites. They visited businesses such as the Thai Farmers Bank, Big C Supercenter, a fish processing plant, a textile manufacturer, and Boonrawd Brewery. “I was surprised by how willing businesses were to share intimate details of their corporate structure with us,” said participant Monique Salazar, MBA 01.
In Malaysia the group visited the Kuala Lampur Stock Exchange, the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers, the Petronas Twin Towers, the Royal Selangor Pewter factory, and the Prime Minister’s Department where they met with the country’s Director General. Members of the HELP (Higher Education Learning Program) Institute, a private college, hosted the students while they toured the country.
The students found business leaders eager to tell them about Malaysia’s recovery process from the 1997 Asian economic crisis, their most lucrative industries, and the country’s strategies to attract foreign companies to do business there. “This trip was an excellent first effort in providing the students with a global perspective,” said Zerrillo. He gave much credit to the coordinating universities in Asia that did so much to make the trip a success.
-Kelly Matthews, MBA 01
Now there’s another entry point to the McCombs School’s top-ranked graduate accounting program—company sponsorship. If you are interested in financial reporting accounting and assurance services, have a non-accounting undergraduate business degree, and obtain the sponsorship of your employer, you can enter a specially crafted 36-credit MPA degree program and finish in 14 months. Regular admissions criteria apply.
The new program, called the MPA-Alternate Entry, combines the existing Accounting Readiness Program—a two-week nondegree course that prepares participants for advanced study in accounting—regular MPA degree coursework delivered through two summer sessions and one full semester, and a one-semester internship.
For more information on the MPA-Alternate Entry, contact Richard Joseph, program director, at 512-471-6559 or TexasMPA@mccombs.utexas.edu.
BMAS Conference Draws International Scholars
The McCombs School Center for Business Measurement and Assurance Services (BMAS) hosted an exploration of empirical management measurement research opportunities at its third annual academic conference on March 9, 2001. A conference highlight was the workshop led by David F. Larcker of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the world’s leading scholars in management accounting. “Larcker studies real managers and the information they use to make real decisions,” said William R. Kinney, director of BMAS. “He stressed that relevant information for management requires measures of the value of employees, suppliers, customers, and processes as well as the value of physical plant and inventory.”
Other notable speakers were Professor Madhov Rajan (University of Pennsylvania), Professor Wim Van der Stede (University of Southern California) and Professor Sandra Vera-Muñoz (University of Notre Dame).
UT and Austin Partner with Tianjin, China
Austin begins a “Partner Technopolis” relationship with Tianjin, China this year as the result of a proposal submitted to the cities’ mayors by Gang Yu, professor of MSIS at the McCombs School. Yu, a native Chinese who is a special advisor to the city of Tianjin, saw a perfect match between the two cities.
“Tianjin is very much like Austin with its major emphasis on high tech development,” he said. “This presents a unique opportunity for UT to play an important role in exchange programs, as well as executive education in Tianjin.”
Perhaps the first of many to come, then, Texas Executive Education began delivering a custom program to strengthen Motorola Tianjin’s technical management team this spring. The students will complete the program in 18 months, and while they won’t earn a degree, the value they create will have significant implications for the company’s bottom line.
“We built a series of courses that perfectly adapted to Motorola’s high tech business,” said Chantal Delys, assistant dean for Executive Education at the McCombs School. Texas Executive Education has worked with Motorola in Austin for many years.
The Strategic Leadership for the Technology-Driven Organization program begins this spring with professors Yu and Barua teaching the E-Business and Supply Chain Management module. Professors teaching in this course must be especially cognizant of the cultural differences that make conducting business in China very different from doing so in other parts of the world.
“Although driving toward a market economy,” says Yu,” China is still under a socialist infrastructure, and its government policies, tax structures, import/export laws, and so forth, are very different from western countries, as are its value system, incentives, and management philosophy, which have been inherited over thousands of years of culture.”
The third largest city in China, Tianjin’s economic growth is one of the fastest. “Many western enterprises choose Tianjin for setting up their divisions and production sites due to its resource availability and its proximity to Beijing,” Yu says. The city aggressively pursues policies to make it attractive to foreign investment through its Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA), and has developed four pillar industries: electronics and electricity, food and beverage, biomedical, and machinery.
Motorola, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Lucent Technologies, Caterpillar, Honeywell, and Nestlé are among the Fortune 500 transnational companies with a presence there already. China’s imminent entry in the World Trade Organization will make Tianjin an even more attractive place for global businesses.
McCombs School Passes AACSB Re-Accreditation with Flying Colors
Following a peer review visit in November, the McCombs School was reaccredited by AACSB The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. The Business School at UT Austin has been a charter member of AACSB since it was first established in 1916.
The McCombs School was particularly commended on the dedication and skill of its administration, faculty, and staff; the ability of the faculty to maintain both a strong research focus and an emphasis on teaching excellence; undergraduate student enthusiasm for the learning experience; impressive placements of its doctoral graduates; and the quality of the facilities.
The McCombs School, like all other AACSB accredited institutions, undergoes the review process every ten years, submitting interim reports at intervals in between. There are currently more than 300 accredited business schools in the United States.
UT Places 2nd at the Marshall International Case Competition
A team of four undergraduate students from the McCombs School competed and placed second in the Marshall International Case Competition at the University of Southern California (USC) in February. The Competition drew teams from 19 business schools in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Italy, Hungary, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia.
The UT team consisted of Business Honors students Tanmay Desai, Vikas Kalra, Eric Liaw, and Eric Payne, and was advised by Susan White, a finance professor in the McCombs School. Desai felt the breadth of schools distinguished this competition from others. “There was definitely a feeling of respect in this event. USC brought the best schools not only from America but also from the rest of the world,” he said.
The competition required each team to solve a Harvard Business Case. The teams were given 24 hours to work on their solutions before presenting to distinguished members of the California business and educational community. To become eligible for this event, the McCombs School team won in a qualifying Internal Case Competition held on campus last spring.
Find out more about McCombs School Case Competitions.
— Vikas Kalra, BBA 02
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
