First runner up was Nutraberry, a supplier of raspberry seed powder and oil to be used as an anti-oxidant food supplement.  The company has been developed by Albers alums David Wishnick (MBA, 2011) and Elana Lausberg (MBA, 2008), and is already shipping product to manufacturers.

The second runner-ups were Octave and Universal Charge.  Octave is an app that teaches you how to sing.  Universal Charge will provide a payment system to electric vehicle owners for use at charging stations.  Octave was founded by five undergraduate students, headed up by senior Alex Tsway and including Brett Kennedy, Chenyu Wang, Michael Fogarty, and Thanh Huynh.  Universal Charge was developed by Brett Phillips, a current MBA student.  Octave took the Community Choice award at the finals, I am guessing largely on the strength of the interesting concept and Adam's authentic and congenial presentation style.

The business plan competition is a great learning experience for our students and involves many volunteers as judges and mentors.  The deeper the students get into the competition, (which includes a trade show and elevator pitch competition) the more mentoring and coaching they receive, and the more powerful the experience.  The many volunteer judges and mentors are an important part of that and it could not happen without them!

And let's not forget that sometimes these businesses become a reality - the students go out and start them!  In the process, they will almost always get assistance from members of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center Advisory Board and other friends of Albers.  For example, we estimate that students have raised over $4.5 million in start-up funding through the competition as investors are exposed to the concepts and want to back them.

The business plan competition was a big success in its 15^th year.  IEC director, Sue Oliver, and program administrative assistant, Nettasha Reese, did an excellent job of organizing the process.  Congratulations to them!

Some of the top academic awards included the Paul A. Volpe Award for the graduating senior with the highest academic performance, awarded to Kalison Shilvock.  Ha Nguyen received the Academic Achievement Award for the Outstanding Transfer Student. Receiving the Jerry A. Viscione Award for the highest academic performance among our graduate students was Professional MBA student, Thomas Smith.

The top leadership award went to Christopher Clem, who received the Spirit of Albers Award, which is presented to the student who best embodies leadership, enthusiasm, dedication, commitment to service, and compassion towards others.  Christopher, an economics major, was recognized for his work for social justice both on campus and overseas.  This includes working with micro-lending organizations both in Argentina and Seattle.

Receiving the top service awards were Jonas Harris, who received the undergraduate award, and Daniel Klein, who received the graduate student award.  Jonas received his award for his work with ENACTUS and Redeeming Soles.  Daniel received his award for his work to organize professional and social events for our graduate students.

The awards ceremony was followed by the Beta Gamma Sigma (BGS) induction ceremony.  BGS is the academic honorary for business students at AACSB accredited business schools.  Some 25undergraduate and 42 graduate students were inducted.  Dr. Fred Dekay does a great job of organizing the BGS students and getting them to accept the invitation to join BGS.  Year after year our chapter is designated a Premier Chapter by BGS because so many of our students accept the invitation.  Only our top performing students receive an invitation to join BGS.

Dr. Peter Brous, Professor of Finance, received this year's BGS Teacher of the Year Award.  We also had four faculty members inducted into BGS - Dr. Bonnie Buchanan, Dr. Holly Ferraro, Dr. Jessica Ludescher, and Dr. Rubina Mahsud.

We are very proud of the academic achievements of our students!  Congratulations to all our awardees!!

This year's finalists were Lynette Johnson (Soulumination), Paul Shoemaker (Social Venture Partners), and Molly Stearns (Overlake Hospital Medical Center Foundation). Molly Stearns received the Red Winged Leadership Award for 2013.  The award recognizes the great work she has done at the Seattle Foundation and Overlake Medical Center Foundation.  Although Molly received the award, all the finalists are winners!  For more information on the finalists and the great work they do, go to: http://www.seattleu.edu/albers/inner.aspx?id=111890.

The Red Winged Leadership Award is becoming a singular event for Seattle University.  Inspired by Seattle University's experience as a host school for the Opus Award, it is taking on a life of its own because our students are doing such a great job with organizing the process.  Its alignment with the mission of Seattle University and the Albers School also make it very compelling.

This year's GLFS students did a phenomenal job of managing the award process and staging the event.  Each year, the students put their special stamp on the program.  This year, the students introduced a scholarship named for the winner that will be awarded to a Seattle University student.  That is a great idea!

Albers is very proud of the work our GLFS students do with Red Winged Leadership Award, under the guidance of Professor Jennifer Marrone.  Hats off to all the students and Professor Marrone for a job well done!

Rascoff helped found Zillow in 2005 and became CEO in 2010.  Zillow is expanding rapidly at the moment, hiring new employees not just in Seattle, but in California, as well.  Spencer noted several times that Zillow sees its role as empowering the consumer by unlocking information.  Zillow does not see itself as making the real estate broker obsolete, as there will always be a need for assistance with a complex and critical transaction such as buying or selling a house.  Zillow sees the role of the agent as having changed from "information gate keeper" to " transaction consultant."

Rascoff opened by discussing his early career in investment banking and private equity, which proved to be valuable training for his later exploits, but also was too transactional and not satisfying for him in the long run.  Ultimately, though, that experience set the stage for co-founding Hotwire and then Zillow.

In moving from Hotwire to Zillow, Rascoff said he grew weary of the travel industry and looked for another sector that could be impacted by the Internet.  Real estate seemed like another market where industry databases were locked away from the consumer.  Zillow set out to unlock that information and succeeded.

While starting out in the home sale vertical, Zillow has now moved to home lending, rentals, and, most recently, home improvements.  Rascoff said this was enough to keep them fully occupied at the moment, and they planned to focus on the domestic market.  In entering the global market they would start from scratch and bring little to the table.  In the mean time, strong competitors have already adopted the Zillow model and have a head start.  A rapidly growing segment of their business is on mobile phones, and they have found it easier to monetize mobile than the web.

In case you have not noticed, Zillow has done six acquisitions of late.  Rascoff said they have all been in "adjacent spaces" and they have worked hard to keep the existing management teams in place.  They have sold the acquisition by telling the target firm it can do what it does better with Zillow, where it will have access to more resources.  They have also used stock options to align the interests of management teams with shareholders.

When asked about his leadership style, Rascoff said he was there to serve his direct reports and help them be successful.  He sees himself as a "player coach," and noted the higher up in the organization you are, the less you are responsible for actually doing things!

When asked what advice he would give recent college graduates, he suggested students look at people who are 10 to 15 years into their career and ask if you want to live like they do!  Also, keep in mind that in a high growth company you are likely to have more opportunities for career development.  If a company is not growing, there are fewer opportunities and you tend to get pigeon-holed in a particular role.

If he had to do it over again, what is one thing he would have done differently at Zillow?  Communicate more with brokers.  Zillow was an outsider and the industry was suspicious of the company, giving the most negative interpretation of the moves it saw Zillow making.  Only later did Zillow figure out how its actions were being interpreted by agents.  Today, the lines of communication are much better and brokers are forthcoming with suggestions for improvements.

Spencer Rascoff gave a fascinating presentation on Zillow and his career leading up to its founding.  He also provided excellent career advice to the many students in the audience.  The final speaker for this year in the Albers Executive Speaker Series is SU alum Leo Hindery, Managing Partner of Intermedia Partners.  Hindery has a long career in the cable TV industry and is visiting from New York City on May 28^th.  See you there!

Getting 50 people to campus to cover 84 classes is no easy task.  Many more people end up being asked than are able to visit.  I know that many potential speakers were out of town this week or their schedule was too busy to allow them to come to campus.  Nevertheless, we had some great volunteers coming to classes, including Robbie Bach, former President of Microsoft's Games and Devices division, Phyllis Campbell, Vice Chair of JPMorgan Chase Northwest, Brian Webster, CEO of Physio-Control, and Dan Wall, Senior VP at Expeditors International.

Other events during the week included a presentation on the sustainability practices of Costco Wholesale.  Nearly 200 people showed up to hear Sherry Flies, who leads Costco's sustainability efforts, explain Costco's pioneering sustainability practices. 

There was also a panel discussion around ethics and entrepreneurship with about 50 students and faculty attending.  If featured Albers alums Kent Johnson (MBA '71) and Meg McCarthy (BSBA '84) as well as Bryan Mistele, founder and CEO of INRIX.  Kent created the Lawrence K. Johnson Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship at SU and spent many years as a venture capitalist, forming Alexander Hutton Associates.  He now does business resolutions with his new firm, Aebig and Johnson.  Meg is a serial entrepreneur having successfully started businesses such as Pharmacy Automation Consulting Technologies, LLC and Bizzults.

The final event of the week was a wrap up panel discussion on business ethics from the perspective of students, faculty, and professionals.  Panelists included Jeff Greenaway (CIO onDemand), Dr. Marinilka Kimbro (accounting faculty member), Eric Huang (graduate student), and Mark Pufpaff (undergraduate student). 

The Center for Business Ethics organized the event, which is only right, since it is the advisory board of the Center that came up with the idea of Business Ethics Week!!  Those who were instrumental in the orchestration of Business Ethics Week include the director of the center, Dr. John Dienhart, and his two graduate student assistants - JP McCarvel and Sherry Ren.  It was a job well done!

This was the second year of Business Ethics Week, although last year it was actually Business Ethics Day.  We intend to make this an annual event in the Albers School, continuing to make it more impactful each year!

The day included a gathering of over 150 students, faculty, and staff in the PACCAR Atrium for a picture of symbolic support for land mine victims - everyone rolling up their right pant leg to "Lend a Leg."  Here is the shot:

This was followed by a showing of the film, "The Eyes of Thailand".  The film focuses on two elephant land mine survivors.

Our campus participation in International Mine Action Day was inspired by the visit of Tun Channareth to our campus nearly two years ago.  Channareth received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to ban landmines, and was here to receive an honorary degree from the university.

The students did a marvelous job of organizing the event.  Nine Albers student organizations collaborated with nine student organizations from other parts of campus.  In doing so, they showed that collaborating with others can lead to a more successful result!  Kudos to them!

Each year, we go to interview and meet with the interested SISU students.  Since SISU is focused on language training, we find the English language skills of the students to be very strong, but we still want to test that out by meeting with them.  This year there are four SISU students in our MPAC program.

SISU was founded in 1949 as the Shanghai Russian College!  It is one of the Chinese schools included in the government's Project 211, which means it is one of the more prestigious universities in China.  It has about 7000 undergraduate students, 3000 graduate students, and 4000 international students!    It has 37 different undergraduate programs, 33 master's programs, and 12 PhD. Programs.  There are actually two business schools, the College of International Finance and Commerce and the College of International Business.  We currently work with the former but would certainly be happy to collaborate with both!

For the past several years, Bruce Koch, chair of our Department of Accounting, has gone to Shanghai to do the interviews.  In the process, Bruce has become a rock star at SUSI, known for his enthusiasm, sense of humor, fondness for spicy food, and love of cold temperatures.  That is a tough act to follow.

SISU has two campuses, one in the city (HongKou) and one out in the suburbs (Songjiang).  In 2008, David Reid and I visited the HongKou campus and our visit led to the creation of the 3+2 program.  The undergraduate business program is at the Songjiang campus, so I had to travel out there to meet with the students, visiting that location for the first time.  The campuses are night and day.  The HongKou is small and contained like the SU campus, but the buildings are packed more tightly and generally taller.  The Sonqjiang campus is spread out with stately buildings and wide grassy lawns, what you would associate with a large Midwestern university campus!  The HongKou campus is in a noisy, traffic filled neighborhood.  Songiang is in a quiet district of wide boulevards and manicured landscaping.  It is about 60-90 minutes by car between the two campuses, depending on traffic.

First, I spoke to about 40 SISU students about the MPAC program and our new Bridge MBA program.  Some SISU students may be interested in the latter.  Then, I interviewed 16 students who were interested in the MPAC program to test their English skills and their interest in accounting.  Of course, it was very interesting to talk to these students and learn about their lives and aspirations as well as their interest in SU!  The interviews took place over two days, and in addition to our conversation I also gave them a short essay to write so we would know something about their writing skills.

After the interviews, in consultation with SISU staff, we ranked the students for purposes of awarding several partial scholarships we offer to SISU students.  It was a difficult process since there were so many talented students, but we finally came up with a list we were happy with.

Throughout the process, SISU was a very gracious host.  If the shoe were on the other foot, I doubt that we would do as good a job of hosting them to our campus!  In particular, Ms. Xiaolin Yan, who serves as Foreign Affairs Secretary for the college, was always there to get me where I needed to go, answer questions, and do anything else needed.  Thank you, Xiaolin!

During my visit to SISU, I also talked to several campus officials about strengthening the ties between SU and SISU, which they are anxious to see happen.  Suggestions include a student exchange program, hosting visiting faculty at the two institutions, and creating a 3+2 program around the Bridge MBA.

During the visit I also visited with our alum, Diane Jurgens, who earned her MBA at SU and serves as Managing Director for Shanghai OnStar, a joint venture between GM and the Shanghai Automotive Industrial Company.  It was fascinating to meet her and learn about her accomplishments, as it goes without saying that she is one of the few American women leading an automotive business unit in China or elsewhere, for that matter.  I hope we will be able to get her to speak on campus over the next year or so!

I am now sitting in the Tokyo airport on my way back to Seattle.  I did not notice much different about Shanghai in 2013 compared to what I saw in 2008.  If you have been to Shanghai, you know it an impressive city with its miles and miles of high rise buildings and high rise freeways.  All this has been created in just a few decades.  It is interesting to see, but once you see it, it is not something you go out of your way to see again.  That means that both this trip and my next trip to Shanghai will be about visiting SISU, maybe to begin collaboration with their College of International Business! :}

That included Wichita State grinding out a win over Pitt, Southern nearly upsetting Gonzaga, Harvard upsetting New Mexico, and the Shockers of WSU bouncing Gonzaga in the third round.  Not a bad regional, and it far exceeded my expectations looking at the lineup going in.  That just shows you one more time that you never know with college hoops.

Salt Lake City was not the only place for upsets.  My alma mater, LaSalle, found a way to make it to the Sweet 16 as a play-in team, having not been to the tournament since 1992.  On the other hand, my other alma mater, Notre Dame, was upset in the first round.   And my team for 19 years, Creighton, won a close second round victory, only to fall to Duke in the third round.  Thus far, my affiliated institutions have a record of 4-2!  One of these days, maybe the SU men's team can make it to the dance.  The SU women nearly did this year, and they will be right in the thick of it next year, I am sure!

Speaking of women's hoops, they are in the middle of their tournament, as well.  Normally, it is equally exciting, but this year is there any chance that someone can beat Baylor?  It just does not seem likely, which makes it less intriguing.  That is the interesting thing about the men's side this year - it seems like so many teams have a legitimate shot at the title.

The Albers March Madness pool is back - I am so glad Madhu Rao has ramped it back up!  There is a lot of abuse unleashed every time the results are updated, and I get more than my fair share.  But that is OK, as it would be unseemly for the Dean to win.  It is important to have a respectable finish, however!  That Harvard win busted my bracket some, by the way!

I have been going to Regionals since 1998, when Creighton qualified for the Big Dance for the first time under Dana Altman, and played in Orlando.  It was there that Creighton upset Louisville in the first round.  A few changes I have noticed since then is that (1) TV coverage of games is so much more available,  (2) tickets are easier to get and there are more and more empty seats, and (3) the commemorative t-shirts are so much easier to buy - they always used to run out of  them.  (1) and (2)  are no doubt related.

There is one thing that sometimes becomes a problem, and that is fans (and announcers) sometimes forget how YOUNG these players are.  That goes a long way in explaining a missed layup or free throw at a critical point, losing one's temper and drawing a technical foul, or making a bad decision on an impossible angle shot or pass.  Then, sometimes an occasional fan will think it is humorous to get on a player like one would witness at a pro game - not very funny at all.  That is the advantage of working in higher education every day - you know how young the players are!

I know that there are many critics of March Madness, saying that it exploits the students and makes millions of dollars for others.  On the first point, a scholarship athlete is getting over $50k in benefits assuming he or she is making progress toward a degree, and that does not factor in what a degree will do for lifetime earnings (on average).  Plus, you know those students just love the experience of being in the tournament! 

On the second point, that is no doubt true, but schools are negotiating more favorable contracts with networks and more of that can be used to pay the costs of athletics (including the other sports for men and women!).  Plus, schools reap intangible benefits from the exposure in terms of alumni relations and boosting the brand of the school - just check with Florida Gulf Coast on that!

During her time here, Gail probably had to deal with me more than she had to work with anyone else on campus.  That means she is a survivor - she put up with me all those years! :}   One thing that probably helped was our common enthusiasm for athletics, particularly college basketball.  Naturally, we were very supportive of Seattle U. returning to Division I athletics, and I don't have to ask her to know that she is VERY excited about the women's basketball team leading the WAC!

An important thing to be able to say when you leave is, "I left the place a much better place than I found it."  That is definitely the case for Gail.  One example would be our alumni relations and the Albers Alumni Board.  Under Gail's watch, the alumni relations of the school have definitely improved and the Alumni Board has strengthened.  Alumni events such as the Crab Feed and the Golf Tournament are much stronger today than they were.  In recent years, Gail has been working with Rob Bourke to make that happen, but she has definitely had an impact.

One of Gail's most important contributions was her work on the SU Capital Campaign - "For the Difference We Make" - which went from 2003 to 2009.  While the campaign was underway when Gail arrived, she definitely was instrumental in the success of the Albers School.  Our key projects were to create an endowment for graduate student scholarships, the Tinius Professorship in Accounting, and endowments for our entrepreneurship and business ethics centers.  The success of those projects is definitely paying off today, and is part of the legacy that Gail is leaving at SU.  The graduate scholarships have proven to be critical in the last few years as our graduate students have faced increasing financial pressure and declining employer support.  The Tinius Professorship has been instrumental in attracting and retaining outstanding faculty to our highly ranked accounting program.  The endowments for entrepreneurship and business ethics are providing significant levels of support to our widely admired Center for Business Ethics and Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center.

Of course, Gail's success in garnering resources for the Albers School goes well beyond the capital campaign.  Other notable achievements include the PMI China Engagement Initiative, scholarships to fund student study abroad, and corporate support for the Summer Business Institute, not to mention my favorite, the Dean's Fund! :}

Attendees at the dinner remarked on Gail's passion - her passion for fund raising and her passion for the university (you can add women's basketball to that).  They also pointed to her generosity with her time, talent, and her own giving.  When people experienced an illness or some other setback, Gail was always there to support them.  One person remarked that Gail did it without giving it much thought, that it was simply the thing to do, not realizing what a positive impact it had and that it was not the way everyone responded.

Although Gail was in fundraising, which does not usually have much direct contact with students, Gail had a profound impact on a number of students during her time here.  She hired them as administrative assistants and trained and mentored them to do their work at the highest level.  This ended up being an important part of their education at SU, making Gail a professor with impact!

While Gail has retired, she really hasn't.  It comes as no surprise to anyone who knows her that she is continuing to work part-time on special projects for Mary Kay McFadden, VP for University Advancement.  This includes leading the search process to find a new development officer for the College of Science and Engineering and helping to orient new University Advancement staff.

Gail Yates is leaving, but she will not be forgotten.  She will be remembered for her professionalism, for her willingness to pitch in and support her colleagues in Albers as well as University Advancement, and for her enthusiastic support of the mission of Albers and SU.  She will have the satisfaction of knowing she has left an impressive legacy at the Albers School.

McAdam has served as President and CEO of F5 Networks since 2000. He took the company through the turbulent post-dot-com era, positioning it to grow from annual revenue of $108 million to more than $1.3 billion today. He has overseen numerous successful acquisitions, guiding F5 into new markets that enhance the company's Application Delivery Networking solution offerings. Under his leadership, F5 was added to the S&P 500, and Fortune Magazine named F5 to its 2011 and 2012 lists of 100 Fastest Growing Companies worldwide.

When McAdam took over F5, their main offering was around load balancing and most of their customers were dot-com companies. Starting in 2004, they were able to offer traffic management systems and successfully target Fortune 500 firms. Making that bet was one that worked for F5! Through the years they have been able to expand their services to other areas such as data security. The rise of mobile data and the movement to the cloud have expanded their market considerably.

In discussing the success of F5, McAdam emphasized the importance of culture, noting that employees need to be respected and respectful of one another. Other aspects of the F5 culture include innovation, integrity, metric-driven, and global mindset.

Regarding the latter, most of F5's business is outside the US, and customers are requiring the same product. There is little difference in what they sell across markets, but the size of transactions is much bigger in North America.

When it comes to his leadership style, McAdam said the most important thing is that people trust you. People at F5 clearly trust McAdam, and his humble persona definitely helps with that. Also critical, he said, is to surround yourself with good people - exactly what you would expect a leader with humility to say!

McAdam had other important insights to share with the audience. One was that he is a great believer in paranoia when it comes to business - "only the paranoid survive," he said! It's clear that he will never let F5 get complacent.

He also noted that a successful CEO must have a supportive board of directors. If he had not had that at F5, particularly when he first arrived, he would no doubt have left long ago.

Technology is changing our lives and our society in ways we don't yet fully understand. With the rise of mobile devices and the cloud, F5 is right in the middle of many of these changes. McAdam noted there are significant growth opportunities for F5, and growth is necessary for F5 to remain an independent company. His visit to campus was an excellent opportunity to hear about some of the key trends in the tech industry, but also about successful leadership in a rapidly changing environment.

Compared to other sectors of our economy, higher education has not changed that much.  How we do things is not all that different now than it was thirty years ago when I started my career in higher education.  We have continuously refined and improved upon what we do, but the basic framework has persisted.  That seems like it is about to change. 

Two forces are coming together to force our hand.  One is the continuing improvement in technology that facilitates on-line instruction.  On-line instruction is not new.  It has been around for several decades, but what is different is that it is getting better.

The second force is the high cost of higher education, whether it is private or public.  Private universities have been consistently raising tuition faster than the rate of inflation.  That is not sustainable.  Public higher education, perhaps underpriced at one time, has increased sharply in cost due to financial pressures experienced by state governments.  This story is familiar to every family trying to send their children off to college.

Clayton Christensen, a management professor at Harvard, has made a name for himself with his research on "Disruptive Innovation," a model he uses to explain why companies at the top of many sectors have found themselves all the sudden struggling to survive.   Whether it is explaining the demise of Blockbuster, Kodak, Digital, or Borders, each was the victim of a disruptive innovation.  Sometimes it is the development of a new technology or process.  Sometimes it is the development of a new product that overtakes an existing product. 

