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August 31 , 2004
Students We expect more and more from our students each year, with good reason. We continually attract and recruit leaders. Let me tell you a little about our incoming MBA class, which we welcomed in mid-August. They are homogeneous only in their outstanding credentials. They represent 20 countries and 122 different undergraduate institutions and speak 14 different native languages. Their average work experience is more than five years. And they’re interesting. One has published four books. Another pilots Blackhawk helicopters. Yet another flew his own plane to Nashville for an interview. One guided an expedition up Mt. Kilimanjaro. More than one has started his or her own company. Needless to say, we’re excited they all are here. And we are eager to see where they will go. Faculty We applaud the accomplishments of our outstanding faculty. I am pleased to announce that, in recognition of their standard-setting accomplishments, three Associate Professors have been promoted to full professor: Craig Lewis, Paul Chaney and Ray Friedman have all attained this important career milestone for their award-winning research and teaching. Congratulations! We also welcome new faculty.
Meanwhile, we grieve the loss of one of our standard-setters, Professor Emeritus Tom Mahoney. Dr. Mahoney, who passed away on July 26, at age 76, joined our faculty in 1982 and was the Frances Currey Hampton Professor of Organization Studies until his retirement in 1995. He was one of the nation's leading experts in organization theory and behavior, and he also pioneered the development of compensation and reward theory. He put Vanderbilt on the map in the field of human resources, and we still benefit today from recruiters who come here due to his legacy. We will miss him greatly. Our ProgramsWhether you’re a student, alumnus or part of the business community into which our graduates enter, you can expect academically rigorous programs that build on Vanderbilt’s tradition of excellence in a variety of new ways. In 1966 Robert Kennedy said, “These are times of danger and uncertainty, but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history.” His statement was prophetic. Today, we are part of a changing landscape—not just academically and not just in terms of American business but globally. To prepare students for this emerging environment, and to thrive in it as an institution, we are seeking to engage all of our creative energies. Our entire university is involved in the effort. We are developing a number of cross-disciplinary programs—and taking particular advantage of the powerful resource presented by Vanderbilt University Medical Center to establish an important niche in the business of healthcare. We have internally announced this differentiating Healthcare MBA program to be launched in Fall 2005. Over the summer, we initiated an international marketing course in England. Building on Owen’s strong reputation in disciplines such as finance, I believe that these new cross-disciplinary initiatives represent the kind of innovation that will attract a new generation of MBA students to Vanderbilt to prepare for a new generation of business challenges. Dean’s Office In this community, we expect the best from each other. That standard must begin with this office, from which you should continue to expect strong leadership, integrity, transparency, ongoing communication and engagement. And focus. This last quality, most of all, I believe will be critical to our school’s advancement. In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins studied the successes of companies that went from steady if unremarkable performance to consistently outperform the stars of the market. He found a surprising number of common denominators among these uncommonly strong companies: • They identified their real business passion; • They recognized the areas in which they could excel; • They were honest with themselves about where they stood in the marketplace and strongly believed in their success; and • They maintained an unwavering focus on their goals. Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management is on a path to greatness. This year, we will encounter a variety of issues—the global geopolitical situation, economic uncertainties and an anomalous year for school rankings—plus the ongoing challenges of a competitive education market. Meanwhile, we’re in the process of developing and launching new academic programs, reviewing our curriculum and conducting a search for a new dean. We have a full plate. But do not expect us to be distracted from our overarching goals: to continue and accelerate our progress toward the top echelon, with distinctive strengths that complement the distinctiveness of this academic community. I urge you to remain focused on what is important, what is best for this university, this school, for all that make up our community. It would be easy to anticipate the future and delay commitment until the new dean is in place. It would be easy to fail to recognize the opportunity that lies ahead and delay, to wait, to obfuscate. I urge you to get involved, to contribute constructively, to improve, and to make this place better for your presence. Discover this place. Shape your world and, as you do it, shape ours as well.
