November 19, 2002
Meet the New McCombs Department Chairs
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| Alison Davis-Blake Management Dept. |
Laura Starks Finance Dept. |
Tom Shively MSIS Dept. |
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The McCombs School welcomes three new department chairs this year, in Management, Finance, and Management Science and Information Systems (MSIS). Though all are established faculty members at the school, we thought readers might enjoy learning more about them and their visions for the McCombs community.
Alison Davis-Blake, Management
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The Management Department in the McCombs School begins the 2002-03 school year with a new chairman but a familiar face overseeing a diverse, renowned and beefed-up faculty.
Alison Davis-Blake, who has taught in Management for the past dozen years after a stint at Carnegie Mellon University, becomes the new department chair. She heads a group of more than 40 faculty members -- 22 tenure-track professors and 20 lecturers who promise a challenging, innovative course of work.
Davis-Blake, whose research expertise is in strategic human resources management and organizational design, has sat on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly and the Academy of Management Review.
Among numerous academic and professional awards, she has won the 1998 CBA Foundation Advisory Council Award for Teaching Innovation and the 1993 CBA Foundation Research Excellence Award for Assistant Professors. Her research has been supported by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and the Sloan Foundation, among others.
As chair, she says one of the department’s goals “is to retain the current excellent faculty, while at the same time attracting very high quality professors that allow us to compete with any school in the country. I believe we are succeeding with that endeavor.”
An important change in the department, as underscored by Dean Gau's 2002 welcome address to MBAs, is the response to issues raised last year in the entrepreneurship program. As a result, more resources will be allocated to upgrade the program.
While the basic structure of the entrepreneurship curriculum remains the same, a number of additions and options will be available this year. The various offerings will be integrated under a common umbrella, in response to student interests and current business conditions, Davis-Blake says.
With the addition of the Moot Corp course to the core entrepreneurship offerings, there will be six core courses offered, from which students can choose five to complete their specialization in entrepreneurship. The annual Moot Corp competition draws competitors from around the world. The course will bring together issues from a number of other courses, including how to write and present a business plan, how to launch a business and how to grow a firm. The course will be open to students from across campus, including engineering, natural sciences and law. The department will also support two other competitions in addition to Moot Corp, to encourage the participation of as many students as possible.
“I understand some of the frustrations that were raised by students and alumni at the end of the year, and we have initiated concrete initiatives to address those concerns. The innovations this year will make for a better program,” Davis-Blake says.
| Management Courses |
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Management courses offered this year will include electives in strategic management and human capital management as well as courses in two broad areas on which a student can focus: Supply Chain Management and Entrepreneurship. Supply Chain Management Entrepreneurship |
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Laura Starks, Finance
Long-time university denizen and San Antonio native Laura Starks adds the title of Finance Department Chair to her already crowded list of accomplishments this fall semester. Starks, who has been a faculty member at McCombs since 1986, and who received her B.A. and Ph.D. from the university, takes over for George Gau, who was named dean earlier this summer.
Starks will head the 25 professors and lecturers -- 19 tenure-track, six adjuncts -- in a department that is actively addressing many of the issues making current headlines as a result of the ongoing business scandals.
"Greed is nothing new, it's always been with us. But now, at the very least, those taking unethical actions will have to think much more closely about what they do because of the scrutiny their actions will receive," Starks notes. "Some of these instances are real criminal activity. It is not so much ethics as it is out and out fraud."
The finance faculty has spent a considerable amount of time planning for class discussion the ethical and corporate governance implications of Enron, WorldCom, et al. Starks believes that one of the challenges to the faculty will be to place these ethical lapses in proper context.
"That is particularly important for the undergraduates, who have not, for the most part, had nearly the experience and exposure to the real business world that the MBAs have had," Starks says.
Among goals she has set, Starks hopes to promote both teaching and research expertise by recruiting dynamic new faculty and melding them with the department's existing outstanding faculty. "Teaching is extremely important, but we also want to have cutting-edge researchers. Because both work for the benefit of the student," says Starks.
The semester will see a complete review of resources and how they are allocated, "with the goal of making sure that students leaving here will have the tools and skills they need to succeed in today's business environment, which increasingly is both high-tech and knowledge driven," she says.
Starks has served as director of the American Finance Association, the Financial Management Association and the Western Finance Association and been Associate Editor of such academic journals as Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Financial Management, Contemporary Finance Digest, Journal of Financial Research, Journal of Corporate Finance, and the Journal of Financial Services Research.
Among other awards, Starks has received the 1996 Smith Breeden Distinguished Paper Award, the 1998 Financial Management Association Award for Best Paper in Corporate Finance and the 1997 Western Finance Association Award for Best Paper in Corporate Finance. She received the CBA Foundation Award for Research Excellence in 1996, as well as the CBA Foundation Award for Outstanding Research Contributions in 2000.
| Finance Spotlight |
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Some of the ongoing programs housed in the Finance Department are: The MBA Investment Fund, L.L.C. The EDS Financial Trading and Technology Center The Financial Analyst Program The Energy Finance Program The Center for Energy Finance Education and Research (CEFER) The Real Estate Finance and Investment Center The Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst Center The AIM Investment Center |
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Tom Shively, MSIS
Tom Shively, the newly appointed chair of Management Science and Information Systems (MSIS), begins the fall semester having completed a strategic review of IS courses, with a redoubling of efforts to counter the dip in enrollment as a result of the decline in the dot-com industry of the past several years.
"Enrollment is down a bit in the MSIS courses this year due to the condition of the information technology sector of the economy. However, I am confident this area will bounce back in the near future and the department will be ready. We have attracted outstanding new faculty the past several years to add to the depth and quality of our existing faculty,” Shively says.
Shively, an avid tennis player always on the look out for a tennis partner, has been an MSIS faculty member for the past 17 years, since receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
He takes over a department that is large and diverse in its teaching scope, which encompasses courses in information sciences, quantitative modeling -- including statistics, risk management and management science -- as well as business law.
Shively has received several teaching awards, including the Joe D. Beasley Award for Teaching Excellence in 2001 and 1993, and outstanding MBA Program core professor in 1994 and 1992.
Although the regional and national teaching climate is changing, the capstone class for MSIS majors will continue to be MIS 374, Shively says.
That popular course includes three small projects at the beginning of the semester leading up to a major project that involves the creation of a technological solution for a business client.
The students split into five-person teams and spend 11 weeks in the exercise developing a tech solution. It’s an important project because the student teams become involved in real-world issues, and the project accounts for more than one-third of the total course grade, Shively notes.
Such technology giants as IBM, Motorola, Dell, 3M, National Instruments and Tivoli have utilized MIS 374 students to help develop solutions to problems that have, at times, baffled their own internal staffs.
Over nearly two decades, the class students have worked for hundreds of firms, small businesses, government agencies and non-profit entities. In recent years, the students have focused on developing web-based systems to gather, store and efficiently manage information.
The Austin Fire Department (AFD), for example, recently estimated that through four semesters, it has received $100,000 worth of free consulting services from MIS 374 students.
But it’s not only entities like AFD who get something out of the projects, because the students earn valuable real-life experience as a result of the course.
“We’ve developed a good mix of very good instructors and great researchers, because we need both,” Shively says.
| MSIS Centers |
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Among the major centers housed within MSIS are: Center for Business, Technology and Law Center for Research in Electronic Commerce Risk Management and Insurance Program |
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.