Christensen has finally applied his insights to his own industry, higher education, which is presented in his co-authored book, The Innovative University.  Christensen argues that universities will need to re-engineer themselves to assure on-going relevance.

Across our programs in the Albers School, we expect these trends to appear in different ways.  Perhaps the slowest to be impacted is our undergraduate business degree, which by its nature has a strong formative character to it.  Where we think it is showing up first is in our MBA program.  Our program is strong and highly rated, but tuition and fees are high for the average student.  And while we have always prided ourselves on the flexibility of our program and the ability to accommodate working professionals, it still takes a lot of time and requires many visits to campus.  Overlaying all of that is a steady drumbeat of commentaries critical of the value of the MBA.  Of course, we don't agree with that, but that talk is on the street.

To keep our program relevant, we need to reign in the financial cost and increase accessibility.  That means identifying what is really needed in an MBA and delivering that in an even more convenient format.  We need to design different ways for students to complete prerequisites, cut some of the coursework, and move to "hybrid" models of teaching, where lectures seldom take place when classes meet.  Instead, lectures are reviewed by students outside of class and class time is used for higher order activities.  To the extent that students (and employers, perhaps) question the value of the MBA, they may have more interest in certificate programs.

There is no way to know for certain how "Disruptive Innovation" will impact higher education, but it would be foolish to assume it will not.  New developments are taking place very quickly and we must stay alert and ready to respond.

Davis has taken an interesting path to get to PATH.  Most recently he was at McKinsey as global director of social innovation, focusing on cross-sector work in global health and development.  Prior to that he was CEO of Corbis, the digital media firm, and also served as interim CEO of the Infectious Disease Research Institute.  He has also served on the boards of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Global Partnerships, and the Council of Foreign Relations.

To illustrate his point about innovation and the importance of cross-sector partnerships, Davis gave the example of the Meningitis Vaccine Project, which PATH has been working on with the Gates Foundation, WHO, and others.  It began in 2001 and eventually achieved the breakthroughs needed to be at the point today where over 112 million people have been vaccinated.  One of the guiding principles of the project was that the price of a dose needed to be kept under 50 cents.

To achieve that price point required significant innovation.  Ultimately, it meant PATH was working with a Dutch technology firm, an Indian manufacturer, African political leaders, and many others.  Key lessons learned from this and other innovative ventures include:

1. You need to be clear about what you want to do.

2. Partnerships are critical to success.

3. You need to think of innovation globally.  It does not just happen in the US.

4. It takes leadership to make it happen and it is hard work.

Davis said there has been a notable shift in where innovation happens and where power sits in global health and development.  In-country capabilities have improved and countries are taking more ownership of the process.  In particular, the process has become much less patriarchal and much less dominated by global powers such as the US.

When asked what advice he would give to students wanting to work in the global development field, he said:

1. Trust your instincts.

2. Be comfortable taking risks.

3. Develop a specific skill.  Organizations do not hire many generalists.

As someone who has gone back and forth between the for-profit and non-profit organizations, Davis was asked to reflect on differences between the two sectors.  He noted they had more similarities than differences and we need to "bust some myths" that non-profits are inefficient and business is greedy.  Business can be inefficient and on-profits can be greedy.  He also thought that non-profits are harder to manage since there are fewer financial tools and metrics are harder to come by.

There was a large turnout for the event, with over 250 in attendance.  It was clear that students from across campus were present, not just business students.  It's an indication that Davis' message was well received and many are eager to learn more about the power of cross-sector collaboration.

The Bridge MBA is a full-time, one year program.  Students will take 12 credits a quarter for four quarters over a 12 month period.  There are many curricular and co-curricular activities designed to make up for the lack of work experience.  For example, students are required to do a consulting project, take on an internship, participate in the Albers Mentor Program, and attend Albers Speaker Series events.  These are "nice to have" activities in our other graduate programs, but they are not required in those programs.  Similarly, this is a full-time cohort program, whereas most of our other graduate programs are flexible part-time programs giving students many options in terms of when to begin and how fast to proceed.

We are very excited about the Bridge MBA.  It will address a real need in the current marketplace as many recent college graduates struggle to enter the labor market and begin their professional career.  We get to design an integrated curriculum from scratch.  Courses will fit together and reinforce each other much better than happens in traditional programs.  Finally, it is a graduate program with many co-curricular requirements integrated into the student experience.  This is something new for us, because historically we have focused on courses to meet program learning goals.

If anyone can deliver a quality fast-track and intense program like this, it is Seattle University.  We are very student focused, and the Bridge MBA will require a lot of support for the students in the program.  The Albers Placement Center is highly regarded by employers and will be able to identify internships for the students, and jobs upon graduation.  The Albers Mentor Program has been up and running for over two decades, so we know this is a fantastic opportunity for the students in the program.  Through the Projects Center, we have a strong track record of successful work with businesses on student consulting projects.  The Albers Executive Speaker Series has a ten year record of bringing top business leaders to campus.  In other words, we are well positioned to deliver on the distinguishing features of the program.

I am very proud of how our faculty and staff were able to move the program from concept to reality.  A group of faculty and staff began work on this project in July.  Working over the summer (when faculty do not normally work on committees!), they were able to design a program proposal for the full Albers faculty to consider at the beginning of the fall quarter.  Responding to feedback, the task force fine tuned the program design, which was formally approved by the faculty in mid-October.  We then took it to Seattle University's Academic Assembly for its approval in early November.  Finally, the Seattle University Board of Trustees gave formal approval to the new degree program at its meeting on November 29^th.

To design and gain approval for a new degree program in less than five months is moving really, really fast!  Only at Seattle University can something like this happen!  It takes a lot of collegiality and campus wide support to do something like this! :}

We will start marketing the Bridge MBA in January, but already we are receiving a number of inquiries as word spreads about the new program.  That is very exciting.

When we first announced the program, students in our existing MBA program, which we are now branding as the Professional MBA program, wondered what this meant for their program.  For example, some were concerned that it somehow undercut the value of their degree.

First of all, it is important to understand there are many versions of an MBA degree and a number of schools have as many as six or seven different MBA degrees.  Even locally, schools have a variety of MBA degrees.  For example, the main campus at the University of Washington has a Full-time MBA, a Part-time MBA, and a Technology MBA.  They are all legitimate MBA degrees and one does not detract from the other.  Like us, they also offer an Executive MBA degree, which is yet another version of an MBA. 

What most distinguishes them is the audience they are designed for, and this is definitely true for our Bridge MBA and Professional MBA.  The Bridge MBA is designed for students lacking work experience.  The Professional MBA is designed for students who have significant work experience.  We know from past experience that those two groups should not be mixed, because students with work experience have a strong desire to learn from other students with professional experience.  They do not like students in the classroom who do not "bring something to the table" for class discussions.

Over the years, we have always been clear about the need for students to have work experience in order to enter our Professional MBA program.  Still, we would always have a number of students applying to the program who lacked that experience, and we, of course, would deny them admission to the program.  Now, we have a program for those students, and seeing all those applications over the years is one reason we are optimistic about the prospects for this program.

The required co-curricular activities for the Bridge MBA are an important distinguishing feature when comparing the program to the Professional MBA.  The Professional MBA relies much more on classes (and credit hours) to achieve outcomes.  The Bridge MBA relies much less on credit hours, instead supplementing classroom activity with co-curricular requirements.  In fact, we are now reviewing the Professional MBA to determine how it needs to be restructured to remain up-to-date and relevant in the market.  For example, it could come back with fewer required credit hours and new co-curricular requirements, borrowing to some extent from the Bridge MBA.

We are excited about the opportunity to offer the Bridge MBA.  We think it will prove to be a very good program for a number of students.  We look forward to welcoming a strong cohort in Fall, 2013.  In the meantime, if you know of anyone who is interested in learning more about the program, have them contact Jeff Millard at millardj@seattleu.edu.

Fr. Steve Sundborg was able to attend and presented Mary with the "Honored Retiree" Award from the university.  The award is presented to exceptional staff upon their retirement from the university, and Mary is certainly deserving of the award (which includes privileges such as SU email, library access, and Connolly Center access).  Fr. Steve recalled that when he first started as President, they wanted to have a staff representative on the SU Executive Committee.  Mary filled that roll for two terms, which says something about the respect people have for Mary.  There was never any doubt that she would ably represent staff and not be afraid to speak up!

I first met Mary before I arrived at SU in 2001.  Jebnet is a group of Jesuit business graduate program directors that meets twice each year, and Mary was representing SU while I was representing Creighton.  Mary was well established with the group and one of the key leaders by the time I started attending meetings in 1997.  She welcomed me aboard and showed me the ropes.  When I applied for the dean's job at SU, I was happy to see that Mary was on the search committee.  Of course, I don't know what that did for me, and have never wanted to ask! :}

I have always been impressed with Mary's attention to the needs of students.  "Students First!" could have been her personal tag line.  Her dedication to students no doubt rubbed off on other Albers faculty and staff over the years.  Mary was also always one to pitch in and help with any project that we happened to be working on.  You could always count on her to be a team player.  Of course, you would also get her opinion on how the project needed to be done, whether it corresponded with your own or not!

A number of faculty and staff stood up to share their favorite memories of Mary.  Several faculty spoke of her invaluable assistance in helping them in their role overseeing one of our graduate degree programs.  Several staff mentioned some personal difficulties they had experienced and how Mary had been so supportive of them at a critical time.

Mary got to tell a few stories, as well.  One was that former Albers dean Jerry Viscione used to call her "The Flasher," because she was always leaving budget documents in plain sight on her desk!

Great universities are built by the efforts of people like Mary Carpenter.  Thank you, Mary, for everything you have done for SU and its students!  You have created quite a legacy!

Marra explained the origin of Symetra, which at one time was the life insurance division of Safeco Insurance.  Safeco sold the division to White Mountain Insurance Holdings in 2004, which included other investors such as Berkshire Hathaway.  The current ownership structure is 20% White Mountain, 20% Berkshire Hathaway, and 60% publicly traded.

The title of Marra's talk was, "Respect the Cash Cow."  To explain that, he shared a simple tool that he uses to make good decisions about different business units in a company, what he called the "Boston Matrix."  On one axis is the growth prospects for the business - high or low??  On the other axis is market share - high or low??  A business can be classified into one of four quadrants: high growth and market share("Stars"), high growth and low market share (??s), low growth and high market share ("Cash Cows"), and low growth and low market share ("Dogs").

Stars	??
Cash Cow	Dogs

The goal should be to become a "Cash Cow" for the business.  "Stars" may not be sustainable.  Competition will be attracted into the market and profitability will be challenged.  Or, they may become cash cows.  A Question Mark (??) is unproven but has potential.  The problem is it is not making money, it is burning cash.  The Cash Cow may help fund the Question Mark, but you don't want to do that for too long.  A "Dog" is losing money, but can prove hard to get rid of.  It may have been the first line of business and so people want to hold on to it for too long.

When asked about the "Fiscal Cliff," he noted that their business tracks with the economy.  They do well when family income is rising.  Symetra wants to see a strong economy.  He is hopeful that a bi-partisan effort will succeed in avoiding the Fiscal Cliff.  He noted that higher personal income taxes should help Symetra's tax saving product line.

Marra also explained how the low interest rate environment created by the Federal Reserve is a drag on their performance.  The low rates depress the performance of Symetra's investment portfolio and ultimately force them to raise insurance rates.

When asked for one piece of advice he wished he had received upon entering the job market after college, he said he wished someone had told him that he had more control over his career progress than he realized.  He noted that if you network and find a mentor, it can help you take charge of your career and make moves that you didn't realize you could make.  Another plug for the Mentor Program and networking!

One panelist asked Marra if it was problematic to be an insurance company headquartered in a town known for technology.  He said the problem had more to do with Seattle not being an insurance town, because it will be more difficult to network with others in your industry, and networking is very important.  If you are in Hartford, which is such a hub of insurance activity, you can network at your children's soccer game because there are sure to be half a dozen other parents working in the industry.  Not going to happen in Seattle.  As a result, he tells his employees to get out and join industry groups, attend conferences, and visit customers more frequently.  Another challenge is you are not as near the customer.  The Northwest does not have the same population density that other parts of the nation have.  It means longer, more time consuming trips to see the customer.

When asked about the comment by previous speaker Jim Sinegal, former CEO of Costco Wholesale and now Executive in Residence for Albers, that culture is the most important thing about an organization, he said he could not agree more.  He described the Symetra culture as one of teamwork, mutual support, and respect.  People support each other.  Leadership is necessary to provide direction, but everyone is important and valued.  It is important to remember the competition is out there, not in the organization!

It was another great opportunity for our students to hear from a respected business leader, in this case one representing the insurance industry, Tom Marra from Symetra.

Now this probably explains many of those instances when you wondered what the Dean was thinking!  It can now be attributed to "brain freeze," at least during the winter months. This does not just include me, but also past luminaries such as Jerry Viscione, Fred DeKay, Jan Duggar, and David Arnesen.

It also has impacted the work of Mary Carpenter, Ilona Legesse, and Jennifer Horne.  Imagine what they have had to overcome to maintain their high level of operational effectiveness!

The challenge for me is I no longer have that excuse and we are entering the winter months!

Fr. Morrison was President of Creighton for 18 of my 19 years there.  I recall that when I visited Creighton as a job candidate, my schedule included a meeting with Fr. Morrison.  Can you imagine -- the university President meeting with some last-minute 25 year old job candidate??  It was April, and the only reason I was there is because they had made an offer to someone earlier in the year and he had accepted and then changed his mind, forcing them to scramble back into the market!

This meeting was different in that it included associate deans and marketing directors.  Susan Weihrich also attended the meeting, but Barb Hauke did not (could not find out what the meeting agenda was).  Deans from 13 Jesuit business schools were there, and there were an additional six schools represented by an associate dean.  So, 19 of the 28 Jesuit universities participated (four Jesuit schools do not have business schools, so would not be expected to attend).  Some parts of the meeting included everyone, some broke us up into the three groups.

Much of the meeting was devoted to technology and how higher education is changing.  I am a firm believer that going forward there will be a need for much more collaboration between institutions so that we can leverage what we do best.  Our Jesuit network, both in the US and around the world, gives us an advantage in forging partnerships with other institutions.  The deans talked about ways that our schools might collaborate.  For example, if St. Joe's has a Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing MBA (they do), perhaps some of their online specialty courses could be offered to our students.  Or, perhaps there is a way to partner across several schools to deliver our Health Leadership EMBA program.  Such collaboration would require us to move much deeper into online course delivery than we currently do.

Our group has long wrestled with whether we want to do a joint branding campaign.  We have experimented with this, but no one has ever been satisfied with the effort.  At this meeting, we finally concluded that we don't have the resources or shared goals necessary to make this successful.  Going forward, we will make sure to keep our website, Jesuit Business Schools (http://www.jesuitbusinessschools.net/), up to date, and do some search engine optimization for it, but not much else beyond occasionally sponsoring an AACSB event.  We will also work on developing some common language to explain Jesuit business education and develop a logo that we can use for mutual benefit.

This meeting was in the Midwest, so it is time for the group to come to the West Coast!  In October, 2013, the deans will meet at Seattle University!  Let's pray for a little unseasonably dry October weather!

In discussing Blue Nile, Mark took us back to the Internet frenzy of the late 1990's.  Jewelry was one of the few verticals that someone was not trying to dominate, but the experts were saying that jewelry would not work on the Internet because price points were high and people needed to touch the product. Despite the Internet crash with the resulting hit to capital access and the steep drop in consumer demand after 9-11, Blue Nile was able to survive and ultimately thrive.

Zulily has been a big success and is growing rapidly.  The company just moved into the British market and has plans to expand to other global markets.   At one point, Mark did a "compare and contrast" of the two businesses.  Blue Nile is focused on male customers, zulily is focused on females.  Blue Nile does not lend itself to impulse shopping, zulily does.  Broad market advertising such as display ads do not make sense for Blue Nile - targeted advertising such as paid search works better for finding the customer about to get engaged.  Zulily can cast a wide net because there are so many more potential customers out there - moms with young children!

What are some lessons Mark has learned in founding Blue Nile and zulily?  Get something out there and up and running.  Don't take three years to plan it.  Start collecting data and see what is working and not working and respond accordingly.  Execution is critical for success, so do not underestimate that.  Surround yourself with good people, and make sure they are not like you.  They need different skills and a different perspective.

Mark recently joined the board of Home Depot and was asked how that fit with his interests and experience.  He responded that Internet sales are increasingly important to Home Depot and he brings his experience and understanding of Internet retail to the board.  He noted that both his businesses and Home Depot are customer focused, and he has spent his time competing against brick and mortar retail, so being on the board allows him to see the market from that side.  He is also amazed at the number of zeros in the financial report - he is used to seeing smaller numbers!

Mark noted that mobile devices are creating a sea change in commerce and how customers shop.  Retailers now must be ready to serve customers across multiple platforms, with desktops, tablets, and phones all requiring something different.  Mobile is a plus for impulse shopping (think zulily), but not so much for more deliberative purchases (think Blue Nile).

Mark Vadon provided a great start to the Speaker Series for 2012-13.  He spoke candidly and gave our students excellent advice, while also providing many keen insights on web-based commerce.  Thanks, Mark!

The Mentor Program allows students to benefit from the insights and wisdom of professionals from the Seattle business community.  Students participating in the program often report it is one of the highlights of their time at Albers.  Groups of 2 to 3 students are paired with a mentor, who works with them throughout the academic year.  Students often stay in touch with their mentor long after the year is over. 

The Mentor Program is available to graduate students as well as undergraduate seniors.  Accounting mentors are available to accounting majors who are juniors.  This year we expect over 160 mentors to be working with 250 to 300 students.

Since the program began in 1990, we estimate that over 4100 students have benefited from the advice and council of over 1000 mentors.  That is quite a legacy!  We have one mentor who has participated every year of the program - Jesse Tam.  Another, Willie Aikens, started in 1990 and has been a mentor in every year of the program but one.  We are very grateful for their long standing support of the program!

The Mentor Fair is a very high energy event.  It is a bit like speed dating.  Mentors are scattered throughout the classrooms in the Pigott Building.  Students scan the list of mentors and then go interview mentors in order to help form their preferences.  Students submit their list of preferred mentors and staff attempt to match students and mentors.

Our staff members do a terrific job of organizing this event and the entire program.  As one mentor told me on Friday night, "They have this on complete lockdown!"  Hats off to Mary Lou Moffat, Megan Spaulding, Hannah Garcia, and Paula Boos Fitzgerald for their excellent work on the program!

For more information on the Mentor Program, go to: http://www.seattleu.edu/albers/mentorprogram/.

Classes begin tomorrow for the academic year.  Well, not really, since the EMBA students started classes in late August, but for most students, the academic year begins on September 19th! 

We had our new student orientation for undergraduate students this morning.  It was a high energy event in the Paccar Atrium, where freshment and transfer students were milling around meeting facutly and staff and learning about opportunities such as study abroad and student clubs that can be joined.

The dean made a few welcoming remarks -- here are most of them:

At convocation yesterday, Nicole Gaddy, the ASSU president, gave you three pieces of advice.  I have my own four that I am going to give you - just a little overlap with Nicole.

First, don't procrastinate in getting your work done.  The quarter system is only ten weeks and goes by quickly.  Your friends in the semester system have more time to play catch up.  You don't.  You need to get things done - soon.

Second, communicate - with staff and faculty about any issues you are having.  If you are missing class for a week because you are sick or there is a family emergency, let people know that.  Don't let them jump to the conclusion that you are blowing off their class.

Third, participate - get involved. There are lots of clubs, lots of organized activities, lots of community service opportunities.  Take advantage of them, they will expand your educational experience, and equally important, you will be contributing to the experience of others.

Fourth, work hard!  We have a rigorous academic program.  This should not be easy, and over two or three or four years the more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.  We need to do something about this weather - it threatens to interfere with your hard work!

What were the four? [editor's note: the crowd was able to repeat them, to my relief.]

Real quickly, I want to talk very briefly about being a business student at this Jesuit business school. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that "business" is bad and couldn't possibly be used as a channel to serve the community and society.  It is a mechanism for doing good, but it is a human institution, and therefore can be a mechanism for not doing good.  But that can be said about any institution, including government or religion.… 

When you reflect on yesterday's topic at the convocation, the future of our planet, it becomes very easy to see that no real solution to the problem of global warming is going to happen without business providing much of the solution.  There is already a great deal that business is doing to contribute, which you will be learning about in your classes, but there is no denying the record is spotty and not all business is pursuing a positive track.  That means there will be plenty of opportunity for you to contribute after you graduate!

I want to take advantage of the opportunity to visit the recent "We Built it" campaign.  Now, who knows what I am referring to here?

[Editor's note: one student in the audience gave an excellent summary of the issue.  Congratulations, young man!  You should do well here!]

I do not want to get involved with the Presidential campaign and who is the best candidate.  But I do want to take advantage of this opportunity to remind everyone that, despite all the negativity about the US economy, we really are blessed to be able to participate in one of the most successful economies in human history.  We have achieved a very high standard of living (albeit there are growing problems with the distribution of wealth and income, but I don't have time for that today).  We have one of the most supportive environments for business to operate in here in the US.

The point the President was attempting to make (and maybe not with his usual eloquence) was that successful businesses in the US benefit from the supportive eco-system that exists here.  There are certain things that we take for granted that the rest of the world cannot - property rights that are respected, a legal system that works, infrastructure, education, relatively low taxes, etc…  This system supports the success of individual entrepreneurs and if they had tried to do what they do somewhere else, it probably would not have worked.  It is hard to imagine how that can be a controversial point!

That leads to a second consideration, which is if you benefitted from what the community has provided, you have a responsibility to give back to that community and to help that system to continue to thrive.  This is not unlike the adage, "from those who much has been given, much is expected."  Of course, you know that service to society and the community is something that this university emphasizes a great deal, and this is one reason for that.

A related point that the President wanted to make (and it may have clouded the message in trying to make it) was that somewhere along the way, all of us who have experienced some measure of success, including successful entrepreneurs, caught a break.   Maybe it was having an inspiring teacher at exactly the right time.  Or not trying to start a business just as a recession was commencing.  Maybe it was just being in the right place at the right time.  Maybe it was getting an unexpected check from grandma.  What ever it was, it was some kind of break that not everyone gets.  In other words, have some humility.  Realize that sometimes we are lucky.  I don't know anyone who has been successful who can go back and say they never, ever caught a break.  All of us have something to be grateful for, including a college education!