I’d like to extend a warm welcome to all those who joined us since the last issue of Inside Owen. Our new teammates include:
New 'Career Paths' Resource Offers Students Benefit of Experience Let’s say you’re entering Vanderbilt to pursue an MBA. Your interest is investment banking. You’re not entirely sure which courses to take. To whom should you talk about matches and internships? What skills will you need to build? In reviewing your course choices, “Alignment of Human Capital” might not appear to be the most relevant subject for an investment banker. You pass over that course. Big mistake, especially if you aim to be a manager someday. But how could you have known that? That’s one of the questions that drove the development of a leading-edge new resource at Vanderbilt: a roadmap of typical course and career paths followed by MBA students. The program, introduced by the Career Management Center this summer, rolls out with the incoming MBA class. These students received and could begin using the pathways resources when they enrolled for the fall semester. The career pathways describe:
“For the first time,” says Melinda Allen, Director of the CMC, “we also have identified faculty advisers for each career path who can offer guidance on course selection. “In addition, we have tracked the career paths of Owen alumni. Now, our students can see real-world examples of the types of courses taken by our MBAs (who are not identified by name), the companies they have worked for and where they might expect to be in their careers 5-10 years from now based on the experience of our alums.” One of the career paths, Allen quickly points out, is “Define Your Own Path.” Not everyone fits neatly into a box. “Nor do we want them to,” Allen says. “And that’s not the purpose of this resource. It’s designed to be more like a travel guide than a roadmap. We want to give students the best information so they can make their own choices.” The career paths represent an innovative “best practice” that promises to add value to a Vanderbilt education. “We know of only a couple of other schools that are doing this,” Allen says. “We have so many wonderful concentrations and options here. We see the career paths as a tool that students can begin using systematically early in the MBA process to get the maximum benefit from what our school has to offer.”
Getting the Second Degree: Vanderbilt MD/MBA Students
But all three see a big benefit in getting an MBA along with their medical degree. “I worked for a year at an internet start-up before medical school,” Raj says. “The way medicine is going, I thought it would be useful to have the skills you learn in business school, which you can apply in any realm of medicine. The MBA program adds skills you aren’t going to get in medical school or a residency.” MD/MBA students spend a year at Owen after completing their third year of medical school, and then take classes at both schools during their fifth and final year at Vanderbilt. Ornob and Raj, who just completed their year at Owen, agree that the experience of attending business school offers a marked contrast to medical school. “At Owen, everything is done as a part of a team,” Ornob says. “Medical school doesn’t prepare you for business school in that respect – in medical school, you do a lot of work by yourself.” Raj, who is pursuing an MBA with a healthcare emphasis, cites his course on Leading Teams and Organizations as particularly helpful. “It gave me a completely different perspective on interacting in groups,” he says. “We approached teamwork from a different perspective than I had ever been exposed to.” Rasheeda, whose year at Owen is just beginning, knew she would attend Vanderbilt’s medical school when she was accepted by Vanderbilt’s early admission program during her sophomore year as a biomedical engineering student. “Once you get into medical school, you realize you’re going to have a life of learning,” she says. But the decision to combine her MD with an MBA came much later. “My interest started in undergrad, when I first heard about this joint degree,” Rasheeda says. “But when it came down to a final decision last summer, I really had to question that extra year.” She decided to pursue the combination MD/MBA because she felt it would expand her career options, and she is “strongly considering” the healthcare track. “I’m interested in seeing how business and its concepts play a role in medicine,” she says. “I think this year is really going to open me up to ideas for running my own practice and pursuing hospital administration, and help define my long-term career goals.” Ornob, who is focusing on general management with an emphasis in healthcare “because that’s where my interest lies,” believes graduating with an MBA as well an MD may give him an advantage as he applies for residency programs. “Residency programs are realizing that physicians need to be more business savvy,” he says. “Physicians have to be better able to interact with all of the other parties who make up healthcare – nurses, technicians, managers and staff – as well as patients.” He also believes MD/MBA students come to Owen with a specific advantage. “Medical school builds a very strong work ethic,” he says. “We’re used to studying really hard!”
Use your browser. Discover this place.
