The Legacy of Dean George Gau

In a Q&A, Dean Gau reflects on his tenure and shares his thoughts on the future of McCombs and business education.

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Are there specific things that people point to as they have come to this understanding?

The quality of our faculty and students is the key. When we have an opportunity for them to get to know faculty, they come away impressed. And then when they recruit our students, and our students wow them during their interviews and then do well in their companies, you see an endorsement of who we are. I’m also quite proud of the professionalism of our staff and appreciate their dedication to our school.

“He’s helped the business school get the reputation we think it deserves. Of particular note are the students who have participated in the management of the MBA Investment Fund. These graduates are now proudly representing McCombs in many of the nation’s largest and finest financial institutions.”

- GARY CRUM President, CFP Foundation Chairman, McCombs Advisory Council

As you look back over these six years, what do you feel has changed?

It’s very clear to me that our MBA program has much more of a national presence than it did six years ago. We’re placing more of our students outside of Texas, and more of our students are having opportunities to become business leaders in national and international companies. I’m also pleased with how our research faculty care more about and are involved more in our undergraduate program. We have such a fine set of undergraduate students. They’re capable of more than we’ve been able to ask of them. We’re challenging them more, and I hope we continue to develop that initiative.

We have a stronger research environment in the school, and I feel we’ve developed nicely our relationships with industry and our external constituents, particularly the school’s Advisory Council. Their knowledge of the faculty and staff in the school is much stronger, and they have a greater respect for research than there was six years ago.

What kinds of lessons do you want McCombs students to learn about leadership, whether through class work or through interacting with leaders that come to the school?

I want students to learn that there are different leadership styles. There isn’t one cookie-cutter formula that fits every situation. Also, communication is such an important factor in leading. You can’t assume that just because you sent an e-mail out, that everyone’s going to read it and pay attention to it. They have other concerns going on. You need to learn how to say things multiple times to try to hit your audience. So I want to emphasize the importance of developing a communication style; how leaders think about that, how it can frame their decisions. From visiting business leaders, I want students to know why they are doing their jobs. Because in my interactions with those leaders, it’s been clear to me that seldom is it the money they earn that’s driving them. There are other types of satisfaction that they get from being a leader, and many strongly feel the desire to move their companies forward.

“George is entrepreneurial in a traditionally non-entrepreneurial place, like a university. He set the model at McCombs for research centers, involving alumni in more than just funding—getting their input and ongoing involvement to improve the educational experience for students and increase opportunities for professors to access the develop relationships with industry participants.”

- JEFF SWOPE Managing Partner, Champion Partners Ltd. Member, McCombs Advisory Council

Thinking about business education in general, what’s working and what isn’t?

We are still finding the right balance of academic rigor and professional application. If you went back, way back, to the 1950s and looked at business education, it had very little academic rigor. It was viewed very much as a trade school education. And in fact that’s why the great universities wouldn’t allow students to major in business as undergraduates. It just wasn’t rigorous enough an education to develop the critical thinking skills desired for the highest-quality undergraduate experience. And there was a report written in 1959 by the Ford and Carnegie Foundations that just lambasted business education as being similar to trade school. In response to that, you saw strong business schools reach out to economics departments, psychology departments and sociology departments and try to bring more academic quality into the school.

Since then, our academic disciplines have developed their own body of knowledge, and business schools like McCombs now have some of the best academics in universities. During that process, we cared too little perhaps about business application. Now we’re at the point where I think we should be more comfortable that we can be academically rigorous, and at the same time recognize that we’re a professional school that brings into the classroom how the concepts we teach are actually applied and developed. We can have strong relationships with industry without giving up our academic rigor and the quality of what we do.

“George has always had a unique combination of long-term vision and results orientation. Many people can envision a bright future but struggle to identify the path that will bring their ideas to fruition. Not George. He is very clear thinking and is adept in turning his ideas into action. I should also add that George is a terrific mentor. I know firsthand that he goes out of his way to introduce students to the right alumni who might be able to help them through a particular decision or juncture in life.”

- LYNN UTTER, President & COO, Knoll North America Former Chair, McCombs Advisory Council

Why is that duality between academics and application so important?

Executive education is a great example of this. There are wonderful business schools that we all respect from an academic point of view that are very involved in executive education. The new AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center and the growth in our executive education program are going to give our faculty more opportunities to be involved with industry and still be quality researchers. Austin’s a wonderful place to live, and we love being here, but it’s not a leading business center in the U.S. or even Texas. So most of our faculty don’t have day-to-day opportunities to be involved with business professionals that relate to their discipline. Executive education can supplement that and enable us to give our faculty more of those opportunities, particularly through custom executive education programs.

With custom programs you have development time with a company to understand the problems they’re facing, and you develop curriculum to address those problems. Out of that often comes new ideas about how concepts you’ve been teaching are actually applied and improvements that can be made through academic research.

What motivates you?

I get great joy from seeing initiatives accomplished. To be able to take an idea, structure it, convince people of the worthiness of the initiative, figure a way to move it forward and then see it actually accomplished gives me great satisfaction. I also enjoy seeing people develop. It’s fun to see, whether it’s watching a faculty member expand their research reputation or their teaching skills, or seeing a staff member grow in their role, acquire more skills, I really enjoy that. And if I can help them in that development, then that’s pretty neat.

What’s your dream job?

This has been a great job. Hopefully I will find a new challenge that I will enjoy as much, but I’ve been lucky. I have loved being an academic, doing research and teaching students. It was great being a department chair. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being a dean. We will see what the future holds.