These themes of contributing to your community through community service, or staying humble, are going to be part of your education here at SU and Albers.  Please pay attention to these important lessons and many, many others.

I need to wrap this up.  There is only so much of my talking at you that you can tolerate.  Welcome to SU and Albers, and I wish you every success in your studies, but realize that is not going to happen without some serious effort on your part.

Have a great quarter!

I had never been to London before, and it was interesting to be there before the Olympics and witness some of the preparations taking place.  Everyone was sure that traffic would be a disaster during the games.  As for the sights of the city, I found the British Museum, the British Library, the Courtauld Gallery, and Churchhill's Underground Bunker to be the most interesting spots! 

Next I flew to Barcelona, for the 18^th annual meeting of the International Association of Jesuit Business Schools (IAJBS).  But before that, my wife and I took a cruise out of Barcelona, with stops near Toulon, Nice, Florence, Rome, and Naples.  This was our first cruise, and it worked out well.  Every stop allowed for a new adventure.  At Toulon, we took a train to Cassis, a picturesque coastal town known for its white cliffs (calanques).   Near Nice, we disembarked in the town of Villefranche-sur-Mer and hiked around the high priced Cap Ferrat peninsula, including a visit to the Rothschild mansion and gardens.  At Florence, we took a bus into town and saw the Uffizi Museum and the Medici Chapel.  At Rome, we took the train into the city and retraced our March visit for a day, seeing the Pantheon and seven different churches, including the Jesú Church.  In Naples, we took the tour to Mt. Vesuvius and Pompeii.

Back in Barcelona, IQS was the host school for the conference and we started with the IAJBS board meeting on Sunday, July 22^nd.  The issue that took up the most time - should we start charging annual membership dues?  The answer was - yes!!  Fr. Michael Garanzini, President of Loyola of Chicago and Secretary for Higher Education for the Jesuits worldwide, joined our meeting and updated us on the order's plans for Africa.

The conference opened with a mass in the early evening.  Formal sessions started Monday morning, the 23rd.  The most interesting for me was the update on plans to establish Jesuit business programs in Africa.  I first discussed this topic in a blog last summer (see IAJBS on 7/26/11).  Progress is being made, but not at warp speed.  There are now four initiatives in Ivory Coast, the Congo, Kenya, and Burundi.  The Ivory Coast initiative is the only one with programming up and running.  The others are hoping to begin programs in 2014.  Fr. François Kabore, SJ is heading up the West Africa Project which is located in the Ivory Coast.  While I don't see us playing a major role in this initiative (they seem to have several other Jesuit schools already supporting them), I did talk to him about the possibility of faculty teaching there (either in the summer or on sabbatical) and doing internship placement for our International Economic Development and/or International Development Internship Program.  He was very positive about both.

We continue to be in touch with the organizers of the Great Lakes Region initiative, which is designed to serve students from Burundi, Rwanda, and the Congo in a bilingual (English and French) program.  The plan is to begin with an undergraduate business program in 2014.  Dean Alain Decrop from Namur University in Belgium is heading this up and is looking to Albers to be a supporting institution.  That would entail assisting with the development of the undergraduate curriculum as well as having some of our faculty teach in the program.  How much teaching still needs to be determined.  Dean Decrop is likely to visit SU in early October for further discussions.

Fr. Fidelis Udahemuka, SJ is heading up the East Africa project in Kenya.  (Interestingly, Fr. Fidelis almost ended up enrolling in our MBA program, opting at the last minute to attend Santa Clara because he knew the Jesuit community there.)  There, the plan is to start with an EMBA program in 2014.  I suggested to him that he consider using our assistance to develop the curriculum, drawing upon our highly successful and highly ranked Leadership EMBA program.  He was very open to that offer.

Late Monday afternoon Carl Obermiller and April Atwood presented their paper, "Sustainable Literacy Scale Development," which detailed their work to develop a scale to measure student knowledge about sustainability issues.  April did the presentation and did a nice job with it.  I made sure not to tell her that the head of Jesuit higher education worldwide, Fr. Garanzini, was in the audience - I did not want to make her nervous! :}

The next day, Meena Rishi was delivering her paper on sustainable development in India, but I missed it because we flew back to Seattle that morning!  I am sure it went well, though.

As for Barcelona, it is a very interesting city.  The most amazing site is the Sagrada Familia Cathedral, the Gaudi inspired basilica that has been under construction since 1882 and is only 65% completed.  There are many streets and alley ways to wonder in the downtown section near the Ramblas and a few other churches to see, but they don't compare to the churches to be seen in Rome.

There you have it - a quick summary of my junket to Europe.  Now it time to get back to work!

Dayton, Ohio is hot and humid this time of year, and it is not the easiest place to get to (particularly for international participants), but once you get there, it is a pretty manageable place.  Anyone from Seattle will notice there is a lot less traffic!

The most interesting part of the meeting for me was the participation of Cardinal Peter Turkson, who is heading up the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP).  The PCJP recently published, "Vocation of the Business Leader: A Reflection."  It is a very readable document that pulls together what Catholic Social Teaching means for business.  If you have ever read any of the encyclicals on CST, you know they are rich documents, but very difficult to plow your way through.  It is nice to have such an accessible document that does such a nice job of summarizing the positive role business should play in our society!  You can find the document at: http://www.stthomas.edu/cathstudies/cst/conferences/Logic%20of%20Gift%20Semina/Logicofgiftdoc/FinalsoftproofVocati.pdf

The Cardinal kicked off the conference by celebrating mass, which of course is a great way to start a conference for Catholic business schools.  I believe it was the first time I have been at a concelebrated mass where most of the priests were Black, a result of the mix of attendees at the conference.  Four of the five priests (including the Cardinal), were Black.  I guess I should chalk it up as, "A Sign of the Times." :} [Vocations are strong in Africa and parts of Asia, and weak in Europe and the US.] I am also trying to recall the last time I was at a mass led by a Cardinal.  I think it might have been way back when I was eight or nine years old and Cardinal John Krol was presiding at my Confirmation at St. Cyril's Church in the Philadelphia diocese!

The mass was followed by a talk by Cardinal Turkson on "Vocation of the Business Leader."  He confided that they called it a "reflection" instead of a "note" because the latter would have required it to receive various approvals from the Vatican bureaucracy, which of course means it would still be awaiting publication!  The Cardinal explained the process that was followed to develop the document, including the significant consultation with business leaders and academics.  His message was that business serves the Common Good, and he challenged Catholic business schools to bring that message to students and alumni.  He also talked about leadership, using the image of the shepherd as a figure providing leadership and sustainability to the flock.  I liked his point that the good business leader sometime goes behind when the flock knows the way, but sometimes must take the lead when new paths are being taken.

The local Dayton newspaper covered the presentation and described the Cardinal as a "potential Pope candidate."  You can read the article at: http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/potential-pope-candidate-speaks-at-ud-1393170.html

The conference featured a number of papers presented by faculty in attendance on various aspects of Catholic business education.  There were several plenary sessions, including one featuring a panel of business school deans discussing the challenges they face in their positions.  I served as moderator and had the easy role of peppering my colleagues with questions on mission, working with other units on campus, the role of Catholic Social Thought in Catholic business education, hiring for mission, and how mission should influence faculty research.  These are not easy questions, but we had three deans with collectively over five decades of dean experience - Joe DiAngelo from St. Joseph's, Ellen Harshman from St. Louis University, and Tom Bausch, Dean Emeritus from Marquette.

I had to leave the evening of the 19^th, so I missed the last day of the conference.  All the flights home were significantly delayed.  It's the combination of thunder storms and no slack in the system!

The picnic is always used to salute those who are departing.  This year that included two people who could not make the picnic, so we saluted them at a school meeting on June 7^th:

Tom Kelley - Tom joined us full time in 2002 after a long and successful career at Arthur Andersen.  His last assignment was managing partner for the Moscow office, so Tom always had a lot of good advice for students with respect to their professional formation.  Tom was a rigorous teacher, and thanks to his undergraduate degree from Holy Cross, fit right in to our Jesuit institution.  Tom will be missed!

Dino Falaschetti - Dino served the last two years at the Thomas F. Gleed Endowed Chair in Business Administration, which is a two-year visiting appointment in the Albers School.  Dino was very popular with students and enlivened the intellectual climate by organizing several panel discussions on contemporary issues where law, economics, and finance intersect (like Dodd-Frank!).   Dino is headed to Bozeman, Montana where he will be Executive Director of the Property and Environmental Research Center.

At the picnic on June 12^th, we said good bye to several faculty and staff:

Rex Toh - Rex is retiring after 32 years as a faculty member at SU.  You can read my blog from May 25^th about Rex!

Mary Carpenter - Mary has been our Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs and a few months ago was diagnosed with cancer.  She has been out on sick leave and plans to retire in November.  Mary has been working at SU since 1988.  Mary always had a "get it done" attitude and was always willing to tell you exactly what she thought, all of which I appreciate.  Mary was a strong advocate for our graduate students, and we will miss her very much.

Steve Brilling - Steve has served as Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship Center and prior to that served as an executive in residence.  He has done a terrific job of building up the center, and in the process reaching out to the community for support.  It is not easy for a "business guy" to come to a college campus and be successful, but Steve has done that. Steve will continue to work with us in the family business arena.

Kim Eshelman - Kim has served as the administrative assistant for the Entrepreneurship Center since 2007.  She has been instrumental in the continuous improvement the center has achieved.  She is an artist and is leaving to pursue her passion full-time.

Carly Cannell - Carly joined Albers a year ago after working at SU's Center for Service and Community Engagement.  She worked as a program manager for our EMBA programs.  She just completed her MBA at SU and will be taking a position with The Boeing Company.  Carly was one of the students very involved with the project to raise $20,000 for the St. Ignatius School in Rwanda.

A big thank you to Tom, Dino, Rex, Mary, Steve, Kim, and Carly for their many contributions to the Albers School!  We will miss all of you!

Here is a picture of the Albers School faculty and staff taken at the June 12th picnic:

The business sector has been under fire of late, but the criticism is broad and over-reaching.  Business makes a critical contribution to our society.  Our standard of living does not improve without a healthy business sector.  That said, not all businesses "get it."  They don't always understand the importance of ethics and integrity.  They don't always understand it is about meeting the needs of all stakeholders (not just stockholders) and the obligations a business has to the community it operates in. They don't always understand that the goal should be to create a sustainable, profitable enterprise.

Our students know these things, and that is why we are excited to see these business graduates entering the workforce.  We look forward to the many contributions they will make to society for decades to come.

Kudos to our students who received awards for their academic achievements.  At the graduation ceremony, Tiffany Wadel (BABA Economics) received the President's Award for the highest academic performance of a graduating senior who entered SU as a freshman.  She also received the Paul Volpe Award for the best business undergraduate academic performance.  Albers students Ted Adams (BABA ECIS) and Aran Kaweerattanaphon (BABA Finance) received the Provost's Award, which goes to the graduating transfer student with the highest GPA.  Both had the same academic performance, so there were two recipients of the award this year.  Albers has the highest concentration of transfer students on campus (about 40%), so it is not surprising that two of our students are receiving the award!

On the graduate side, August Kristoferson (MS Finance) received the Jerry A. Viscione Award for the highest academic performance of a business graduate student.  By the way, both Volpe (1947-65) and Viscione (1988-97) are legendary deans in the history of the Albers School!  Too bad it was before the concept of blogging was created - they would have had some good things to blog about!

Viscione Award winner August Kristoferson with Professor Holly Slay and his spouse, Melanie:

Fr. Steve Sundborg, President of SU, speaking at the Albers Graduation Celebration:

Fiona Robertson and Madhu Rao did an admirable job of reading the names of our graduates at graduation.  Probably the best that has been done since the dean stopped doing it!

Not only did Albers dominate the President and Provost Awards this year, but we also dominated the singing.  Maddy Cary (BABA management) handled the national anthem at the undergraduate ceremony in the morning and Anna Klutho (BABA marketing) took care of the graduate ceremony in the afternoon. 

Speaking of students and reflecting back over this academic year, our students did some amazing things in 2011-12.  Some of the highlights include:

• The Graduate Leadership Formation Specialization students organizing the third annual Redwinged Leadership Award.
• Our graduate students who raised $20,000 to support construction of the St. Ignatius School in Rwanda (overseen by their classmate, Fr. Jean Baptiste Ganza, SJ, who graduated with his MBA).
• Our Beta Alpha Psi students (the accounting honorary) received the Gold Chapter Award (one of seven schools nationally) and won the KPMG Northwest Case Competition.
• Our SIFE students, who won the regional competition and completed an incredible number of hours of community service in the process (over 3600 hours that impacted an estimated 162,000+ people).
• Three Albers students/recent alums receiving Fulbright Fellowships - Michelle de Vera (graduated on the 10^th with a BA in Economics), Senay Kahsay, and Kyla Hagedorn.

Congratulations to our 2012 graduates!  There will be many opportunities for you to leave the world a better place than you found it.  We expect big things from you!

Everyone is going to miss Rex.  Rex has a unique style, which everyone seems to have learned how to navigate.  Basically, Rex can be very "direct."  If it were someone else, you might worry about it.  But it is Rex, so you don't worry about it.  There is a certain charm to it all that only Rex can pull off.

Rex has been a great champion for the importance of faculty scholarship.  He has been a leader in this regard within Albers, and therefore on the SU campus.  He leads by example - he has nearly 90 journal articles to his credit!

He has also tried to assist colleagues with their scholarship, either making suggestions to improve their work or inviting them to join him in research projects.  He has co-authored with a number of our faculty and served as a valuable research mentor for them.  Rex has not only had an impact on campus, but he has also impacted the profession.  For example, he recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, recognizing his work as both an author and reviewer for the journal.  It is also important to acknowledge that Rex was a "research pioneer" at SU, throwing himself into his scholarship at a time when research received little support from the university. 

I discouraged Rex from retiring.  I asked him what he plans to do in retirement.  Surely, he will miss his teaching and research??  No, he says, he will keep busy with his gardening and travelling (Rex just loves a good cruise!).  I'm betting not and he will be back before long begging me to let him teach! :}

Rex is very devoted to the concept of "efficiency."  He does not like take long to get things accomplished.  My favorite memory of Rex in this regard will be how he orchestrated the elections of Marketing Club officers.  I always imagined it as the way elections worked in the USSR!

On May 25^th we hosted a dinner to honor Rex and recognize his contributions to SU.   His colleagues in attendance noted his dedication to efficiency and scholarship, but also his success in the classroom.  He was very successful as an instructor of statistics, something his colleagues admire since they know what a difficult topic it is to teach.

At the dinner, Rex was presented the plaque listing him as the 1982-83 MBA Professor of the Year.  It was retrieved from the "Albers Archives" and given to Rex for safekeeping -- until someone else on the plaque retires and we need to present the plaque to her or him! 

We will miss Rex, and will always admire the legacy he has created at Seattle University.  Thanks, Rex!

Dave Tinius was on the podium this year as co-moderator of Beta Alpha Psi (BAP -- the accounting honorary).  Since Dave was involved in organizing the first award dinner, he was able to tell us that the first dinner took place in Campion Hall (as did the fortieth) and was organized to commemorate the launch of our Beta Alpha Psi chapter.  Dave noted that Campion looks better now than it did in 1973!

Twenty-two different awards were bestowed on our accounting students.  Angela Bever, BAP president, received the BAP Leadership Award.  Michael Watson, the incoming BAP president, received the BAP Outstanding member Award.  Alex Mena received the BAP Community Service Award.

The BAP students involved in the ceremony, such as Angela and Michael, were very poised and professional.  They made their faculty very, very proud!

Our BAP chapter had a great year in 2011-12.  It was one of seven chapters in the nation to receive the prestigious Gold Chapter Award.  They also received two best practice awards at the BAP regional meeting, and one of them will now be competing for national recognition at the BAP national meeting in August (a financial literacy program done with Girl Scouts of America).

Mary Carpenter received the Chair's Award, which goes to the staff member who provides exceptional service to the Department of Accounting.  Since Mary is on sick leave, she was not present to receive the award, but the presentation was taped for her viewing pleasure!

One of the critical success factors for our Department of Accounting is the strong support it receives from the accounting professional community.  Prior to the dinner, the department advisory board had met and everyone was buzzing about what a great meeting it was.  The advisory board is pushing the department to take on a new strategic initiative, and not only that, stepping up to provide support for the project.  Advisory board members were joined by other accounting professionals at the reception and the banquet.  It was all an impressive display of support from the accounting community.

Despite being on sabbatical this quarter, Department Chair Bruce Koch was there to MC the event.  [I have to admit that we ended up asking Bruce to do a lot even though he was supposed to be on sabbatical - I guess that means we cannot really get along without him.]  With his self-deprecating sense of humor, Bruce was able to keep the audience engaged throughout the ceremony.  Fortunately, he eased up on his normal supply of puns! :}

Congratulations are in order for the Department of Accounting on the occasion of the 40^th year of its awards banquet!  Talk about sustainability!!

Over 200 students, judges, mentors, coaches, and sponsors participated in the competition this year.  It has become a very powerful event and a significant learning experience for the students who participate, particularly those who make it to the final round.  It is a great benefit for Albers and SU to be able to draw upon so many volunteers from the Seattle community.  These volunteers are integral to the success of the competition.

Each year the final presentations get better and better.  The students are much further along in their planning than they used to be.  I attribute this to the powerful influence of their mentors.  Each team participating in the competition is assigned a mentor (assuming they want one, which they better be smart enough to accept!).  The mentor is a business professional with an entrepreneurial background, and they advise the students in putting together the plan.  Introducing mentors into the competition was the best thing we have done to raise the quality of the competition.  Our mentors really have an impact!

For a video on the impact of the competition on student learning, go to:  http://youtu.be/cXa1txQc2xI

The two presentations I saw were In My Grandma's Kitchen and Lockstep Shoes.  They were both strong presentations by Nick Woog and Joe Lancaster, respectively.  Nick plans to bring out a series of organic food products under the (much more manageable) brand, "Joe's," named after his father.  The first product is an organic garlic sauce.  Lockstep Shoes will license a design concept that shoe brands can incorporate to make it easier for the elderly, the injured, and the handicapped to get in and out of their shoes.  Both these products were very compelling (Nick took the runner-up prize), so that is how I know that Populous Law must have made a great presentation of a great concept!

Scott Oki, well known Seattle entrepreneur and philanthropist, was the keynote speaker for the event.  He revealed that he grew up near Seattle U., at 14^th and Yesler.  He made it clear that he did not grow up in a privileged environment, and ended up serving in the military and finishing his studies at the University of Colorado.  Scott also made it clear how hard one has to work to be successful, referencing his 90 hour work weeks and going years without a vacation. 

Since leaving Microsoft 20 years ago, most of his work has been as a social entrepreneur and philanthropist.  He highlighted two of his most recent ventures.  One is the Parents Union, which is a non-profit dedicated to pursuing school reform on a state by state basis.  It is designed to bring parents together who have an interest in pushing for K-12 school reform. 

The second recent venture is See Your Impact.  This is a social networking tool for "the bottom of the philanthropic pyramid," as Scott put it.  See Your Impact allows people who are raising smaller amounts of money to leverage social networking.  An important feature is to allow the donors to actually see how their contributions benefit recipients.  See Your Impact posts images and stories of the beneficiaries that donors can view.  A group of our MBA students are currently using See Your Impact in an initiative to raise money for the soon to be built St. Ignatius School in Rwanda. 

Scott's parting words of advice for students was, "Find your passion and go for it!!"

The business plan competition is aptly named after Professor Harriet Stephenson, a member of our faculty since 1967 and receiving an award this year for 45 years of service at SU!  Harriet started our activities in entrepreneurship in 1990, and we would not be where we are today without her pioneering activity and foresight.  In 1990, it was hardly clear to academics that entrepreneurship was a worthy area of study!  Now it seems obvious.

This was the last business plan competition with Steve Brilling as Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship Center.  Steve has been leading the center since 2004 and done a great job improving the quality of the competition each year.  Steve will be missed, but he is not leaving completely.  He will continue to play a role in our Family Business programs.

Kim Eshelman has served as Steve's administrative assistant since 2007.  She is stepping down to pursue her passion as an artist full time.  We will miss Steve and Kim and thank them for all their excellent work during their time with us!

Gary joined Bombardier in 2004 as President of the New Commercial Aircraft Program and was named President of Commercial Aircraft in 2008.  He began his career with The Boeing Company in 1973, where his roles included Vice President and General Manager for the 737/757 programs and President of Flight Safety Boeing, which is the role he had when he left Boeing in 2002 to take a position with CAE, Inc., a leader in commercial aviation training.  While leading the 737/757 program, Gary oversaw Boeing's single aisle commercial airplane division through the biggest production build-up in the company's history to that point in time.

Gary's presentation was on, "Leading a Non-US Global Enterprise," and he highlighted a few advantages that US firms have when doing business in the global market.  These are things that many of us in the US take for granted, but should not!  They include a huge home based market to grow up in.  Second, we don't have to worry about exchange rate volatility in that home market, whereas companies in smaller nations are forced to expand into other currencies much earlier in their development.  When US firms do venture abroad, foreign sales are still sometimes denominated in dollars.  You can bet that Canadian firms are not pricing their exports in Canadian dollars.  Finally, export financing through an entity the size of the US Export-Import Bank is not available in most countries.  This is particularly advantageous to large scale industries such as aviation.

One advantage that US firms do not have is good people.  "They are everywhere," said Gary.  The trick is to create an organizational culture that leverages that talent.

One questioner asked how it was that someone with a business background held leadership positions that one would associate with someone from an engineering background.  Gary's response was that you should always understand your product, even if you are the finance guy!  He was not afraid to ask questions about how airplanes worked.  Additionally, he was always willing to take on a new challenge, so in the process was continually learning about the business.

Several questions were directed at doing business in China, where there are concerns about protecting intellectual property.  Gary acknowledged the challenges, but said that China is such a big market you have to be there if you are in aviation.  The key will be to find a way to establish the right partnership.  The market has confidence in Western aviation companies, and that can be a leverage point in establishing partnerships in China.