“Our website is far and away the strongest and most efficient marketing tool we have available to us,” says Yvonne Martin-Kidd, Director of Marketing & Communications for Owen. “Our goal is to showcase the people, the place, and ‘the promise’ that make Owen special. In addition, we added several new features that make it easier for visitors to navigate and get to the information they are looking for.” You can go to http://www.owen.vanderbilt.edu and take a look for yourself. In the meantime, here’s a guided tour of some of the highlights. New Navigation Paths When you visit, you’ll notice there now are some new ways to navigate the site. “It’s designed to be customer-centric,” Martin-Kidd says. “Much of the content speaks to particular groups of visitors such as prospective students, international students, alumni, recruiters, corporate visitors, and press.” In addition, from the home page, visitors can easily ’drill down’ to learn more about the particular program they are interested in—MBA, Executive MBA, PhD, or Executive Programs. “As we continue to diversify and expand our program offerings, the new navigation can easily accommodate this growth.” Quick LinksWeb users tend to fall into two classes—surfers and seekers. While surfers will take the time to click their way through a website, seekers know exactly what they want and desire a ‘straight-shot’ to that information. “For these individuals, we offer QuickLinks off the home page and throughout the site. These special links take the visitor straight to some of the most-popular destinations, including the MBA application, the Faculty Directory, Executive Program Registration, and information on how to recruit at Owen.” A Virtual Visit “Over and over again, we hear new students say that the visit to Owen and to Nashville ’clinched the deal’,” says Martin-Kidd. “It seems that people are always pleasantly surprised by the genuine warmth of those they meet here at Owen and the sophisticated yet accessible nature of Nashville.” In order to whet the appetite for a real visit, the new website offers a 20-image photo gallery—a virtual visit of sorts—designed to spotlight many of these features. A more robust “search and sort” capabilityParticularly impressive, Martin-Kidd believes, is added functionality fueled by a new database, which includes information on faculty, courses and research. Utilizing the “search” or “sort” features in the new website, visitors can:
“The new site is deep yet very nimble,” says Martin-Kidd. “And, while we’re certainly enthused with this current upgrade, the Owen website will always be ’a work in progress‘. As with any marketing tool, we will always be looking for ways to improve.”
Owen 1986 alumnus W. DOUGLAS PARKER was featured by Business Week this month in the MBA Insider: A Day in the Life section. The interview focuses on him as Chairman and CEO of America West, and talks about his life and decisions after Owen, as well as going through a typical day for him now. “As CEO of America West, Doug Parker knows what it takes to make it to the top: “Take risks in exchange for more responsibility.” Parker has been Chairman and CEO of American West since early September 2001, after holding jobs with American Airlines and Northwest Airlines. Each of these moves was very much in line with his orientation to take risks in exchange for responsibility, as the article describes. The description of a day in the life of an airline executive as well as Parker’s discussion of how his personal philosophy has shaped his career make this article well worth reading. “It’s certainly not required to have an MBA to be a CEO, but it has definitely helped me. The broad base of business knowledge that I obtained at Vanderbilt has served me well as I assumed more responsibility over the years.” The article on Doug Parker can be found at: http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/aug2004/bs2004086_8445_bs049_0.htm *************** The Tennessean ran an interesting article this month on MBA programs, and included several quotes from MELINDA ALLEN, Assistant Dean of Admissions and Career Management. The article discussed the effect of the economy on overall graduate business program enrollment around the U.S., specifically among Tennessee universities. “The economy has a huge bearing on potential students’ willingness to leave a secure job to return to school full time,” said Allen. While she acknowledged that some national trends have affected Owen’s programs, Asst. Dean Allen also stated that, “The key for admissions officers is maintaining the quality of the student body, not the number of applications.” Allen also commented on the difficulties foreign students have faced since 9/11; difficulties which have impacted Owen’s program. Owen has traditionally attracted a high percentage of international students. “Applications at many schools may be down, but the value of an MBA degree still gets high marks.” More News...
Mason Wimberley: From Sea to Shining Sea 2004 Owen grad Mason Wimberley cycled across the United States to raise money for his favorite charity.
When Mason left the Army, he decided to build on the management skills he developed in the military by pursuing an MBA But he admits the change from army officer to graduate student was an abrupt about-face. “Coming to Owen from the military was a very big transition,” he recalls. “There was a big difference just in the way people interacted.” While many students were learning about management, Mason had lived it. “In the army, they put us in leadership positions very early,” he says. “At 23, I was in charge of 37 people, which isn’t typical of most other people I’ve worked with. The Army gave us a lot of responsibility in stressful situations.” Mason chose to focus on healthcare because he could use many of the skills he developed in the military. “You have to lead in stressful situations, working with people to get things done,” he explains. Before joining the healthcare practice at Navigant Consulting, an international management consulting firm, Mason took the summer off to complete the trip with a group put together by America by Bicycle. “The best part of the trip was riding through the small towns and meeting the people,” he says. “And I was able to gain some visibility for the American Emergency Relief fund, which many people don’t know anything about.” Interested in contributing to the Army Emergency Relief Fund? AER is a private, non-profit organization founded in 1942 to help soldiers meet their basic needs; the private, nonprofit organization was started in 1942. AER has been listed by Reader’s Digest as one of “The Best Charities,” and awarded the top rating, four stars, by Charity Navigator, an independent charity evaluator. You can contact Mason at masonwimberley@hotmail.com, or send a check directly to Army Emergency Relief, Attn: Donations, 200 Stovall St., Room –5-N-13, Alexandria, VA 22332-0600.