When Gary was an MBA student at SU, we required a thesis for graduation (many an MBA alum has complained to me about that over the years!).  Gary reminisced about his topic, "The Capital Crisis in the Airline Industry."  At the time, people were concerned that there would be insufficient financing for growth in the industry.  Gary argued, correctly, that there would be no capital shortage.  Things have a way of working out, he said.  What you once thought was a stretch in terms of something like production capacity, is easily exceeded a decade later. 

This perspective is what nearly four decades in the aviation industry will give you!  It was a great opportunity for our students to learn from an aviation leader!

Gary's presentation was the last chapter in this year's Albers Executive Speaker Series.  We had another good year, with some of the highlights including Howard Schultz from Starbucks, Jim Sinegal from Costco, and wireless industry legend John Stanton.  We hope to do as well in 2012-13!

The three finalists this year were Jocquelyn Duncan (Work it Out Seattle), Killian Noe (Recovery Café), and Dan Wall (Opportunity Knocks).  Jocquelyn is the Founder and Executive Director of Work it Out, which is a non-profit dedicated to getting high school dropouts productively re-engaged with the community.  She became increasingly alarmed at the wasted talents of young people in her community and was called to act.  In her remarks, she noted that there are 6.7 million high school dropouts in our nation, a daunting waste of talent, creativity, and energy.  She advised the audience to consider our legacy - "what will you leave behind?" she asked.

Killian Noe moved to Seattle in 1999 and surveyed the community to find an unmet need.  She concluded that there was not enough support for those recovering from addiction and mental health challenges.  The result was Recovery Café.  She advised the audience to be ready to take a risk and don't wait until you are 100% sure to launch a new initiative.

As a top executive at Expeditors International, Dan Wall was when he enrolled in our Leadership EMBA program.  The program requires students to develop a legacy project in the workplace.  Dan developed Opportunity Knocks based on his personal experience with Expeditors, where he started working at the age of 18.  Opportunity Knocks identifies high school students who are not planning to continue their education beyond high school and offers them a part-time job with the opportunity for a full-time job if they meet Expeditors' expectations.  The program began at the Seattle headquarters but has now branched out to offices around the country and, soon, around the world.

For her work in founding Recovery Café, Killian Noe was selected as the 2012 Red Winged Leadership Award recipient.  Of course, all three finalists are winners and doing wonderful things to advance the Common Good!

The keynote speaker for the evening was Jim Sinegal, our new Senior Executive in Residence and co-founder and retired CEO of Costco Wholesale.  It was Jim's second event of the day, as earlier he spoke to students in the Marketing Club at their end of the year event.

In his remarks, Jim chose to focus on the legacy of Sol Price, founder of Price Club, who Jim considers to be his mentor.  Jim learned many things from Price, including that a business has a responsibility to the society it operates in.  The creation of jobs with good working conditions is the highest service that a business can provide to society.  Jim mentioned that the 30^th anniversary of the founding of Costco would take place this fall, and that their original business plan called for 12 warehouse locations.  Today, Costco has over 600 locations in eight countries.

We're very proud of the Red Winged Leadership Award and its effort to recognize an unheralded leader in our community!  Our students in the GLFS do an amazing amount of work to organize this event, and they are to be congratulated for their successful execution of what is becoming a Seattle University tradition!

For more information on the Red Winged Leadership Award, including videos on the honorees, check out the website:

http://www.seattleu.edu/albers/redwinged/

In 2002 he had left Nordstrom, Inc. where he had been President of Nordstrom.com, and was looking for a smaller, more entrepreneurial challenge.  He said that a mentor gave him some great advice, "Don't buy a great company, buy a company that is successful in spite of itself."  Otherwise, you will pay a lot of money and it will be difficult to make it better.  Buy something you can fix and add value to.

After acquiring OR, the first thing he did was to come and ask a lot of questions to employees and customers.  After all, there is a need to know what the business is about.

He also noted the importance of sizing up the workforce.  You need to identify who the high performers are and who are the people that will need to move on.  Or, as he quoted Jim Collins, "First who, then what."  People come first, then everything flows from that, according to Nordstrom. It is critical to identify your best people and treat them well, and at the same time to identify your lowest performers and have them move along.

An exciting point is when you get to hire new talent.  To get the people you really want, you have to have a good story and credible vision for the future.  The new employees can reinforce the need for higher levels of performance with the existing high performers, and that becomes a virtuous circle.

Culture and brand are both very important to the success of a business.  One of the problems with the existing culture at OR was that it was not customer centric and thought it knew what was best for customers.  There was not enough listening to the customer.

In the question and answer period, the following points were made:

• Weather trumps the business cycle when it comes to OR's sales.  Bad winter weather means stronger sales.

• When it comes to social responsibility and the OR supply chain, the factories of their suppliers offer excellent working conditions.  It is sub-contracting by their 20 main suppliers that they must be vigilant about.

• OR does not want to spread itself too thin.  It prefers to focus on accessories and apparel.  It is not going to do tents and sleeping bags.  They don't need new categories, there is plenty of opportunity for growth in their current categories.  So what is their next challenge??  Staying focused!

• With social media small companies can created a lot of noise.  He gave examples of that for OR.  Local events related to their product categories, in particular, are a good way to raise awareness of the brand.

• Consumers are "tribal."  They want to belong to something, so they become OR customers as opposed to the customer of a rival brand.  They develop an emotional tie to the brand story.

• He warned that it would be dangerous for OR to become a regional company.  Then, all their products would be about the rain and staying dry.  That would not have much relevance for customers in Colorado and Minnesota, where down jackets are important.  Down jackets are disastrous in the rainy Northwest!

Dan Nordstrom has guided OR back from the brink.  It was a brand that was losing relevance, and now is one of the most respected in the outdoor industry.  It was hunkered down doing accessories "it's way," and has now expanded successfully in to apparel.  He is a leader who understands the importance of people, culture, execution, and brand.  It was a great opportunity for everyone in the audience to hear from him.

Our next speaker is on May 14^th, when Gary Scott, who recently retired as President of Bombardier Commercial Aircraft, will be visiting.  Gary earned his MBA at SU and his topic is, "Leading a Non US Global Enterprise."  It will be from 5:30 to 6:30 PM in Pigott Auditorium.

We had some excellent visitors participating in the program.  Speakers included Jim Sinegal (former CEO of Costco Wholesale and Senior Executive in Residence for the Albers School), Gary Scott (former President of Bombardier Airplanes), Brian Webster (CEO of Physio-Control), and Robbie Bach (former President of Microsoft Games and Devices).  Gary gets the prize for visiting the most classes - four!!

The concept of Ethics in the Business World was proposed to us by the advisory board of the Center for Business Ethics.  Their thought was to have business leaders come to classes to expose students to some of the ethical dilemmas they are sure to face in their careers.  They thought that many classes might participate, but we challenged ourselves to have ALL classes meeting on that day to participate.  We got about as close to that as you can! 

We also envisioned complementary activities throughout the day, so from that grew an alumni event in the morning featuring Professor Marc Cohen (Assistant Professor of Business Ethics), and Stan McNaughton (CEO of PEMCO insurance, who also spoke to a class later in the morning).  We collaborated with the College of Science and Engineering so that they would schedule their Boeing panel discussion on engineering ethics to take place on the same day.  Undergraduate students starting a campus chapter of Net Impact organized a panel discussion at the end of the day on socially responsible investing.  Net Impact is a non-profit that encourages business students to see business as means for social good.  The bottom line should be about more than profits, but also people and the planet.

As you might imagine, with classes meeting throughout the day, the event was something of a logistical nightmare.  How to match all the speakers with all the classes??  No worries there.  Aaron Hayden, the graduate assistant for John Dienhart, our Frank Shrontz Chair of Business Ethics, was able to put that all together, including getting all the necessary parking passes (mid day visitor parking is something of a challenge!).  Aaron managed all the details and entertained our guests throughout the day.  It is not easy to get people to come in during the middle of the workday when some classes were meeting, but we managed to do it, thanks to the commitment of many of the volunteers.

Ethics in the Business World makes a statement to our students. It reinforces for them the importance of ethical business practice and alerts them that doing the right thing is not always easy.  Nevertheless, one must hold to one's core values and recognize the importance of ethical business practice both for long run professional success and the effective functioning of our market economy.

Many thanks to all the business leaders who participated in Ethics in the Business World!  It was a very successful event, and we plan to do it every year.  The students were the beneficiaries of the collective wisdom of our 39 volunteers.  I want to thank the faculty who surrendered some of their valuable class time to participate in this event.  It is another demonstration of their alignment with and commitment to the SU and Albers mission!

Pigott Auditorium was packed.  Every seat was filled.  I wish we had more seats, because there were at least another 100 people who wanted to participate.  If people left early, we ushered someone in to fill that seat.  I've heard from many of you who we were unable to accommodate, so I am going to put a little more detail into this than I otherwise might!

Howard started off with a video about the Great Recession and Starbucks' response to raise funding for loans to small businesses.  The company decided that job creation was the most important thing needed, and small business was the best opportunity for that.  With access to credit for small businesses in short supply, the company started a campaign to raise funding for small business loans.  Howard is really proud of that video, by the way.  I was hoping the video was on the company website so that those who could not attend could see it, but it is not.  They suggested that people watch the video of their recent annual meeting, which has many of the same themes. 

In his opening remarks, Howard talked about his efforts to fight back against political gridlock in Washington, DC.  If things were working well, Starbucks would not need to be launching the campaign to boost small business.  He noted that 154 CEOs had joined him in protest by holding back political campaign contributions.

Another concern he has is the fraying of the social safety net.  With rising stress on state budgets, he thinks there is little doubt we will see further deterioration as states are forced to cut back their programs (Washington state is shaping up to be a prime example of this).

He switched gears and started talking about developments at Starbucks.  He noted that a business is not going to be successful for the long term if it just focuses on maximizing profits for shareholders.  It must give highest priority to its employees, second comes customers, and shareholders are third.  

He also noted that Starbucks had an important set of values that were part of the culture and retaining those was critical to success.  For example, he told a story of a large institutional shareholder coming to him in the midst of the Great Recession and suggesting it would be a good time to dump the employee health coverage plan to boost profitability.  Howard said, "He didn't get it."  Taking away health care would destroy the trust the company had built up with employees.

He recounted his returning to the CEO role.  It was right at the beginning of the Great Recession.  The company had strayed from its roots, and its problems included it was a coffee company that actually was not making good coffee anymore!  Could something be more fundamental??  He talked about dramatic steps he took, such as shutting down for a day to retrain on coffee making, or holding a $33 million company meeting in New Orleans to get key leaders from across the company back on the same page.  While spoofed at the time, subsequent results speak for themselves.

He spoke of some of the key to success.  These included loving what you do.  You need to enjoy what you are doing to be successful at it.  Second, surround yourself with talented people who complement your skill set and share your values.  A third key is to share success.  Give plenty of credit to others for their contribution to the success of the enterprise.

He closed with an uplifting message.  He was not born into privileged circumstances.  He has come a long way from humble beginnings.  He grew up in the projects.  He did not attend Harvard, Yale, or Stanford.  One of the keys was to dream big dreams and not let others discourage you from achieving them.  His life story is the American Dream.  "Dream big dreams and then dream even bigger dreams," he said!

It was then time for the Q&A, starting with questions from our panelists, which included alum Jody Hall (owner of Cupcake Royale), undergraduate student Arielle Newcomb, and MBA student Michael Wang. 

There were interesting ties in their background that might have made one think we knew that when we put them on the panel.  Jody started working at a Starbucks in 1988 when she was still a student at SU in order to get money for Christmas presents.  At that time, there were only about 30 stores (compared to over 17,000 today).  She ended up working at Starbucks for eleven years (her last role was head of marketing for music and entertainment), and you can see the influence of Starbucks on her business (health benefits for employees, giving back to the community, etc…).  For Arielle, her first job was as a Starbucks barista in Redmond, WA in 2007!  Truth be told, we did not learn all that until after they agreed to be panelists!  Nothing on Michael and Starbucks that we could uncover, though.

In the Q&A, he made a few interesting points:

• Regarding China, they have found that it is important that the leadership team needs to be Chinese, not ex-pats.  They know the culture and the politics.
• Regarding India, they greatly admire Tata and what the company stands for.  They decided that they wanted to be partners with Tata and pursued that goal.
• One question asked about all the new beverage products (juices, sports drink, etc…) that the company is planning, and whether Starbucks would remain a coffee company.  Howard responded that the core competency of the company for over four decades was coffee.  That was not going to change, BUT, it is important to retain the entrepreneurial spirit of the company, and from time to time they need to experiment with new products.
• One question asked him to reflect on what would have happened to the company if he had not returned as CEO in 2008.  He responded that he was well positioned to return.  He understood the company and its heritage.  If someone was hired from the outside, they would not have had that understanding and by the time they did, it may have been too late.
• He noted that there had been two important shifts in employees and customers in the last few years that all businesses have had to address.  Customers are much better informed about companies, including the company's values and culture.  Customers want to support companies with values similar to their own.  Regarding employees, many employees had a previous employer with a dysfunctional culture.  They arrive with a certain amount of cynicism and distrust.  It is critical to demonstrate to them in the first 45-60 days that they are valued and that the firm has a mission they can embrace.  A company that can do these things has a significant competitive advantage.
• The final question brought him back to the political scene.  He illustrated the problem by recalling how President Truman sold the Marshall Plan to the nation and both political parties.  He asked if such a thing would be possible today.  The answer is no.  Our political debates are dominated by the extremes on the Right and the Left.  The much larger middle is going unheard.  We need to get back to the middle and not be held hostage by ideology and partisanship.

Regarding the turnout, I have had a number of people imply their disappointment about not getting into Pigott Auditorium.  We were hoping for a strong turnout, but it was definitely larger than we had anticipated.  Maybe we would have done a few things differently, but someone was sure to be left out. 

What I was struck by was the number of undergraduate students in the audience.  Past experience is they don't turn out for the speaker series, but they were here for Howard Schultz.  I was glad to see them, and hope they can take advantage of future speakers. This does suggest that Howard has captured the imagination of this group of students and the generation they represent.  He has "rock star" status.  He could use this to assert a positive influence over them!  It is an opportunity that very few people have, and it will not last forever.  That is something for him to think about!

Next up is Dan Nordstrom, CEO of Outdoor Research, on April 26^th.  Come learn about how Dan revived this iconic outdoor equipment brand!

Where are these faculty, administrators, and recruiters?? I have yet to run into them!  The article says the biggest complaint is that "undergraduate (business) degrees focus too much on the nuts and bolts of finance and accounting and don't develop enough critical thinking and problems solving skills…"

Message to Melissa Korn, the writer, and all the faculty,administrators, and recruiters that she apparently knows that I don't - not all undergraduate business programs are alike!!

Let's take the business program at Seattle University and other Jesuit schools like us.  Our business students take the same university core curriculum that other students on campus take.  That means the same history, philosophy, theology,science classes that psychology, political science, and math majors are supposed to take.  This means 60 of the 180 credit hours required for graduation, excluding the economics and statistics and business ethics courses they take that are offered in the business school.

So, to the extent you think that critical thinking and problem solving skills are only gained outside the business curriculum, Albers students are covered.  But, I am not willing to admit that the business curriculum does not contribute to these skills.  Quite to the contrary!  Our students see plenty of real world projects, case studies, and writing assignments in business courses that, among other things, develop their critical thinking and problem solving capabilities.

The author says schools are "taking the hint," and responding accordingly.  For example, George Washington University is turning to their psychology and philosophy departments to teach business ethics.  Um, excuse me, but the Albers School has three business ethics professors with PhD's in philosophy.   We love our colleagues in psychology and philosophy, but we don't need to run to them for help to teach business ethics, nor do we need to add a business ethics course to our curriculum - it's already there.

Ironically, in the April 5^th edition of our student newspaper, The Spectator, there was an article about the current job market for students.  A main point of the article was that the good news about the job market is misleading, because it is business (and engineering) students who are getting all the job offers! 

This is the ultimate test!  What does the market want?  Right now the market is saying it wants to hire talented and well-prepared students from the Albers School! If you check out the Albers Placement Center, you will see that there are many companies interested in our students.  If our students lacked critical thinking and problem solving skills, the Albers Placement Center would be very quiet right now.

I can't speak to what happens in every business school, but it is time for the Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and other "experts" to stop treating undergraduate business education as a flawed homogenous experience.

 Although raising money for student scholarships is the cause, the main reason for launching the event was friend-raising and getting alumni back to campus.  In 2002, our connections with our alumni were not where we wanted them to be and the alumni board came up with the idea of the crab feed.  Since the university did not have much in the way of alumni staff, in addition to coming up with the idea, the alumni board was required to EXECUTE the event, as well!  They stepped up to the plate and the rest is history!

This year's alumni board Crab Feed Committee was chaired by Heather Hutson, and the committee worked closely with Rob Bourke on our staff to put the event together.  Several staff from the University Advancement Office also helped with the event, but the work of our alums was critical to its success.

 I had a number of people comment that they thought this year's silent auction was the best so far.  Unfortunately, I did not have time to peruse the items, as I was too busy talking to people.  And my wife managed to come away with only one item!  People also said it was the best crab we have ever served, but I hear that every year, which I take to mean we serve good crab every year!

We try not to burden the crowd with long speeches from university administrators.  Fr. Sundborg was able to attend and he gave a well received and relatively short greeting to the crowd.  I, too, keep it short and just do some of the many "thank you's!" that need to be done.  Eddie Pasatiempo, a member of my advisory board, was there, and sent this picture courtesy of his iPhone:

This year we had over 250 people in attendance, including women's basketball coach, Joan Bonvicini, fresh off the team's successful run through the Women's Basketball Invitation Tournament, making it to the semi-final round.  We also raised more than $10,000 for scholarships for Albers students!  That is a great cause, of course!

When I started thinking about what to talk about tonight I looked at the schedule and I noticed that you have had at least half a dozen people speaking about leadership, so of course I realized there is no additional value I can add on that topic, so I can't talk to you about that.

Then I thought about my visit to Omaha last weekend to take in the NCAA basketball tournament action taking place there, but then realized not everyone is a basketball fan, so that is probably not an appropriate topic either.  It was sunny and 83 degrees in Omaha by the way, so it was nice not to be in Seattle.

So finally, I wondered if my visit to Rome the week before might provide some material.  I was at a board meeting of the International Association of Jesuit Business Schools, and one of the things we did was meet withFr. Adolfo Nicolás, who as the Superior General is the head of the Jesuits worldwide.  He leads the more than 18,000 Jesuits who work worldwide and is referred to as the "Black Pope."  Jesuits have historically dressed in black, the Pope in white.

During our interaction, Father General emphasized the significant role that Jesuit Business Schools could play in today's world, especially in promoting business with conscience and business with responsibility.  In commenting on the programs offered at Jesuit Business Schools, he said that he was impressed with their energy to "change the face of business."  He noted that business without ethics leads to "disaster," and said that due to recent events the world is now more open than ever to an ethical approach to business.  He would like to see the Jesuit business schools lead the way in thinking about business in a different way, one that is more holistic and dedicated to the Common Good.

Of course, what I liked was when he emphasizedthe important role of business schools at Jesuit universities, noting that business "has more attraction" to students than philosophy and theology.  That may come as a surprise ot our colleagues in the College of Arts and Science, since the presumption is always made that they are the preeminent feature of a Jesuit education!

In 2010 Fr. Nicolas met with Jesuit university presidents from around the world in Mexico City, including Fr. Steve.  He delivered a talk called, "The Globalization of Superficiality."  Don't you love that title!  He could be a marketing and branding guru.  It is seen today as the most prominent articulation of his thinking on Jesuit higher education.  In celebrating our Jesuit roots, I thought it would be a good basis for my remarks tonight.

This is what he means by the globalization of superficiality: "When one can access so much informa­tion so quickly and so painlessly; when one can express and publish to the world one's reactions so immediately and so unthinkingly in one's blogs …; when … the new­est viral video can be spread so quickly to people half a world away, shaping their perceptions and feelings, then the laborious, painstaking work of serious, critical thinking often gets short-circuited."

"When one is overwhelmed with such a dizzying pluralism of choices and values and beliefs and visions of life, then one can so easily slip into the lazy superficiality of relativism or mere tolerance of others and their views, rather than engaging in the hard work of forming communities of dialogue in the search of truth and understanding. It is easier to do as one is told than to study, to pray, to risk, or to discern a choice."

He goes on to say that this poses a significant challenge to Jesuit higher education because of its reliance on depth of thought and imagination.  Regarding the graduates of Jesuit universities, he says: "How many of those who leave our institutions do so with both professional competence and the experience of having, in some way during their time with us, a depth of engagement with reality that transforms them at their deepest core? What more do we need to do to ensure that we are not simply popu­lating the world with bright and skilled superficialities?"

Now, as for the ELP, LEMBA, and HLEMBA, programs it is our intent and our hope that you gain both professional competence and when you finish you are different at the core!  From my observation, the programs that do that best in Albers are these programs.  I hope that has been your experience thus far.

One point that Father Nicolas made to the university presidents is that he would like to see the 110 Jesuit universities around the world (28 in the US) working together and collaborating.  After all, one of the positives of globalization is greater ease of communication and travel.  He would like to see consortia of Jesuit universities focused on responding to global challenges.  He suggested several.

One was "more adequate analyses and more effective and lasting solutions to the world's poverty, inequality, and other forms of injustice."  Now, that is an interesting one, and we might ask what would that mean for ELP, LEMBA, and HLEMBA.  Who has a suggestion or take on that?

Well, we are doing great work with our social justice projects in collaborating with local partners.  Someday, we might be able to say this about global partners.

As an example, a group of Albers faculty and undergraduates have been working in Africa on a project called "Africa Start Up."  The project was conceived and developed by one of our alums when she was an undergrad, and involves providing business training to low income small business owners with little formal schooling.  Originally, they were in Malawi working with the University of Malawi.  As conditions on the ground changed, they moved the project to Ghana and worked with Ashesi University.  Neither is Jesuit because the Jesuits have yet to establish business schools in Africa (but it is actually something they have identified that they wish to do and they are working on it).  It gives you an example of what could happen someday.

Another issue that Father Nicolás raised is the following: "Globalization has created new inequalities between those who enjoy the power given to them by knowledge, and those who are exclud­ed from its benefits because they have no access to that knowledge. Thus, we need to ask: who benefits from the knowledge produced in our institutions and who does not? Who needs the knowledge we can share, and how can we share it more effec­tively with those for whom that knowledge can truly make a difference, especially the poor and excluded? We also need to ask some specific questions of faculty and students: How have they become voices for the voiceless, sources of human rights for those denied such rights, resources for protection of the environment, persons of solidarity for the poor?"

So, if he were to ask this group of students to answer these questions, what would you tell him?  What would you point to about our program?  Or are we coming up short?

There you have it.  Some of the thinking of the Black Pope, Father Nicolas, which has interesting connections to our celebration this evening.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate everyone who has completed the ELP.  We wish you the best and hope that this has been an experience of "change and transformation."  We also hope that you will stay connected with us, including participating in alumni events for the CLF and university.

To those of you continuing on in the LEMBA or HLEMBA programs, I encourage you to persevere and keep your head up.  Despite what you may think from time to time, the faculty are not out to get you and have your back at all times.  Before you know it, it will be June, 2013 and you will be going across the stage at Key Arena.

Finally, I want to thank all our faculty and staff who work in our programs.  It is evident to me that they are doing excellent work and represent the university well.  Give them a round of applause please.  

Most of the IAJBS board consists of business school deans from around the world.  In addition to board members from the US like me, board members came from Belgium, Spain, India, the Philippines, and Korea.

The meetings took place the afternoon of March 8^thand all day March 9^th.  The highlight of the meeting was our visit with Superior General Adolfo Nicolas.  I was very impressed with the Father General.  He has a very deprecating sense of humor and seems very humble.  He was amused that everyone wanted a picture with him and maybe even puzzled by it.  The purpose of the meeting was to familiarize him with IAJBS and to learn how IAJBS could assist the work of the worldwide Jesuit order.  Here is a picture of me meeting the Father General:

The Father General emphasized the important role of business schools at Jesuit universities, noting that business 'has more attraction" than philosophy and theology.  He noted that business without ethics leads to "disaster," and said that due to recent events the world is now more open to an ethical approach to business.  He would like to see the Jesuit business schools lead the way in thinking about business in a different way, one that is more holistic and dedicated to the Common Good.

The rest of the meeting was taken up with planning for the IAJBS conference in Barcelona in July, reviewing the finances of the organization, and discussing the relationship between IAJBS and Colleagues in Jesuit Business Education (CJBE).  CJBE has historically been a US-centric organization, but the plan is to become an organization to serve business faculty at Jesuit schools around the world. 

We also were updated on plans to establish Jesuit business schools in Africa.  Projects in Kenya, Rwanda/Burundi, Ivory Coast, the Congo, Burkina Faso, and a new one in Nigeria are all at different stages of planning.  The hope is that IAJBS schools in other parts of the world will assist with this initiative. It does not seem like much progress has been made in this effort, and at this point there is not an obvious way that the Albers School can assist.  We will continue to monitor how this develops and how we might contribute.

Outside of the meeting, my wife and I were able to squeeze in some tourist activity since we arrived on Wednesday, March7^th, and left Sunday, March 11^th.  While the meeting ended on March 9^th, it would have cost more than $600 more to fly home on Saturday, so I reluctantly stayed until Sunday!

The afternoon of the 7^th we toured the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica.  We moved quickly through the museum because there are rapid diminishing returns in viewing statues and medieval art, at least for me!  The Sistine Chapel is quite amazing, and therefore crowded!

St. Peter's is also quite striking inside, and we walked the 320 steps to the top of the cupola for an excellent (but very crowded!) view of the city.

On Thursday morning, before the meeting started at noon, we walked over to the Pantheon, and also saw San Ignatio Church, Trevi Fountain, and the Gregorian University, as directed by Fr. Sundborg (he earned three degrees there), as well as several churches containing paintings by Caravaggio (famous artist for those not knowing).  That evening, after having dinner near the Pantheon, we walked to the famous Spanish Steps to see what they looked like in the evening.

Saturday we headed to the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and the Roman Forum. The interesting thing about Rome is it has so many antiquities that something really has to be stunning to get your attention. Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum have all sorts of Roman structures and statues but in the shadow of the Colosseum they just don't grab your attention.  Anywhere else and they would be the center of attention, but nothing compares to that 75,000-seat stadium, more seats than CenturyLink Field!

There is one very important piece of advice I have for Rome, and that has to do with getting into the Colosseum.  Don't arrive without a ticket, or you will stand in a very long line!  If you don't have a ticket, go to the entrance of the Palatine Hill, which is just south of the Colosseum and buy a combo ticket. You can tour the hill and Roman Forum first, or buy the ticket and go to the Colosseum instead of going through the turnstiles at the Palatine Hill entrance. 

We toured Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum first, then went to the Colosseum.  As we did, and figured out the long line was for people buying tickets and the line to the left was for ticketholders like us, it seemed as if there was something wrong and we were going to be sent back to get at the end of the long ticket line.  How could we be passing so many people??  But it is true.  If you have a ticket, stay to the left and get right in, passing a lot of people spending a long time in line.  So much for an economist assuming perfect information!

After the Colosseum, we toured Capital Hill that boasts the Victor Emmanuel Monument and the nearby Galleria Doria Pamphilj Museum.  The latter is interesting because it is located in a large aristocratic opulent residence and has works by such well known artists as Titian, Caravaggio, and Raphael.

Unfortunately, by the time we got out of the museum the Gesu Church was closed, and it was another place we were instructed to see by Fr. Steve, since it is the Jesuit Church and contains the remains of St. Ignatius of Loyola.  We returned later that evening on the way to dinner.

To all these places we walked.   We never used a cab or public transit.  That is a great thing about Rome. You can do a lot of walking and most of the places you are interested in seeing you can walk to (assuming your hotel is somewhere in the area - ours was near the Vatican).  Of course, all this walking was facilitated by excellent weather.  The sun was out the whole time, and temperatures reached a high of 65F during the day and dipped down to about 40F at night.

One problem I always have with Europe is Jet Lag!  In this four-day visit I never adjusted, and I don't think a longer trip would have been much better.  It is so much easier to go to meetings in Latin America where the time zone does not change much!

As everyone knows, technology makes it a lot easier to travel to Europe and not fall behind on emails and continue to stay in touch.  What I really like now is being able to listen to my voice mail messages in Seattle on my iPhone in Rome!

Leaving Rome early Sunday morning was interesting.  We got to the airport just before 4:00 AM for our 6:00 AM flight. Two hours ahead of time is a good rule of thumb for the airport in Rome according to the experts, but that does not factor in that our flight was the first out that morning!  How many flights are out of Seattle before 6:00 AM??  Things don't get going early in Italy, I guess.  We were literally the first people through security.  It was so weird, we were not sure we were in the right place or doing the right thing because there was no one in front of us!  The airport was completely empty in the walk to the gate and no stores were open, of course.  That has to be a once in a lifetime experience!

Was this trip worth it?  Yes, I think so.  It's hard to hash out IAJBS issues when you are not face to face and how often have I met the Father General, any Father General, in my 30 years in Jesuit higher education?  Once is the answer! Plus, I got to see almost all of Rome that any tourist wants to see!

The projects are a distinctive part of the ELP and, in turn, the Leadership EMBA and the Health Leadership EMBA programs since students in those programs also participate in the ELP.  The projects have significant impact because our students use their considerable talents and influence to address the social injustice they take on.  The students typically have 15-20 years of work experience and significant managerial responsibility in their organizations. The groups also work with other organizations focusing on the same societal challenge, thereby leveraging their own efforts.

I had the opportunity to attend the presentations for three of this year's six projects.

"Computer Moms," designed by Aaron Posey, Mark Seidl, and Irene Sacristan Sanchez, joined with a community center to set up computer literacy classes for immigrant women who in some cases could not speak English.  Several of the women were able to attend the presentations, and their willingness to attend on a Friday morning shows their appreciation for the training!

"Project Oasis," developed by Chris Jonsson, Gregory Kavounas, Tim Onders, Kumil Turczanski, and Tess Wilkins, also partnered with a community center, to provide access to affordable and healthy food.  They worked with a group of Hispanic women, and again some could not speak English, to provide information on healthy and affordable foods and to organize a buying group to stretch their purchasing power.  Several other partner organizations were mobilized, including some food industry firms.

"E3: End Elderly Exploitation," was a project to raise awareness about the financial exploitation of the elderly, with a "Did You Hear About Margaret?" campaign.  It includes billboards, radio ads, brochures, and posters.  The group partnered with Crime Stoppers and a number of law enforcement agencies.  The group designing the program included Richard Arriola, Kim Baldwin, Jeff Hoevet, and Pete Segall.  One of the partner agencies was the Pierce County Sheriff's Office, and Sheriff Paul Pastor attended the presentation, along with Sgt. Ed Troyer.  They were excited about the opportunity to partner on the project, and reminded the audience that a previous ELP group had partnered with them on a project raising awareness around physical abuse of the elderly.

In each case, our students identified an important societal challenge to address.  They designed a sound response to the problem, and identified organizations in the community to partner with.  The result was a sustainable solution.  That is the IMPACT in Leadership Impact Day!

As Executive in Residence (EIR), Jim will have a profound effect on the education of our students.  He is one of the most admired executives in the world.  While he has reshaped retailing, his impact and reputation extend far beyond the retail sector.  The Costco way of doing business has valuable lessons for companies in all sectors.  As EIR, Jim will be a guest speaker in classes, speak to student clubs, provide seminars for faculty, mentor students, and maybe even teach a class!  There are many ways that he will be able to share his talents, insights, and wisdom with our students and faculty.  We are very excited to be able to work with him in this capacity!

So, just what is some of that wisdom that Jim can share with Albers students?  We got a taste of that March 1^st from his presentation, "Costco: The First Thirty Years."  When asked what advice he would give to young people just starting out in their career, he stressed the importance of hard work and perseverance.  Success never comes without it.  He also encouraged students to find something you truly love doing, that way you never feel like you are going to work!

When asked about Wall Street analysts who criticize Costco for not raising prices and paying workers too much, he replied he did not want to complain, because Costco had high stock valuations, so obviously is not being punished by Wall Street.  He noted that analysts like to hear themselves talk and therefore have to have something to say, but he was never convinced they could run the business.

He was asked why other companies did not perform as well at Costco.  At first, he said he didn't want to comment about other companies because he always had his hands full at Costco.  But upon reflection, he noted two things - many companies get caught in a trap of focusing on quarterly earnings and trying to please Wall Street  rather than managing for long term success, and second, many companies lose focus and try to do too many things at once.  He advised picking a few important initiatives and focusing on those.

One student asked about Sarbanes-Oxley and the need to sign the quarterly financial statements.  Jim admitted that although he was an early critic of SOX, he believes that 90% of the legislation was beneficial.

Jim is always asked about China, and this event was no exception.  He replied that Costco believes it has many opportunities in its existing footprint and it makes more sense to pursue those rather than launch into a new market.  He also opined that China is a very difficult place to do business, and that Costco has real concerns about the rule of law and other aspects of China that affect Costco's ability to be successful there.

Jim was asked about the importance of culture in a business and how the current culture would be maintained at Costco now that he was no longer CEO. He replied that, "culture is not the most important thing, it is the only thing."  He said he was not concerned about being able to maintain the culture while current CEO Craig Jelinek is at the helm, since Craig has been at the company since the very early days.  After that, it may get more difficult, but it will be something for the company to pay attention to.

Finally, Jim was asked what is most critical to the success of the company going forward.  He said that the managers of the Costco warehouses (aka "stores") will be most critical to the success of company.  Each of those individuals has a very important job, and how well they perform shapes the performance of the company.  Given Costco's "pro-employee" reputation, it is not surprising that Jim boils down the continuing success of Costco to its people!

So, there you have it.  A taste of the wisdom Jim Sinegal will be offering to Albers students.  We are very grateful to him for his willingness to work with us as Senior EIR!  What a resource he will be!

Seventy-two percent of those surveyed were in their first deanship - so am I.

Only 18% of deans are women - I am not helping with that.

Among those in their first deanship, 24% were associate deans prior to becoming a dean and 23% were department chairs - I was an associate dean.  In case you are curious, about 8% were in industry before joining academe as a dean - that does not happen often and it is frequently not successful (but I can think of some exceptions). 

Among all deans, which would include those who were a dean somewhere else first, 19% arrived after serving as a dean elsewhere, 19% came after serving as associate deans, and 14% were previously a department chair.

The average dean has served 4.6 years.  In case you are concerned that people like me pull up the average, the median is 3.3 years.  I am in my eleventh year, so people are starting to wonder about that.

Sixty-three percent of deans were at the same institution prior to becoming dean.  Not me, I came to SU from Creighton.

Management is the top disciplinary area for deans, with 14.2 % having their degrees in management.  Economics used to be the most common discipline for deans, but is now at 13.5%.  I am an economist.

Among current deans, 33% were not actively looking to be a dean, but responded to an invitation to apply.  Twenty-five percent were actively looking and were either nominated or applied on their own.  I was not actively looking and Greg Prussia called me - so the rest is history and you can blame him! :}

In his opening remarks, Beckmann noted it was not typical for his talks to be sponsored by a business school, but SU is where he would expect it to happen! 

One of the points Beckmann made was that when it comes to improving living standards, we are making progress globally.  He used an example of Bangladesh, where he worked 35 years ago and recently returned to visit.  In travelling to the remote village that he lived in, the improvements in the quality of life there were quite striking - ranging from the quality of housing stock, to flood control construction, to paved roads, to better nutrition, to cell phones.  The example shows that when measured over decades and not year to year, we really are making progress in fighting poverty.

As for our own country, Beckmann said our progress against hunger and poverty basically stopped in 1974, and we have not moved the needle since.  He attributes this to simply not trying to address the issue.  The agenda of his organization is to restore the political will to address poverty in the US.

In terms of advice for students, he noted that when you are young and have fewer commitments, you have more flexibility and should use that freedom to work on really important issues.  He also observed that it is a good time to take chances, and he observed that we are often too risk averse.

Beckmann also said that students should not underestimate what advocacy can accomplish, and even small changes do add up and positively affect people.

To illustrate that, he told the story of his adopted son, Andrew.  When Andrew turned 18 and looked up his birth mother, they learned she had been a struggling student and used the WIC program to insure she was adequately nourished during her pregnancy.  It was during those same years that Bread for the World was battling to protect the WIC program from cut backs, so the work of Bread for the World had a very palpable impact on Beckmann and his family.  He added that the birth mother became a member of Bread for the World shortly after being contacted by Andrew because she understood the importance of the WIC program and thus the importance of the work of Bread for the World.

As a school offering a specialization in International Economic Development, it should not be surprising that we would want to host the President of Bread for the World.  Of course, when Beckmann describes himself as a "Lutheran Jesuit," there is all the more reason to have him visit campus!

Three decades ago ATT was a monopolist in the telephone industry, and in an effort to create more competition, the federal government created eight successor regional phone companies.  On top of that, the government wanted to create the wireless industry and struggled with how to distribute operating rights. First, it attempted an application process trying to select the most qualified applicants, it then moved to a lottery, and finally an auction.  In each case there were challenges, and an end result was that it took over ten years to distribute the licenses.  This put our wireless sector well behind companies in other countries.

Because the resulting distribution of companies lacked scale in an industry with huge capital needs, a wave of consolidation naturally followed.  This ultimately resulted in our current duopoly, with ATT and Verizon controlling 80% of the market and Sprint and T-Mobile struggling to stay in business.

We have come full circle.  We started out in the US with a monopoly, and now have a duopoly.

When you stop and think about it, the wireless industry is an amazing story.  At one point, John said there were six billion cell phones being used around the world.  Three decades ago the number was zero.  What an incredible expansion story of an industry!

John's story was about how to navigate this unpredictable and volatile environment.  His three recommendations were:

1. Work with a great group of people who are good at what they do and enjoy working with each other.
2. Be agile in your decision making. You need to be able to react to changing circumstances.
3. Never run out of cash!  Good advice for any start up business!

John also acknowledged that along the way his businesses had been lucky.  They may have benefitted from the mistake of a competitor or just happened to be in the right place at the right time (such as one of the lotteries for cellular rights!).  Frankly, it was refreshing to hear John acknowledge the role of luck.  Too many successful people are not willing to do that.

I am currently reading the book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman.  It is a good book, and one of the topics Kahneman takes up is the role of luck in success.  He notes that too few people are willing to acknowledge the role of luck in their success, so it is interesting to have John as an exception to the rule.  I have long held the view that luck is underappreciated, so I naturally am very receptive to this concept!  By the way, Susan Weihrich gave me this book to read.  Wonder what she intended for me to learn from the book?!

John was asked about the value of mentoring in his career development.  He shared with the audience the most valuable advice he received from one of his mentors:

1. Be slightly underpaid
2. Be fiercely competent
3. Be mobile, as in be willing to move to opportunities in new places and organizations.

John's visit was another great opportunity for our students to hear from a very successful business leader.  He was a pioneer in shaping a new industry.  Those people are hard to find, and when you find one, you are really lucky! :}

In presenting this program, we partner with the Seattle Public Schools and local chapter of the National Academy Foundation (NAF). NAF was founded in 1982 and works to prepare young people for college and career success by providing industry-focused curriculum to underserved students in four areas - Finance, Hospitality & Tourism, Information Technology, and Engineering. NAF's network has grown to 500 academies and serves more than 50,000 students across 41 states, D.C, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Students come to campus to take a class once a week. This forces them to navigate the campus (including parking!) and see for themselves what life on a college campus is like.

They take classes from Albers faculty and do a final project that integrates the course work they have taken. This year, the classes are in Business Communications, Operations, Ethics, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, and Economics. If students fulfill all requirements for the course, they earn a college credit from Seattle U.

Jessica Young is a student in our Master of Professional Accounting Program (MPAC) who works full-time at Boeing. Jessica is on the local NAF board, and was there to greet the students last week. Jessica noted that she participated in the first Academy of Finance program at SU back in 2005! As a result of the program, she really wanted to attend Albers, but ultimately chose to attend UW because of the cost. After graduating from UW with an accounting degree, she took a job with Boeing and is now a part-time student in our MPAC program. It is great to have Jessica back as a student at SU and to see her involvement with the Academy of Finance!

We are pleased to be able to partner with the Seattle Public Schools and the local NAF organization to work with these students each year. We are very grateful for the opportunity to contribute to their learning and inspire them to pursue business studies at the university level!

First, our AACSB accreditation was extended for another five years.  Given the high expectations of AACSB, reaccreditation is never a routine "ticket punch!"

We continued to do well in the rankings.  Our part-time MBA program was ranked 52^nd by Business Week and 59^th by US News and World Report.  Our Leadership EMBA was ranked 18^th by US News, and our finance program 24^th.  For the first time, our MBA program was ranked in the Grey Pinstripes Top 100.  Our undergraduate program was ranked 115^th by US News, and our accounting and finance programs were in the US News Top 25.  Business Week ranked our undergraduate program 4^th in sustainability and 7^th in business ethics.

We developed and launched our Health Leadership EMBA program, getting all the necessary approvals within a six month period and beginning to recruit in May for an August class.  Now that is aggressive!

Our students showed they perform at a high level of accomplishment.  Our SIFE team finished ninth in the nation and our Beta Alpha Psi chapter was one of only seven in the nation to receive the Gold Chapter Award.  Our graduate students won the Pacific Northwest Case Competition and the Seattle Chartered Financial Analyst Institute Investment Research Challenge.  Our Graduate Leadership Formation Specialization students did a stellar job in organizing the second annual Red Winged Leadership Award, presented to Global Visionaries.

Our faculty had an excellent year, as well.  Rex Toh received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly and three faculty - Jot Yau, Carl Obermiller, and Greg Magnan - earned "Big Hit" recognition for their publications in top journals in their disciplines.  The scholarship of all our faculty was highlighted with our first Celebration of Scholarship event in February.  Of course, they are also continuing with their excellent work in the classroom!

We launched the Center for Business Ethics in June, which is supported by an endowment created by the donations of a number of generous benefactors.  We also launched the PMI China Initiative, which will include a series of events exploring the economic integration of China and the US.

The Albers Executive Speaker Series had another good year, featuring leaders such as Jim Albaugh, CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Craig Jelinek, CEO of Costco Wholesale, Kimberly Harris, CEO of Puget Sound Energy, and Tun Channareth, Nobel Peace Prize winner.

On a personal level, contrary to popular belief, the launching of Dean Blog was not my top highlight of the year.  That would have to be the April 1^st edition of Dean Spam! :}

On November 1^st I wrote about our AACSB accreditation, discussing the visit of the peer review team looking at extending our accreditation for another five years (“reaffirmation” is what AACSB calls it).

 This week we received the good news that the AACSB Board of Directors has approved the team’s recommendation that our accreditation be extended!  The extension of our accreditation reflects the excellent work our faculty and staff are doing to provide an outstanding education to our students!  There is a lot of work that needs to be done to meet AACSB’s high expectations, and it is our faculty and staff that get the work done!

In the review, the visiting team gave Albers high marks in several areas:

• We were commended for an effective strategic planning process that drives program innovation.
• Our student advising programs were identified as doing excellent work in supporting student needs.
• The Albers Placement Center was highlighted for its work in assisting students with career planning.
• Our outreach to the business community through our advisory boards was highlighted, and in particular our engagement of boards in the strategic planning process and in faculty recruiting.
• Our Mentor Program was spotlighted for the opportunities it provides to students.

The report also encouraged us to continue our efforts to enhance and support the quality and impact of faculty scholarship and to seek ways to expand our financial resources.

AACSB is the premier business accrediting body worldwide.  Currently, there are 643 accredited schools in 43 countries, and less than 5% of the world’s business schools are accredited.  AACSB is all about quality business education and continuous improvement.  Once you are accredited, you want to make sure you stay accredited!

As I mentioned on November 1, re-accreditation is not automatic and requires our continuous attention.  It is not something you can pull together in the six months before the visit.  A visiting team will be back in Fall, 2016.  In the meantime, we will maintain our commitment to quality business education and continuous improvement!

Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2012!

Last week, Susan Weihrich, Teresa Ling, and I met with students from our Undergraduate Leadership Program.  They invited us for breakfast, so of course we had to show up!  Sharon Lobel is the faculty member overseeing the program, and she was there as well.  [If you are not familiar with the program, go to: http://www.seattleu.edu/albers/inner.aspx?id=24464.]

This is an impressive group of students who have obviously benefitted from Sharon’s guidance.  They are going to significantly contribute to the Albers School over the next two or three years (they are sophomores and juniors).  Many of them are already taking on leadership roles in some of the student organizations in the Albers School, and they are looking for other ways to contribute to our “ecosystem.”

One initiative they are launching is the Albers Leadership Club.  This will be a vehicle for them to continue contributing to the school.  One function of this club will be to encourage all club leaders to come together and share best practices while pursuing collaborative activities.  We all agree that our student organizations can have a greater impact and events will be more successful if the clubs collaborate with each other.

In answer to their question about what more they could do for Albers, we challenged them with several areas, including “what should we be doing to recruit more freshmen to the Albers School?” and “how can we get more undergraduate students to attend the Albers Executive Speaker Series?”  Our speakers always do a great job and I am always disappointed with the low turnout of undergraduate students who can really benefit from attending!

The students asked some great questions.  At one point they asked what leadership roles I had when I was an undergraduate student at LaSalle University back in the day.  Now that is an interesting question and one I had not thought about!  I was able to remember being President of the Economics Club and being the student representative at meetings of the Department of Economics.  

But what really seemed to interest them was me being part of a start-up club called Gallery Associates.  Our role was to support the newly opened art gallery at the university, and I was able to tell them that it was only because of my art history teacher that I was inspired to get involved with this group!  After all, economists are left-brained people, right, and no one is more so than me, so how in the world did I end up in the art gallery??

We reminded them that there are many opportunities for leadership, and they do not all flow from one’s rank or title.  One can lead by seeing something that needs to be addressed and taking the initiative to fix it.

It was very inspiring for the three of us to spend time with this group of student leaders.  They are a talented and savvy bunch, and we look forward to seeing the contributions to the Albers School and SU that they will make during their time here, and the impact they will have on their profession and community after graduation!

Contact Hours??  A blog about contact hours??  Why blog about contact hours, and what are they anyway?

Contact hours are the time faculty is supposed to spend working with students in a course.  A contact hour is actually 50 minutes, not 60.  Our typical three credit graduate course, for example, is supposed to have thirty contact hours.  The typical five credit undergraduate class is supposed to have fifty contact hours.

It turns out that with some frequency some of our graduate courses are getting shorted contact hours.  Every winter quarter it seems that some classes are meeting only nine times, meaning only 27 contact hours.  That's a 10% shortfall for the course!  In the eight week summer term, some of our graduate classes have closer to 26 contact hours.

I am not sure how long this problem has been there, but we finally decided to do something about it.  Beginning with the Spring, 2012 quarter, we will start adding time to courses that would otherwise be shorted.  For example, a ten week class that meets only nine times and would normally run from 6:00 to 8:40 PM will now meet each evening from 6:00 to 8:55 PM.  The times will be on the schedule and students and faculty will know in advance and be able to plan accordingly.

I really don’t know why we let this situation go on for so long.  Our graduate classes don’t have many contact hours to begin with, so missing them shortchanges students and makes it impossible for faculty to cover the material they planned to cover.

It is an example of getting used to something that we should have recognized as being incompatible with academic excellence.  I think the lesson is, “Be Vigilant!”  Big or small, there are lots of things out there that we can change for the better!

On December 2^nd we installed three faculty as endowed chairs and professors.  Saluting these faculty in this way allows us to recognize their excellent work in the Albers School.

Carl Obermiller was installed as the third holder of the George Albers Professorship of Business.  Carl teaches courses in marketing and social issues, marketing metrics, and new product development.  He has been a driving force behind our sustainability specialization in the MBA program and now serves as co-chair of SU’s Sustainability Committee.  He has produced high quality scholarship, publishing in such highly regarded journals as the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Consumer Behavior, the Journal of Business Research, and the Journal of Advertising.  At the ceremony, Carl commented that his latest research was on “Do consumers really listen to marketers?”  Great question!

The Albers family was a generous supporter of SU and the Albers School, and to honor that support our school was named the Albers School in the early 1970’s.  In 2001, we received a generous endowment from the estate of Genevieve Albers which supports the Albers Professorships (and other activities in the school).  George Albers was Genevieve’s father and a successful business man who established a successful food processing business that was sold to Carnation, which was then bought by Nestlé.  The Albers brand is still used today by Nestlé for corn meal and grits!

Chips Chipalkatti was installed as the fourteenth holder of the Robert D. O’Brien Endowed Chair in Business.  Chips teaches in the areas of financial accounting and accounting for intangible assets.  He has been instrumental in the development of our business valuation program.  Chips has been a very successful scholar, with publications in the Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of International Accounting Research, the CPA Journal and the International Journal of Financial Services Management.  In his remarks, Chips noted he is busy organizing a business valuation conference in Seattle in late February.

Robert O’Brien served on SU’s Board of Regents from 1963 to 1971 and then was a founding member of the SU Board of Trustees from 1971 to 1999.  He is given major credit for helping SU through the financial difficulties it experienced in the 1970’s.  He had a lengthy career at Kenworth Motor Truck from 1943 to 1958 and then PACCAR beginning in 1958, retiring as Chairman in 1978.

Jot Yau was installed as the second holder of the Dr. Khalil Dibee Endowed Chair in Finance.  The chair was established with a generous donation from Gary Brinson to honor Dr. Dibee, who was a teacher and mentor to Brinson while he was a student at SU.  Brinson went on to a legendary career in the investment industry, but never forgot the support he received from Dr. Dibee.

Jot teaches primarily in the areas of investments, portfolio management, and hedge funds.  He has guided many students to pursue a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.  Jot has been a dedicated scholar, publishing in journals such as the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Futures Markets, Financial Analysts Journal, and the Journal of Alternative Investments.  He has also published two books, including one on socially responsible investing.  In this remarks, Jot noted that one thing he wanted to accomplish as the endowed chair was to strengthen our ties with Seattle’s finance community.

Khalil Dibee retired from our faculty in 1994 after nearly 30 years of teaching at SU.  He was known for his rigorous classes and commitment to academic excellence. Jot Yau, Chips Chipalkatti, and Carl Obermiller are carrying on that legacy of academic rigor and commitment to excellence!  We are blessed to have them as colleagues!

On November 3^rd, Tod Nielsen, Applications Platform co-President at VMware, spoke at the Albers Executive Speaker Series.  Tod has more than 20 years of experience in the software industry, including previous positions at Oracle, Borland Software, Microsoft, and BEA Systems.  He had plenty of good advice and insight to share with our students.  Tod is also the brother of Melore Nielsen, SU’s Dean of Admissions.

Tod made a presentation on lessons he has learned over the course of his career and framed them as Five Pillars.  The first pillar is the importance of “Milestones.”  Everyone can look back and see certain critical moments or decisions along the path that one takes.  It is also important to look forward, to think about where you want to be in five years, and what the things are that must happen to get there.  The five year plan may not materialize, but it is important to have one.

The second pillar is “Diversity.”  Tod emphasized the importance of having a diversity of experiences early in your career that you can build on later in your career.  He encouraged students to make lateral moves in the organization in order to build that experience, something people often resist.  He also noted the benefit of working in a dysfunctional organization or for an ineffective leader.  That way you learn what does not work!

The third pillar is the “Mentor.”  He stressed the importance of finding mentors over the course of one’s career.  Their advice will frequently be very valuable.  It is also important to find a mentor who does not think like you and can offer a different perspective.

“Customers” are the fourth pillar.  You need to remember that the product is for the customer, so make sure to find out what they want and need.  Tod also emphasized the need to talk to a diverse set of customers, and not extrapolate from a narrow group to a broader audience.

The final pillar is to “Give Back.”  He stressed the need to leave the world a better place than you found it.  This needs to include your time, talent, and treasure, but especially your time and talent.

In the Q&A, Tod gave a number of important insights on the current and future state of the technology industry.  He also said the following:

What is the most important characteristic of a leader?  The ability to listen to others.  Too few leaders do it, and most of the time the people in the organization know what is going wrong and how to fix it.

What is the most important thing you look for in hiring a manager?  It’s passion for what a person does.  Domain expertise is overrated.

What keeps you up at night about VMware?  The pace of innovation – is the company too far ahead of customers and the market?

All in all, it was a fun and interesting evening.  Tod’s talk will be available via podcast.  Check at http://www.seattleu.edu/albers/execspeakers/. 

The next speaker series event is on January 24^th, when John Stanton visits.  Stanton is a highly regarded leader in the wireless industry.

AACSB International is the premier accrediting body for business schools.  Albers is one of 637 schools worldwide (41 countries) with AACSB accreditation, which amounts to less than 5% of the world’s business schools.  For more information on AACSB, you can go to www.aacsb.edu. 

Every five years, schools go through a process of reaffirming their accreditation.  This is our year for reaffirmation.

Back in the summer we submitted a report on our programs and operations.  That report was reviewed by a peer review team consisting of three current or former deans.  Our team consists of Dean Ali Malekzadeh, from Kansas State, Dr. Rich Flaherty, former dean at UNLV, and Dr. Abol Jalilvand, former dean at Loyola of Chicago.  This is a very experienced and respected team.  If we can meet their expectations, we can meet any team’s expectations!

After reviewing our report and asking for additional information, the peer review team visited our campus October 30 to November 1.  They met with advisory board members on Sunday, October 30^th.  Throughout the day on Monday, October 31^st, they met with Albers faculty, staff, and students while also reviewing files and documents.  Near the end of the day they began to draft their report.  Tuesday morning, November 1^st, they delivered their report and recommendation to President Sundborg and Provost Crawford.

The team report makes a recommendation on whether our accreditation should be extended for another five years.  That recommendation will go to the AACSB Maintenance of Accreditation Committee (MAC).  The MAC will meet in December and decide to accept the report or send it back to the peer review team for further consideration.  If all goes well, the MAC accepts a recommendation to affirm accreditation and that gets forwarded to the AACSB Board of Directors for their approval shortly thereafter.  Reaffirmation is then formally announced at the AACSB annual meeting in April.

Reaffirmation is not a fete accompli.  About 30% of schools going up for reaffirmation are placed on continuing review, which means that reaffirmation is postponed for a year or two while they work to address areas where they may not be meeting AACSB expectations.  For example, problems frequently occur with the Assurance of Learning (aka “assessment”) system or with faculty qualifications, such as when schools do not have enough research active faculty.

I think we put together a solid report, and did so within the mere 50 pages that AACSB allows.  Of course, there is no limit to the number of appendices you can submit, so that ran 218 pages! :} Kudos go to Susan Weihrich and her two graduate assistants, Maria Klink and Zoey Wu, for producing our report.

From what I have heard, our faculty and staff did a great job of preparing themselves to meet with the team.  I was not a part of the meetings – don’t want the dean in there influencing people’s answers – but several people said, “You would have been really proud of how we answered the team’s questions!”  That was great to hear and I am sure it will be reflected in our report.

So far, so good, but check back later when the process is further along.

Way back in the day, global development (called economic development back then) was my field of research in graduate school and my dissertation was in the field – “The Demand for Labor on Small Farms in Less Developed Countries: Implications for Employment Generation.”  You can tell how old that is – Less Developed Countries is not a term we use anymore!  Emerging Nations is the proper term these days.  When I was on the faculty at Creighton, each year I would teach the International Economic Development course to undergraduate students.

Now, of course, I am not doing research and teaching in global development, but we have three economists on our faculty who are -- Meena Rishi, Quan Le, and Claus Pörtner.  This is a significant commitment on the part of the Albers School to this important sector.

More importantly, we are offering the International Economic Development (IED) specialization and minor to undergraduate students.  These programs allow students to take specialized coursework in the area, and students also must combine that with a complementary experience – study abroad in an emerging nation or an internship with an NGO doing development work.

Fortunately, our IED program can draw upon the global development sector here in Seattle.  Although we would prefer IED students to go abroad, when that is not possible there is a long list of local organizations they can work with.  We are very fortunate in that regard, as there are few metro areas in the nation that offer a global development sector to draw upon.

It is easy to see how the IED is at the heart of the SU mission.  If we are truly to be “leaders for a just and humane world,” a key concern must be how to raise the standard of living for so many of the world’s people.  If we are concerned about global education, the issue of global development has to be one of the greatest challenges to address.  Today, we have 15 economics majors specializing in IED and 9 IED minors.  It is great to see so many SU students inspired to engage so deeply with the global development challenge.

The College Success Foundation (CSF) helps low income and underserved students to graduate from college and succeed in life.  The foundation does great work, and many SU students and alumni have benefitted from their assistance.

On October 22^nd CSF hosted its students and alumni on the SU campus to explore attending graduate and professional school.  CSF asked me to talk to students about why they should consider going on for that next degree.  Here are some of the things I told them:

The first thing to know is that graduate or professional school is going to be a lot of work and it will be more focused than a traditional undergraduate degree.  Therefore, it is important to have a passion for what you choose to study. 

One of the negatives about attending graduate school is the opportunity cost involved.  Namely, while you are going to school, you are not in the workforce earning income.  Of course, there are many programs designed for people to go to school and work full time at the same time, what we call part time programs.  For example, virtually all of the graduate programs at Seattle University are programs that work that way. 

Of course, there is a price to pay with these programs in terms of not having as much time for family and recreation for the two or three or four years of your study.  Yet many, many students have successfully navigated that path and feel they made the right decision.

Most people know how an undergraduate degree boosts employment prospects as well as income.  So for example, in 2010 the unemployment rate for people with a high school diploma averaged 10.3% compared to 5.4% for people with bachelor’s degrees.  Median weekly earnings for people with a bachelor’s degree was over $1000 in 2010, compared to a bit over $600 for high school graduates. 

The situation for people with master’s and professional degrees is striking.  People with a master’s degree, any master’s degree, had an unemployment rate of 4% in 2010.  Those with professional degrees had an unemployment rate of 2.4%, and those with doctoral degrees had an unemployment rate of 1.9%. 

There is a similar impact on earnings.  Those with doctoral and professional degrees had weekly earnings 50 and 60% higher than those with bachelor’s degrees, respectively.  Master’s degree holders earned about 25% more.

Another way to look at this is to look at estimates of life time earnings from the US Census Bureau.  Depending on your race and gender, the increase in life time earnings of a master’s degree over a bachelor’s degree ranges from 16 to 34%.  For a professional degree from 37 to 67% , and for a Doctoral degree between 30% to 55%.

Let’s look at the numbers for Hispanic males – high school lifetime earnings are about $1.31 million, undergrad degree $2.1 million, master’s degree $2.8 million, and professional and doctoral degrees $3.1 million.

Money is not everything, so why else would you go on to get a higher degree?  Researchers have suggested that it not money that really motivates people to do good work and be successful and enjoy going to work every day.  People need a certain amount of income to live on and don’t want to feel taken advantage of.  They do want to be paid for what they do, but that is not the real source of their satisfaction.

Daniel Pink has summarized the research into three things -- autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  Autonomy means that we have control over our lives and our situation.  You don’t want someone telling you want to do all the time.  You want to be able to use your own good judgment.  One would think that the more education you have, the easier it is to find a situation where you have autonomy, and that the organization where you work is going to trust you to do your job well.

Mastery means you want to be good at what you do.  Well, doesn’t a graduate degree contribute to that??  Whatever it is you are passionate about, presumably more education makes you better at it and improves your skill set.

The final aspect is purpose, which means that you feel like you are doing really important work and the organization that you represent is involved in an important mission.  I don’t think you need a graduate degree to achieve purpose, but it may make it easier to find because your education helps you find out about you.  In other words, your graduate education allows you to find what your passion is, what is important to you, and what your core values are.  This enables you to go out and find a situation where there is alignment with your values and passions.

A graduate degree can impact these three important non-monetary factors, not just your earnings power.  These are compelling reasons to be thinking about that next degree!

The Albers Executive Speaker Series kicked off for the year with René Ancinas, President and CEO of Port Blakely Companies, visiting on October 19^th.  Port Blakely Companies is a fourth-generation family-owned business with forestry and real estate interests in the Pacific Northwest and New Zealand. Many of those who attended found René to be one of the best if not the best speaker they have listened to in the series.  That is saying a lot, because just about every major business leader in Seattle has participated in the series!

René talked about his background as a musician has influenced his approach to music.  He said some of his best role models for leadership have been musical conductors.  “Everybody leads from the seat they are in,” said René. The person in front cannot tell everyone what they should be doing.  The successful conductor gets them to lead themselves.  This is the model that René uses in his own leadership.

René suggested there are five key principles to leadership:

1. Walk the walk.  You will not be successful if you say one thing and do another and do not lead by example.
2. Take a servant leadership approach.  It is not about you, it is about the success of organization.
3. Know your weaknesses.  Don’t try to be someone you are not.  Find people who are strong in ways you are not.
4. Build a good team. Or, maybe he meant to say build a good orchestra! :}
5. Develop and inspire people.  That is definitely the conductor model!

René noted that as a leader, he is more concerned with selecting people for the team based on their values alignment and what they bring as a person in terms of their beliefs and self-awareness.  Skill requirements serve as a filter for finding people, but skills are not the critical factor.

Finally, René used Prezi to do his presentation, a cloud based presentation software.  The audience loved it and I think he has inspired some new adopters!

The next speaker is Tod Nielsen, co-President at VMWare, on November 3^rd.  You need to be there!

The Western Association of Collegiate Schools of Business (WACSB) annual meeting was in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho October 9 to 11^th.  Forty-five AACSB accredited schools from the western US were in attendance, with schools from Arizona to Alaska and Montana to Hawaii represented.  These meetings are always very valuable for networking with deans from other business schools in the region.  Some deans find this to be the most valuable meeting that they attend.

I had never been to Coeur D’Alene except to drive through on I-90.  I recommend getting off the highway!  Coeur D’Alene is a pleasant, manageable town with a great, big lake and plenty of scenery. Our meeting was at the Coeur D’Alene Resort, which is right on the lake.

Idaho, Idaho State, and Boise State were the host schools and they did a nice job or organizing the conference.  Unfortunately, they did not get much cooperation from Mother Nature, as it was cloudy and rainy most of the time.

These meetings always feature presentations and panel discussion on emerging issues for business schools.  The problem that frequently happens is that the program is not designed to appeal to the wide variety of schools in the audience.  For example, this meeting ranged between Research I schools such as Arizona and Oregon, to small privates such as California Lutheran and PLU, to medium sized publics such as Cal-Northridge and Eastern Washington.

One panel featured a discussion on commercialization of technology.   Unfortunately, it was addressed from the perspective of very large public schools, so it had almost no relevance for most schools in the audience, including SU.  The discussion would have been much more meaningful if the panelists represented the variety of schools in attendance.

Another panel discussion focused on financial strategies to address current budget problems.  While the panel was more representative, no private schools were in the group.  Granted, public institutions face more stress than privates, normally, but everyone is dealing with budget pressures.

A final panel focused on how schools support faculty research.  It did have a private school in the mix, but the schools were on the large size.  A more representative mix could have been developed for this discussion. 

One of the questions that came up in this final session was how to measure the quality and impact of faculty research.  It is an issue we are currently wrestling with in the Albers School.  There are no easy answers and I didn’t come across any at this session that could be used by Albers, even though I explicitly asked the panel and audience to share what they were doing.  The Research I schools have addressed this issue by coming up with a limited list of journals for their faculty to publish in.  The rest of us are not interested in that approach. 

In our case, we are now looking at classifying journals into four classes, but ideally we would come up with something which factors in other considerations.  The quality of a journal is not always easy to identify, and just because an article gets published does not mean it has impact or influence on practice or the discipline.  The ideal system would be multifaceted, but no one seems to know what that would actually look like.

What I did learn from this panel is that Albers does a reasonably good job of supporting faculty research, at least when compared to the four schools presenting.  Well, one was a Ph.D. granting school, so we don’t provide that level of support, but we don’t tell faculty there are only four journals they should publish in, either.

The final session was devoted to Beta Gamma Sigma, the academic honor society for AACSB accredited schools.  Once again, Seattle University was recognized as a premier school by BGS.  This is a credit to Fred DeKay, who serves as faculty advisor for BGS and managed to pull this off while on a leave of absence!  Way to go Fred!

Next year’s WASCB meeting will be at Lake Tahoe.  I am planning accordingly!

Earlier this week a peer review team from NCAA visited campus to follow up on the self-study we submitted in April.  Both the self-study and the visit are important steps in our four year process to return to Division I athletics.  2011-12 is our fourth year.  If all goes well, we will be a Division I school in 2012-13.

The self-study was a large and complicated project.  It involved over 60 people from campus working on three sub-committees and a steering committee providing overall direction.  It included students, faculty, staff, and others.  It was a big group, but we intentionally made it a big group because we wanted broad campus participation.  For example, we purposely included student athletes as well as students who are not athletes.

The self-study resulted in a number of improvements being made within the Department of Athletics, but also improvements that impact the entire campus.  In that sense, the process was very helpful and I think the participants feel good about that.

As it now stands, all Division I schools must undergo the self-study process every ten years.  The self-study that we did is the same self-study that long standing Division I schools.  The difference for us was it was our first time through, and something every reclassifying school does in the third year of the four year process.

The NCAA has told us that we are one of the last schools to go through the process as it now exists.  They are studying how to change the certification process to make it more streamlined and less burdensome.

Having been through accreditation processes for AACSB (the business school accrediting body) and the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (the accrediting body for the university), I expected a thorough and burdensome accreditation process!  I wasn’t disappointed but I was not troubled by it either.  It was a good exercise for the university.  We were able to identify areas of strength and aspects of what we do that need improvement. 

Nevertheless, NCAA seems to be almost apologizing for the process and vowing to do better.  Well, that will be beneficial to whoever is involved in the next review cycle.  One thing that is clear is that the next review will not be another ten years from now, as the self-study cycle will become more frequent, perhaps requiring something every year!

In developing our self-study, we received great support from our NCAA liaison, Mira Colman.  Most striking about Mira was her responsiveness.  It was like she was sitting by the computer (or holding her Blackberry) waiting for our email so she could respond!  She couldn’t have been more supportive of us!

The sub-committees received exceptional support from Eric Guerra and Lauren Rochholz in Athletics.  They took care of all the details throughout the process, whether it was scheduling meeting rooms or posting our report material to the NCAA website.  They may have a different take than me on the burdens of the self-study process, though! :}

In a week or so we will receive the peer review team report and be able to respond to any issues by mid-December.  In February, the NCAA Division I Committee on Athletics Certification will meet to review our self-study and the peer review report and make a decision on our readiness to move to D1.  If all goes well, we will be a D1 school in July, 2012.

So far, so good!

This past weekend I attended the inaugural of Fr. Tim Lannon, SJ as the 24^th President of Creighton University.  When a President is inaugurated at a Jesuit university, the other Jesuit schools are asked to send a representative.  I was on the Creighton faculty for 19 years before coming to Seattle U., so I, along with Fr. Mike Bayard, SJ, represented SU at the installation.

I first got to know Fr. Lannon when I was on the Creighton faculty and he was President of Creighton Prep High School.  We were both asked to serve on a Supervisory Committee for the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.  It seems the fraternity had engaged in some inappropriate activity and was on the verge of being booted off campus.  The only way they could remain was under the direction of a supervisory committee consisting of Phi Psi alumni and faculty.  Yes, that means Fr. Lannon, the first alum to serve as President of Creighton, was a fraternity brother when he was a student.  (And I had to be inducted into the fraternity so I could serve as a faculty advisor!)

There is no doubt in my mind that Fr. Lannon will be a great President for Creighton.  He has a great way with people and was an inspiring leader at Creighton Prep and St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where he was before returning to Creighton.

Returning to campus, I was able to see the tremendous improvements that have taken place with the campus infrastructure.  The campus footprint is much larger than when I left, and many buildings have been added during the presidency of Fr. John Schlegel, SJ.  While this is very impressive, it is not the campus facilities that make Creighton an outstanding academic institution.  Returning to campus after being gone for ten years, I was able to visit with a number of my former colleagues. It was a reminder of the many wonderful faculty and staff at Creighton.  They are good at what they do and dedicated to the university and its students (just like the faculty and staff at SU).  I dare not name names because I will leave someone out, but it is really the people that make Creighton a great institution!  And I know they will thrive under Fr. Lannon’s leadership!

The trip back was an opportunity to remind myself about the great network of 28 Jesuit universities in the US and the quality of education they deliver.  Seattle University is not alone in its mission and its success!  It is also a reminder that great leadership (Fr. Lannon at CU or Fr. Sundborg at SU) and great facilities (the new library at SU or the Harper Center at CU) are important for the success of a university, but not as important as the competence and dedication of the faculty and staff.

The academic year is starting this week and campus is getting busier and busier with the approach of fall classes.  [It is true that law students and EMBA students have been in class for several weeks, but they don't fill the campus up!]  On September 15th we had the Albers Convocation, a beginning of the year meeting for Albers faculty and staff.

On September 20th we host a welcome event for our new undergraduate business students, both freshmen and transfers.

At the Convocation, we emphasized that there are four important things we need to accomplish this year:

1. Earn reaffirmation of our AACSB accreditation.  AACSB is the top business education accrediting body in the world.  There are 633 schools worldwide with accreditation.  Accredited schools are reviewed every five years to assure they are delivering a quality business education.  A peer review team will visit us in late October.  We sent them our self-study report in late August, which we know they are pouring over now.

2. Revamp our MBA curriculum.  A team of faculty and staff started working on this last year.  They have come up with some interesting changes and are getting closer to making their initial proposal to the faculty.

3. Revise our undergraduate business core curriculum.  Now that the university has revised the university undergraduate core, it is time for us to look at the business core.  A task force of faculty began work in the spring.  Thus far they have looked at what other programs do and the trends in business undergraduate education.  Now they must get busy formulating a proposal.

4. Establish a system to measure the quality and impact of faculty scholarship.  This is a difficult topic for faculty.  In our current system of annual evaluation and rank and tenure, we are not doing enough to assess the quality of faculty research.  We need to establish a system that is fair and provides faculty with the right incentives and support.

A blogging expert told me there should be pictures posted on my blog.  I am not sure what pictures I have that are appropriate for these topics.  But, if we recognize that the start of the school year means summer is over (way too short one more time!), and it is a great time to look back and remember the highlights.  For me, that would be the trip to Peru and Machu Picchu in July and a vacation trip to Lake Tahoe the week before Labor Day.  So, here is a picture of Machu Picchu: 

 And here is one from the Lake Tahoe trip. Just finished climbing Mt. Tallac, which is in the background:

Summer is over!  Have a great school year! 

On August 8^th we held the ninth annual Albers Alumni Golf Tournament at the Glendale Country Club in Bellevue.  This event has always been important for bringing Albers supporters together and any money raised is used to support scholarships for Albers students.  This year the tournament was particularly successful because we had 130 golfers, a great location, and great weather!

There is a lot of work by volunteers on this event.  This year the leaders were Dave Anastasi from my advisory board and Tony Goodwillie and Scott Warren from our alumni board.  Rob Bourke, our staff member who handles alumni affairs, also puts in a lot of work on the tournament.  The event was developed and championed by our alumni board and we are very grateful for their support across the nine years of the tournament!  And thanks to all the volunteers who assisted with the event this year!  It really takes a lot of work to do one of these!

It’s not uncommon for the tournament to be my one and only outing on the golf course during a year.  This year it was my first time out, but I do have another tournament on the schedule next month.  I don’t mind playing golf, but it is a very time consuming sport – it takes a long time to play a round of golf – and so does not work for me.

I am definitely a fair weather golfer.  I don’t like to be playing in the rain, and we have had a few years when it was raining.  Given the nature of my golf game, what is the point of being out there if the weather is not nice?

For me, golf is very much a team game.  I only do scrambles, which our tournament is, and that should tell you something about the consistency of my golf game!

This year people were really excited about the Glendale Country Club location, and I agree with them.  What was most appealing to me is that it does not have narrow fairways, frequently you can get to the green via several different fairways, and there are very few houses within reach of my ball.

One year one of my partners wanted to know why I was not using a driver off the tee.  I replied that I was using my driver, but apparently it is so “old school” and small compared to the mega-drivers of today, that it looks like a five wood.  He had the perfect solution, he replied, and sent me an extra driver that he had – a Sasquatch Diamana S-65.  It is exactly as it sounds – big!!  And it does make a difference.  My drives, whenever it is a half decent shot, definitely go a lot further and I do not have near as much difficulty coming up with the requisite two drives that every team member is expected to contribute in a scramble.

Frequently people ask me how my team faired in the tournament.  I must explain to them that it is not good form for the dean to win the tournament, so I take all the necessary precautions to make sure that does not happen.  My golf game is usually sufficient to keep us out of the running, but if I need to, I am not above inviting other weak golfers to join my team.  One year my team finished fourth and we were dangerously close to winning the third place prize.  I’ve been much more careful ever since!

On August 8^th I made a presentation here in Seattle to the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) Economics and Investment Conference, attended by credit union board members and CEOs from around the country.  The theme was, “Where Do We Stand Now? An Overview of the Current Economic Climate.”  Here are some of the things I said:

• First, Seattle is a great place to have a conference this time of year!  No heat, humidity, or mosquitoes!
• The “Great Recession” that lasted from December, 2007 to June, 2009 was the deepest and longest since the Great Depression. 
• It has also been the weakest recovery.  Over two years later, we have restored less than 25% of the jobs lost and output has still not recovered to its pre-recession level.
• Looking at the components of output – consumption, investment, government expenditures, and net exports – it is investment spending that has not recovered.  But it is not business investment in machinery and equipment, it is business and residential construction that continue to lag.
• The Fed moved aggressively to address the stress in financial markets and the economic slowdown.  The Fed is out of bullets.  It has done everything it can do.
• The Fed has moved so aggressively that there is a risk of inflation.  I admit to having a hard time figuring out exactly what that risk is.
• The federal government moved modestly to stimulate the economy.  Much of the deficit has to do with fighting two wars (without raising taxes for them), tax cuts, and the cyclical impact on the budget, not specific steps to enlarge the government sector.
• The current discussions on the budget deficit are not well informed because they fail to differentiate between cyclical and structural deficits.  We need to focus on the latter, and that is best addressed by medium to longer term cuts in spending (especially entitlement spending), not short term cuts that make it more difficult to put the recession behind us.
• There are a number of factors weighing down the recovery – the housing market, Federal budget uncertainty, energy prices (although that could be changing), government downsizing, weak income and job growth, consumer deleveraging, and struggles in Europe.
• There are few sources of strength – exports (especially to Asia), business ready to invest when they are convinced that consumers will be there, low interest rates, and maybe energy prices are starting to drop.
• That all adds up to continued modest growth of 2-3%, not good for an economic recovery.  I don’t see the double-dip that other people see.  When a recession is caused by a financial crisis that impacts lower and middle income households, history shows a long, slow recovery.
• If Standard and Poors wants to downgrade Treasury debt, that is fine, but that means they need to do some other downgrading, like for France.  Treasuries are definitely lower risk than OATs!

Fordham University recently hosted a meeting of academics and business people here in Seattle.  As part of the event, they convened a panel of five business school deans to give their perspectives on the Purpose of Business.  Here are some exerts of what I said in the discussion:

“The purpose of business is to meet human needs, in two ways.  First, provide goods and services to customers and, two, to provide employment and opportunity to those involved in the enterprise. 

The first includes basic needs that take the form of goods and services, but also less urgent goods and services that contribute to an improved standard of living.  The products produced by business contribute to the common good by meeting basic needs as well as less critical needs.

Regarding the second purpose, employment is important.  It provides income to meet basic needs, but not just that.  Employment is also a way that people define themselves and find meaning and fulfillment and feel good about themselves.  In brief, it provides human dignity.

The business also needs to be sustainable, which influences how it does business.  The focus is on long term customer relationships, not a quick turn.  The environment cannot be excessively exploited in the process of producing goods and services, since that is not sustainable.  To be sustainable, the business also needs to operate profitability, so that it provides incentives for capital, but profitability, particularly when measured in the short term, is not the sole purpose of the business.

Think of examples of successful businesses that you know of – Costco, Boeing, Paccar, Amazon, or Facebook.  Is it profitability that gives owners and employees pride and excitement? Or is it meeting customer needs and what they produce and do that turns them on?  Looked at another way, Microsoft, Alaska Airlines, and Weyerhaeuser are making money now but do not seem to get any credit for it.  Salesforce.com, LinkedIn, and Shutterfly don’t make much money, but are widely admired.  It has to be some combination of both profits and mission that gets people excited about what they do….

One reason that business should be about meeting human needs and contributing to the common good is that society creates an environment that allows a business to operate.  Without that supportive environment, a business could not be successful.  I have in mind such things as property rights, enforcing contracts, educating and training the workforce, overseeing a monetary system and well functioning financial markets, maintaining law and order, and providing infrastructure like highways and ports that support commerce.  Businesses get a “license to operate” so to speak in this supportive environment.

I would suggest that much of my thinking on this issue is influenced by Catholic Social Thought, and I am not saying that to please our Catholic university host, Fordham University.

A major tenant of CST is the “dignity of the human person,” and how work contributes to human dignity.  Thus, a business that “does not enhance its workers and serve the common good is a moral failure,” no matter how profitable.  It was Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of Labor), the first Papal encyclical in CST tradition issued in 1891, that first raised questions about the treatment of employees.  Subsequent encyclicals have gone on to elaborate and press that theme.  For example, Quadragesimo Anno (1931) posed the “just wage” as one that could support a family and allow for some accumulation of property. 

But back to the role of profits, Pope Benedict says the following in the most recent encyclical, Truth and Charity (Caritas in Veritate): “Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a signal both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it.  Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.”

In sum, my view is that the purpose of business is to provide goods and services to customers and, two, to provide employment and opportunity to those involved in the enterprise.  Business enjoys a supportive environment provided by society and, in turn, it boosts the standard of living of society and contributes to the common good.

In late June I attended a meeting in Washington DC to discuss the creation of a system that helps MBA students select a program.  It is being developed as an alternative to the MBA program rankings that have become very prominent and influential.

The meeting was called by the Business Education Alliance (BEA).   The chief organizers are three business school deans – Larry Pulley (William and Mary), Tony Hendrickson (Creighton), and Caryn Beck-Dudley (Florida State).  They have been working on this for nearly two years and now are on the verge of founding a non-profit organization to provide this tool to aspiring MBA students.

There are lots of rankings out there about MBA programs, particularly full-time MBA programs.  We do not have a full-time program, so it is not something I spend much time on.  But as far as program rankings in general go, I don’t know of any leader in higher education who really likes them.  Still, they are part of our world now, and they are not going away any time soon.

I’ve always been struck by how students, alumni, and advisory boards get excited about rankings.  They really get people’s attention.  Albers has been fortunate enough to receive recognition in some of the rankings out there, particularly in US News and World Report and BusinessWeek.   Still, anyone with any sense should know it is very difficult to compare a few schools vs. one another let alone the 550 AAACB accredited business schools in the US or the more than 13,000 business schools worldwide.  All are doing very similar and at the same time very different work.  The experience of an undergraduate student in Albers is very different than one at Seattle Pacific University or one at any of the three University of Washington campuses.  To try to rank even this small group against one another is very difficult, since the student experience can be impacted by so many different factors, including:

1. Students choose to participate in different program opportunities, thus there is no one student experience in a business program.  For example, one student could choose to be in our Mentor Program and another not.  That will have an impact on their Albers experience.
2. Students enter the program at different entry points, for example as incoming freshman, as a sophomore transferring from another school on campus, or as a junior transfer coming from a local community college.  Each will yield a different experience.
3. Students have different interests, skills and aptitudes, and these may match better in one program than another.
4. Not only will it make a difference as to which faculty the student will have in classes, and who the student’s academic advisor will be, but who will be the friends and support group of the student on campus?  Two students in the same year and major will have a very different experience based on this alone.

All these factors and more make it very difficult to put much stock in rankings as a tool for selecting the right school to attend.

The approach of the BPA is to identify about 20 factors that describe an MBA program.  The inquiring student inputs his or her preferences and an algorithm identifies the programs that best match those preferences.  There is also an audit function so that the integrity of the information provided by schools can be checked.

Whether the BPA can pull this off remains to be seen.  Stay tuned!

The International Association of Jesuit Business Schools (IAJBS) held its 17^th annual world Forum in Lima, Peru July 17-20.  Hosted by the Universidad del Pacifico (UP), the meeting brought together representatives from 35 universities (mostly Jesuit) from six continents around the world.  The meeting had the theme of “Corporate Social Responsibility and Inclusive Business,” and panels and workshops had that theme.  Two Albers faculty gave paper presentations consistent with those themes, Bill Weis and Meena Rishi (along with former student Samantha Galvin).

The conference took place at the UP campus.  The campus is small, but they have cleverly intertwined their buildings, like a 3-d puzzle, to create open space for what is a very urban campus.  The conference is an opportunity to meet deans from other universities and learn about their programs and interest in collaboration.  Some of the schools that I talked to about collaboration were from such countries as Belgium, Uruguay, Colombia, and the US.

There was a presentation made on the Jesuit African Initiative, which is an effort to establish business schools in four African nations – Kenya, the Congo, Ivory Coast, and Rwanda/Burundi.  African Jesuits have identified this as one of their greatest needs, and according to AACSB there are only 781business schools on the continent (none Jesuit) out of more than 13,000 worldwide.  The initiative is just getting off the ground, with Fr. Ron Anton, SJ, the Secretary for Higher Education for the Society of Jesus, taking the lead in organizing it.

This seems like an important project for us to get involved in.  The initiative is seeking a lead school for each of the four projects and a group of supporting schools, as well.  I am thinking we want to go the supporting school route, and the one that makes the most sense to me initially is the Rwanda/Burundi project.  It requires instruction in French (for Burundi) and English (for Rwanda), and the lead school has been identified as the University of Namur in Belgium.  SU has been doing some exploration of work in Rwanda, and this may be a good vehicle for pushing this along.  Of course, we need to look at all four projects, but because the language of instruction will be French in Ivory Coast and the Congo, Kenya is another option for us.

As the conference ended, I was elected to the IAJBS Board of Directors.  I guess they are running out of people to ask.  There are five members from four geographic areas – North America, South America, Asia, and Europe.  I was assured that the board only meets face-to-face at the annual meeting (which is in Barcelona next year) and otherwise meets by teleconference.  I’m not interested in a lot more out of town meetings!

After the conference, my wife and I flew to Cuzco to see Machu Picchu and other sites in the Sacred Valley.  No disrespect to IAJBS and the host school, UP, but this was the highlight of the trip.  Plus, the sun was out in Cuzco, while this time of year Lima is covered in a perpetual blanket of clouds.

 We came to Peru and Machu Picchu 25 years ago for our honeymoon, so it was interesting to see how things have changed.  The country is much stronger from an economic and political standpoint, and the biggest disappointment was the amount of traffic in Lima and Cuzco.  That seems to be a negative that comes with economic progress.  Consistent with the conference theme of sustainability, we need to solve that problem, not just in Seattle, but in urban areas around the world!

I recently was appointed to AACSB’s Initial Accreditation Committee (IAC).  The first meeting was this week in Tampa.  The IAC makes recommendations on granting initial AACSB accreditation to business schools from around the world. 

As you might guess, many more schools in candidacy are from outside the US, since the US is somewhat saturated with accredited schools.  As I anticipated, serving on this committee really allows you to learn a lot about business schools outside the US.  Just the first meeting was enough to verify that.  Nearly half the committee members come from outside the US, and of course their insights are very valuable and necessary.

This committee is a committee that has a lot of work on its plate.  There were plenty of reports to read for this meeting (about 50 were on the agenda!), and I was told that the load was on the light side!  Reports vary in scope depending on where the school is in the accreditation process, but some are several hundred pages long.

I was struck by the rigorous standards the committee holds schools to.  If anyone thinks that initial accreditation comes easy or that different schools receive different treatment, think again.  This group is committed to quality!

This trip to Tampa was long and quick.  Leave Seattle on Thursday at 8:00 AM.  Get to the hotel in Tampa at 7:30 PM (EDT).  Meeting starts at 8:00 AM Friday morning.  Head to the airport at 2:30 PM.  Get back to Seattle at 10:00 PM (PDT), in time to get up in the morning for an 8:30 AM flight to Peru.  More on that in another blog!

It turns out the committee plans to hold its March, 2012 meeting in Seattle, which was quite a surprise to me.  Since it will be on the Friday of finals week, we should be able to host the meeting on campus.  A number of committee members come from European schools, so I hope they will be able to take advantage of Seattle's non-stop flights from London, Paris, and Amsterdam.

I learned that each year the committee holds a meeting outside the US.  Last year the location was Istanbul.  But this year, in light of the sluggish economic recovery, they decided to be conservative and keep all the meetings in the US, with one in Tampa, one in Boston, and one in Seattle.  No exotic trips abroad for me!  At least not this year – I’m serving a three year term. :}

The Summer Business Institute (SBI) is taking place this week.  SBI is a program designed to encourage underrepresented minority students to attend college.  African American, Hispanic, and Native students who have just finished their junior year in high school participate in the program.  They spend the week on campus taking classes taught by Albers faculty, living in the dorms, navigating campus, and doing company visits. 

This is the ninth year of the program.  The 25 students in this year’s class come from 20 different high schools in the Seattle area.  Carl Marino, a former high school teaching, directs the program, and Barb Hauke, our marketing director, provides logistical support.  Six Albers students are serving as counselors.  It turns out that having our students as counselors is one of the most important and compelling parts of the student experience.  With the students serving as roll-models, they provide the participating students with important advice on how to navigate the college admissions process and how to be successful once they are on campus.

Over the years, we have been fortunate to have a number of firms support the program, including Costco Wholesale, Washington Mutual, BECU, Wells Fargo, and Qwest.  Still, we struggle to raise money for the program, and it is such a great program it should be an easier sell!  While the program is targeted at students in the Seattle metro area, we have had participants from such places as Florida, Arizona, Texas, and California.  Somehow they manage to find us!

One important part of the experience is the company visits we do.  Here, the students get to see inside various organizations, usually one of the sponsoring companies, and hear from firm leaders.  Another part of the experience is a group project that draws on the classes taken and the outside visits.  Students end the program with a presentation of their project results.  This is always an inspiring part of the program when we get to see how much the students have learned.

A few years ago we started inviting parents to the closing luncheon.  We had not anticipated what an important change this would prove to be, because it allowed us to provide them with information on the college admissions process and the possibilities for financial aid.  Most of these students would be first generation college students, so the family is not familiar with how these processes work, and frequently they do not have places to turn to find this information.  Especially important is to make sure that families know they should not look at the sticker price of SU and conclude they cannot afford to attend.  They need to know that programs such as the Costco Scholarship Program can make SU affordable.

There are many SBI success stories.  One is Jonathan Bryant, who participated in SBI after his junior year at Kennedy High School.  He ultimately enrolled as a freshman at SU and went on to graduate from Albers with a finance degree.  Upon graduating from Albers, Jon took a position with a private equity firm in Bellevue.

Another great story is Sandra Amolo.  Sandra was a student at Shorecrest High School when she participated in SBI. She enrolled in Albers as a marketing major, and has been a counselor for SBI for the last three years. She has taken advantage of many programs at SU, including an internship in Belize, and earlier this year took first place in the Northwestern Mutual Sales Competition.  After she completed her SBI work this week, she had to rush off to Washington, DC for a summer internship at the Smithsonian Institute. 

SBI has been a very valuable program for the many students who have participated over the years.  Congratulations to Carl, Barb, our counselors and the participating faculty for delivering another excellent program to this year’s 25 students!

As I was pulling out of the Broadway Garage a few weeks ago I realized that the parking spaces along Columbia St. that have been plaguing the exit and entry of the garage had been removed!  What a great day for SU!  I have been whining to people for ten years about the need to get rid of those spots, which accomplished so little while creating such havoc.  I learned that Rob Schwartz and Jonathan Bregman, from Campus Facilities, had pulled off this miracle that so many others could not do or were not motivated to do.  Thanks, Rob and Jonathan!  I need to take you out to lunch to celebrate!

This big step forward caused me to think about other “Big Little Things” that have happened at SU.  By that I mean relatively minor steps that have created huge benefits for the campus.  I thought it would make a good theme for a blog, a Top Ten list of Big Little Things.  But ten will create too long of a blog, so I’ve settled on my Top Five Big Little Things at SU.  Here they are:

1. Eliminating the parking along Columbia St. – with the city eliminating a few parking spots, now it will be much easier to get in and out of the garage.  Kudos to Rob and Jonathan.  Now we have to work on a turning lane to go North on Broadway!

2. Remodeling Campion Ballroom – for a relatively small amount of money, we were able to dress up the Campion Ballroom to make it a decent space for holding events.  Actually, it is more than decent.  With all those windows, when the sun is out it is actually a spectacular venue!  Good riddance to those chandeliers.  They had been there for so long and looked so bad that they were actually threatening to come back in style!

3. Scattering PCs around the Pigott Building – when I first arrived at SU, one of the things students complained the most about was the size of the Pigott computer lab.  There were simply not enough machines given the number of students.  After a year or two, we finally decided to try putting computers in public areas of the building to provide more access.  It worked!  Students were a lot happier, and in the scheme of things it was not that much money.  The big concern had been computer theft, but while we experienced some problems with theft, it never became a major issue.

4. Creating the Albers Graduation Reception – another “When I first arrived …” story is that we used to have separate graduation parties for undergrad and grad students weeks before graduation.  At the same time, we did not host a graduation event for families and friends of graduates and the chance for graduates to say goodbye to faculty and staff.  The graduation parties were suspect – the undergrad event was a during-the-week well-before-finals drinking opportunity for students.  The grad event was a weakly-attended well-before-finals evening event for people who are ready to head home at that hour.  It finally dawned on us that we needed to end those two events and use the resources to host our reception for graduates on the Saturday before graduation.  We have never looked back on that decision!   The reception for graduating students has proven to be a very popular event for all!

5. HLEMBA – our new Health Leadership EMBA program draws heavily on the curriculum of our Leadership EMBA program and leverages the assets we have developed around the latter to help deliver the former.  When we started working with the College of Nursing on an MBA type program that could include nursing graduate students, we did not have HLEMBA in mind.  But as we did more and more research with them, the vision of HLEMBA began to emerge.  It became an obvious program to launch.  Plus the LEMBA program allowed us to attempt a quick roll out of the program.  We made the decision to move forward with program development in December, 2010.  It completed the SU approval process in May, 2011.  We are now recruiting for a class that begins in August, 2011!  That is warp speed in the non-profit side of academe!

OK, so three of the five have to do with Albers.  Isn’t that a bit biased, you ask?  Yes, it probably is.  In which case, send me your bigger “Big Little Things at SU!” 

Graduation really begins the day before on Saturday, first with the Graduation Brunch and then the Baccalaureate Mass.  The former is now becoming a “What will Fr. Steve dream up this time?” event, as in the last few years he has come up with some very creative PowerPoint slide presentations.   The latter takes place at St. James Cathedral, and is always very crowded with students and their families, as it should be.  What was especially noteworthy this year was that it was the first time that Archbishop Peter Sartain presided at the mass.   As one would expect, he has a different style than his predecessor.

Now that Arthur Fisher is no longer Dean of Mateo Ricci, I have the honor of getting Dean Sue Schmitt over to St. James.  Taking on the Columbia St. hill by the Broadway Garage is quite a workout, and not really a problem, except I keep tripping over my graduation gown.  I am going to have to do something about  that.  And going downhill backwards is just as much work as going up!

The Albers Graduation Reception takes place in the Paccar Atrium immediately following the Baccalaureate Mass.  At this occasion, students are invited to bring their family and friends to meet faculty and staff.  It is a very well attended event – over 400 this year – and most of our faculty and staff make sure they are there because everyone looks forward to it.  We have a brief program, at which I know if I talk long enough Fr. Steve will eventually show up and extend his congratulations to the graduates!  This year Nadeje Alexandre and Suzanne Jayne-Jensen took the lead in organizing and did another great job with the event.

In the evening, there is a dinner honoring newly appointed emeriti faculty and honorary degree recipients.  Barb Yates is one of the new emeriti faculty, so I had the opportunity to speak to her many accomplishments in her 41 years at SU.  You can check the previous blog on Barb for more details!  Tun  Channareth, the Nobel Prize winning honorary degree recipient, nominated by our faculty members Peter Raven and Quan Le, was also recognized at the dinner.  Reth visited my Econ 271 class two weeks ago and the students found him to be quite inspirational.

Graduation takes place at Key Arena, which is a great facility since it is big enough and we don’t have to worry about the weather.  However, on this particular Sunday, the weather was very accommodating, so there was some good picture taking going on.  The undergraduate ceremony took place in the morning and included awarding honorary degrees to Japanese-American students who were forced to leave SU due to the internment camps.  Their resilience in the face of this injustice is impressive, for it seems they all went on to do important things in their careers and in raising their families.  Many family members participated in the ceremony.  Unfortunately, the one surviving student who had planned to attend the graduation was unable to attend due to a recent illness, but her daughter delivered a very inspiring message in her stead.  The undergraduate ceremony tends to run long and each year we wonder what to do about.  Fewer graduates (and thus fewer names to read) is NOT an option!

After a two hour break, it is back at it with the graduate ceremony.  Fewer graduate students mean a shorter event, of course.  Tun  Channareth received his honorary degree at this ceremony. He gave a very inspiring and vigorous speech, as I knew he would based on his visit to my class.  He urged the audience to sign the petitions to end land mines and cluster bombs.  He also had some very nice things to say about SU based upon his two week visit to our campus.  That is correct, he has been here from his home in Cambodia for two weeks.  I doubt we will see that again from any of our honorary degree recipients! 

Also of keen interest to me as the business school dean was that MBA student Dejan Mitkovski gave the student graduation speech.  Dejan did a fine job with his remarks, and I could not help noticing that his parents, who flew out from Detroit, were in the first row of the balcony right by the podium and right in my line of sight.  They were closer to him than I was, and justifiably proud of his performance.

At both graduations, after the students receive their degree from the President, they are to walk across the stage to shake the hand of their dean.  However, most of them don’t know that.  They are most likely to be scanning the crowd for their family or staring down at the stage to make sure they don’t trip over their graduation gown.  One has to work very hard to intercept them to bestow the deanly handshake.  This year there was a new twist – some seemed to think I was there to take back their diploma and they were ready to hand it over!  Of course, they don’t actually receive their diploma, just a note saying the diploma will be in the mail assuming they have settled their accounts and successfully   completed their requirements for graduation!

We had 330 undergraduates receiving business degrees this year and 315 graduate students.  At the graduate ceremony, the business students were last in line, so I shook the hand of the last student graduating that day.  I learned the next day from Megan Spaulding that it was her brother!  I did not even know her brother was in our program!  I am not keeping up with what is going on in the Albers School! :}

On June 3^rd we held the launch for our Center for Business Ethics.  John Dienhart, the Frank Shrontz Endowed Chair in Business Ethics, is directing the center and taking the lead in organizing.  He has been ably assisted this year by his graduate student assistant, Aaron Hayden.  Faculty, staff, students, advisory board members, and other supporters gathered for the launch ceremony.

As a business school at a Jesuit, Catholic university, Albers has long placed an emphasis on business ethics, and in more recent decades, social responsibility, and in the last decade, sustainability.  Since the Albers School was founded in 1947, a concern for ethics and values has been part of our DNA and it has been part of the student experience for decades.

The overarching theme of the center will be the importance of creating an ethical business culture in organizations.  Key activities of the center will include assisting Albers faculty with integrating ethics and social responsibility into the classes they teach, as well as organizing workshops and conferences that bring together academics and practitioners to address ethical issues,

It has been a long journey to get to this point.  In 2002 we approached Frank Shrontz to support the Albers Business Ethics Initiative (ABEI).  Our message was that the endowment for the ethics chair only covered the salary of the chair holder, and if there were additional resources available to the chair, more could be accomplished.  In particular, we proposed a series of workshops and conferences on key ethical challenges that would be targeted to the business community.

Frank and his wife, Harriet, graciously agreed to support the ABEI and proposed a challenge grant – they would match contributions up to $60,000.  As a result, we were able to raise over $120,000 and that funding supported a series of workshops and conferences that well received and continued beyond the original three year time frame envisioned.

Creating a $1 million endowment for a new Center for Business Ethics was one of the priority projects for the Albers School in the 2003-2009 Seattle University capital campaign, “For the Difference We Make.”  We raised over $580,000 in the campaign, and that was enough to launch the center.  Since we did not meet our goal, we will continue to raise funds for this endowment.  The additional resources will allow the center to expand its activity and reputation.

It was great to have Frank Shrontz present at the ceremony.  Not only is he the namesake of our endowed chair in business ethics, but he also supported the ABEI and the center endowment.  More importantly, in his tenure as CEO of Boeing, he set the standard for ethics and integrity.  It was a blow to Boeing that his successors could not maintain that standard.  Fortunately for Boeing and all of us, more recent company leadership has looked to his example for inspiration on how to lead the company in the 21^st century.  Others who were instrumental in the funding of the center were also present, including Martin and Maryann Simonetti, Gerry Swanson, and Mark Pinkowski.

This occasion is also a reminder of the great work of the development officers who have supported the Albers School over the years.  Annagreta Jacobson was instrumental in organizing the ABEI and Gail Yates was critical to the success of all the capital campaign projects for the Albers School, including the ethics center endowment.

The Center for Business Ethics is an exciting development in the Albers School.  It will give focus to things that have always been important to us – ethics, social responsibility, and values based education.

Barb Yates is retiring after 41 years at Seattle U.  Barb teaches economics and has been chair of the Department of Economics since 1989.  She started at SU in 1970.  She has earned seven teaching awards at SU, including the SU Alumni Professor of the Year Award in 2006.  She has no doubt taught thousands of students (quite successfully!) and as department chair mentored and guided dozens of faculty.  What a run!  She will be sorely missed at SU.

We had a dinner for her last week, and it gave people a chance to pay tribute to her many contributions to SU.  Bill Weis and Dave Tinius, who have been colleagues for most of her time at SU, complained about her scooping up all the teaching awards.  Fred Dekay spoke about the collegiality of the Department of Economics (and for a long time, the Department of Economics and Finance) under Barb’s leadership.  John Eshelman noted how Barb provided credibility and cover to the Pacioli Society.  If you are not familiar with the secretive Pacioli Society, it was created by Dave and Bill to facilitate the celebration of Luca Pacioli’s 400^th birthday and was instrumental in the sustainability of their study tours to Sansepolcro, Italy (Pacioli’s birthplace).  The Pacioli Society has been the target of many rumors, none that can be repeated here.

Sean Klosterman, a former student of Barb’s, talked about Barb as a servant-leader, and it certainly was a fitting observation.  She truly has been serving students and colleagues for over 40 years.  Barb Yates doesn’t seem to have an ego.  She is never looking for credit for anything she does.  She is very humble and unassuming.  Several in the audience noted that she was always upbeat – the glass is always “half full rather than half empty” for Barb.

It is faculty and staff such as Barb Yates that have enabled Seattle U. to carry out its mission of academic excellence.  The rising reputation of the university is the result of her hard work and long standing dedication to the mission of the university, and others like her.  Barb is one of many faculty and staff who should not be taken for granted in terms of what they contribute to “educating the whole person, to professional formation, and to empowering leaders for a just and humane world.”  It certainly has been a pleasure and an honor to work with Barb Yates during my ten years at SU!

At first I sent it only to faculty and staff.  Then I started sending it to my advisory board.  Then others in the school said I should send it to their advisory board, so at some point it started to go to all our advisory boards.  I started sending to a few people on campus, such as people in PR, and pretty soon others on campus got wind of it and wanted to receive a copy (such as people in University Advancement).  So, now there are a lot of people from on and off campus who receive Dean Spam and some of them even appear to read it!

I think it has been a useful tool for communicating, and there are several important characteristics of Dean Spam.  First, the content is kept very simple and I don't tell people every little detail about something.  If people want more information, they will ask.  Too much information and they will stop reading.  Second is to send it on a consistent schedule, which is basically every two weeks (although in the summer it is more likely to be every three weeks).  I don't think it works well to send it out "every once in a while."  Third, I keep it simple by just cutting and pasting from a Word document.  No HTML or fancy graphics in this missive!

In it's early days, I would occasionally have people warn me that I needed to change the title, because "Dean Spam" would get snatched up by spam filters and my message would never get through.  I resisted that because I liked the title "Dean Spam" since it was such an apt description and I could not think of something simliar.  It turns out that Dean Spam did not get blocked very often, and when it did those folks could easily set their filter to correct the problem.  That is, if they wanted to correct the problem!

When we first started discussing blogging, someone suggested I routinely post Dean Spam up on the blog.  Below is the latest edition of Dean Spam, sent yesterday.  It is a pretty typical edition.  I'm not sure that I should routinely post Dean Spam to the blog.  What do you think??  If I don't hear back, I will take that as an indication that it is not necessary!  Also, if you would like to be added to the list of Dean Spam recipients, let me know and I will do that.

Dean Spam May 19th, 2011

Publication 

Congratulations to David Reid.  His article “A Study of Chinese Street Vendors: How They Operate,” co-authored with Eugene Fram (Rochester Institute of Technology) and Chi Guotai (Dalian University of Technology), has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Asia-Pacific Business.

SIFE Places in Top Ten Nationally 

Our SIFE team placed ninth in the national contest that took place in Minneapolis last week.  More than 360 team competed in the nationwide competition.  The team also received Campbell Soup’s Lasting Hunger Relief Award, which is given for the project that best helps people break the cycle of poverty.  Leo Simpson serves as faculty advisor for the group.  They repeated their presentation today at noon in Pigott Auditorium so we could see how good they are!

HLEMBA Approved 

The SU Board of Trustees approved the new Health Leadership EMBA program on May 5^th and we are recruiting the first class for Fall, 2011!  For more information, you can go to http://www.seattleu.edu/albers/executiveeducation/HLEMBA/.

School Meeting 

On May 13^th, over 60 faculty and staff gathered for a school meeting.  The meeting included reports on the Albers SU Youth Initiative Task Force, the Undergraduate Business Core Task Force, and IB Assurance of Learning.

Red Winged Leadership Award 

The Red Winged Leadership Award Ceremony was held on May 12^th  in Campion Ballroom.  The award process is led by students in the Graduate Leadership Formation Certificate Program, and recognizes social entrepreneurs for their business acumen, leadership, and social impact.  First prize went to Chris Fontana of Global Visionaries.  Global Visionaries empowers youth from diverse backgrounds to become leaders and global citizens through community engagement.

 Business Plan Competition 

The final round of the Harriet Stephenson Business Plan Competition took place on May 13^th.  More than $30,000 in prize money was distributed, with Feral Motion as the grand champion.  The event featured a luncheon address by Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint and co-founder of Blue Nile.  Over 150 volunteers were involved in the process as mentors and judges.

  Microsoft Exec Speaks 

Kurt DelBene, President of Microsoft’s Office Division, spoke as part of the Albers Executive Speaker Series on May 19^th.  His topic was, “Transforming the Microsoft Office Business for the Cloud,” with over 150 in attendance.

 Albers Awards Ceremony 

The Albers Awards Ceremony took place on May 13^th in Pigott Auditorium.  Over 100 friends and family gathered to recognize the accomplishments of our outstanding students.  Bill Santucci received the Paul Volpe Award for the highest academic performance of an undergraduate student.  Andrew Barfoot received the Jerry Viscione Award for the highest performing grad student.  Ajla Aljik received the Spirit of Albers Award for the student who best embodies the values of Albers.   Altogether, 23 awards were presented. 

BGS Ceremony 

The Awards Ceremony was followed by the Beta Gamma Sigma Installation Ceremony.  BGS is the academic honorary for AACSB accredited business schools. Thirty-one undergraduate and 62 graduate students were inducted into BGS.  Tiffany Wadel received the $1,000 BGS scholarship and Carlos Mello-e-Souza received the BGS Professor of the Year award.  Congratulations to all!

Volunteer Recognition Event 

The Albers School Volunteer Recognition took place on Thursday, May 19^th.  The event recognizes advisory board members, mentors, and others who have supported our work over the last year.

Business Week Rankings 

Although we were not included in the overall Business Week undergraduate business programs rankings for 2011 because an insufficient number of recruiters responded to the survey, we did receive some good scores in some of the program rankings.  Highlights include #4 in the nation in sustainability, #7 in business ethics, #11 in quantitative methods, #12 in international business, and #15 in entrepreneurship.  You can check out the rankings at: http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/top_undergad_bschools_by_specialty.html?campaign_id=bschools_related  

It seems these rankings don’t rely on the recruiters! :}

 Nobel Prize Winner to Speak 

Tun Channareth, 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Recipient and 2011 SU Honorary Degree Recipient, will be speaking as part of the Albers Executive Speaker Series on June 2^nd.  It will take place in Pigott Auditorium from 5:30 -6:30 p.m. The title of his presentation will be, "Landmines: A Story from the Heart," For details and to sign the Petition for the US to join the Landmine Ban Treaty you can go to: http://webapps.seattleu.edu/albers/Events/LBTPetition.pdf  

Have a good weekend!

JP

Last Friday was a busy day in the Albers School.  Hard to imagine, but we started with a school meeting at 10:00 AM!  That may be unprecedented.  At the meeting we covered Albers’ involvement in the Seattle University Youth Initiative, our process to review our undergraduate business core curriculum, our new Health Leadership EMBA program, and our assessment process for international business. 

Then, starting at noon, we had the finals of the 13th annual Harriet Stephenson Business Plan Competition.  It seems like it gets better and better every year.  The competition started with a luncheon, with Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint and co-founder of Blue Nile as the featured speaker.  He did such a fine job there was no need for me to provide an inspiring speech! 

I had to leave by the time the presentations of the five final teams began, so I missed that and the announcing of the results at the awards ceremony, where $30,000 in prize money was awarded.  Among other things, I had to be ready for the Albers Awards Ceremony at 4:00 PM.  What can I say?  It was a busy day for the Albers School.  It's a shame so many of us had to be in two places at once, but that is what happens in the spring quarter when you are doing so many end of the year events. 

Of course, the competition did not start last week, but back in the winter quarter with a call for entries, followed by the initial screening round.  Judges reviewed 34 plans.  This narrowed the competition to 20, who then competed in the Elevator Pitch and Trade Show competitions.  You make it through that and you are in the finals.  There were five teams in the finals. I’m told the judges had a very difficult time ranking the five finalists, but Feral Motion was the eventual winner. 

The competition is a great example of how we rely on volunteers from the Seattle business community to educate our students.  Steve Brilling, our Entrepreneurship Center director, estimates there were some 160 volunteers in the process.  Wow!! 

The business plan competition is a great learning experience for the students who participate, especially those who make it deep into the competition.  And increasingly, we see that these business plans become viable businesses.  Mobata, Vera Fitness, and Girlie Girl Wine are all examples. 

Congratulations to Steve, Kim Eshelman, administrative assistant for the center, and all the other folks involved in making the competition a success! 

At the Albers Awards Ceremony we get to recognize our most outstanding students for their accomplishments at SU.  Twenty-three different awards are distributed to students.  Some of the more notable awards are the Paul Volpe Award (highest undergraduate academic performance), the Spirit of Albers Award (the student who best exemplifies the Albers mission to develop ethical and socially responsible leaders), and the Jerry Viscione Award (highest graduate student academic performance).  Congratulations to Ajla Aljic, Bill Santucci, and Andrew Barfoot respectively for receiving these awards!  Bill’s award is particularly impressive, since he has received the top academic award four years in a row.  He will also be receiving the President’s Award at graduation, which is the top award for all undergraduate students at SU.   

The ceremony is followed by a reception for parents and friends.  Then, at 5:30 PM, we were supposed to start the Beta Gamma Sigma installation ceremony.  However, the award ceremony was a bit behind schedule, so we started closer to 6:00 PM. 

BGS is the academic honorary for business students.  Those inducted are our strongest students, which makes for another inspirational event.  Fred DeKay always does a terrific job of organizing our BGS ceremony, but Fred is on a leave of absence this quarter, so he persuaded Madhu Rao and Hildegard Hendrickson to fill in.  Hildegard is a legendary emeritus faculty member in our school, who retired in 1996.  It’s always good to see her at the BGS ceremony.   We inducted 31 undergraduate and 62 graduate students into BGS!  The BGS Professor of the Year award went to Carlos Mello-e-Souza.  That is quite an honor, Carlos!  It’s coming from our most demanding students! 

My day was not done after the BGS ceremony, however.  My final stop was at a fundraiser for The Roots Project, which is a NGO focusing on improving the economic status of women in South Sudan.  I am planning to meet later this week with the founder, Anyieth D’Awol, to see if there are ways for Albers to collaborate with her organization.  [Anyieth is the daughter-in-law of Frank McKulka, who is on the advisory board of our soon to be launched Center for Business Ethics.]

This is the second year of the program. When the students in last year’s GLFC group conceived and developed the program, I encouraged them to make it a sustainable enterprise that future students help carry forward, either subsequent GLFC groups or some other group of students. This year’s event definitely had sustainability all over it! There were more than 400 people in attendance last night! This could become one of SU’s proudest traditions! What is especially compelling about this event is how it aligns so closely with the mission of the university.

This program is such a great example of what students can accomplish when you put them in charge! I think they are an untapped resource for us! How do we use our imaginations to unleash their creative energies?! This is one example. What is the next??

At ast night’s ceremonies, three social entrepreneurs were recognized -- Chris Fontana from Global Visionaries, Shana Greene from Village Volunteers, and Danna Johnston from the Danna K. Johnston Foundation. Each is an impressive and inspiring leader who has created very impressive programs that provide important support to underserved groups. They are all winners! Each deserved a prize and each received one, but the top prize went to Chris Fontana!

I told the students in my Econ 271 class they could earn extra credit by attending the ceremony and writing an essay on which of the three finalists they found to be the most inspiring. I am looking forward to reading those essays!

The event included some excellent videos on each of the finalists. We need to get them up on our U-Tube site so people can see them! In the meantime, I encourage you to learn more about the work of the finalists by checking their websites:

www.global-visionaries.org 

www.villagevolunteers.org 

www.dannakjohnston.org 

Each year the event should get better and better, and this continuous improvement should become part of the tradition. One of the important changes this year was moving the venue to Campion Ballroom. The ballroom looks a lot better these days with its new lighting and decorating. It was sorely needed and the improvements represent the best spending done on campus in the ten years I have been here! The new venue allowed for a reception that did not take place last year.

Kudos to the students involved in the GLFC this year and to the two faculty who guided them, Rubina Mahsud and Jennifer Marrone!