New Owen faculty member Jennifer Escalas spent four years as a commercial loan officer with Union Bank in Los Angeles before deciding she needed an MBA to realize her career ambitions. But her graduate business program at UCLA proved to be a different career turning point than she had anticipated. “Midway through the program, I realized I was much more interested in theory,” she says. “Marketing is one of the core disciplines. It gives you tools to use to figure out what your customers are thinking and what they want, how to build brand equity, how people form attitudes, and how to change attitudes and persuade.” Instead of heading back into the job market, Jennifer – a Phi Beta Kappa with undergraduate degrees in economics, Spanish and linguistics – explored PhD programs, ultimately choosing to study marketing at Duke University. “My research focuses on intended emotional responses and narrative processes,” she says. “Ads that tell stories are good vehicles for evoking intended emotion, because a story is the natural way for people to think. But a lot of research neglects putting together a story that tells you the motivation, goals, actions and outcomes.” After completing her PhD at Duke in 1996, she joined the faculty at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she was also named the Eller Entrepreneurship Fellow in 1999. She and her husband moved to Nashville this summer with their two daughters after she accepted an appointment as Associate Professor of Marketing at Owen. “After eight years of teaching mostly undergraduates, I’m going to be regearing my approach, and I’m really looking forward to it,” she says. “MBA students, in my experience, like to have a lot of involvement in the class.” A native of Southern California, Jennifer met her husband, Rafael Escalas, while both were undergraduates at UCLA. Rafael was a member of Spain’s Olympic swimming team at both the Los Angeles and Moscow summer games, ranking third in the world in 1981 and in the top eight between 1980 and 1984 in his primary event, the 1500-meter freestyle. “When I moved to Durham to start my PhD program at Duke, he had an opportunity to go to Barcelona for a year,” she says. “He was in charge of the swimming competition for their summer games. He’s still doing some Olympic work – this summer, he did a training camp for the U.S. Olympic swimming team in Majorca, the island where he’s originally from.” In 2000, Rafael and Jennifer started their own company, Agon Sport LLC, with two other partners. Agon, which had $1.4 million in sales last year, manufactures custom suits for swimming teams at a facility in Spain, and sells them via catalogs and internet orders. “I find having and running this business beneficial for my teaching because I’m able to show students how I’ve actually applied marketing theories,” Jennifer says. “When I’m able to say, hey, I’m doing this, it buys credibility.”
“From the start, we designed it to have an economic order quantity of one unit,” John explains. “Ingram Book typically ships 30 to 40 books to a single retailer on average, but never the same 30 to 40 books. Retailers typically order one to two copies of several different titles. So I knew from the start that Lightning wouldn’t work if we had to make five or 10 copies to yield one.” Today, Lightning Source has operations in the U.S. and the U.K., maintains more than 175,000 titles electronically, and manufactures up to 130,000 books a week, representing 60,000 to 70,000 different titles. The company also fulfills orders for eBooks, book texts that can be downloaded in Microsoft ® or Adobe formats by readers who find an electronic file easier to use, sold by Amazon and other retailers. John, who became chairman of Ingram Distribution Holdings in 1996, has spent his entire career at Ingram Industries, joining his family’s company immediately after completing his MBA at Owen in 1986. “During my second year at Owen, I really thought very hard about going to New York to work for an investment bank,” he recalls. “But I had a great opportunity at our company. Instead of packing someone else’s bag for the meeting, I could pack my own.” John, who earned his undergraduate degree in English from Princeton, found that Owen “certainly put some additional tools in my bag, which have been very useful.” But his business education actually started before high school. “I’ll never forget it,” he says. “We were probably 13 or 14 years old, and my father [Bronson Ingram, then chairman of Ingram Industries] sat my older brother, Orrin, my younger brother, David, and me down and told us that half of the summer was ours to do with what we wanted, and the other half was his. David and I started packing books. We have all worked down on the barges. We did a wide range of things. It was very valuable, not only for us, but I think the people who work for you appreciate the fact that you have a sense of what they’re doing.” Although electronic books printed on demand may seem like the wave of the future, John points out that Lightning Source is unlikely to replace offset printing of big titles in the foreseeable future. What Lightning Source does is make lesser titles much more accessible. “There are lots of books that are out of print or less in demand,” John says. “So rather than having to have a 10-year supply sitting in the warehouse, with a bunch of capital tied up in them, you can make books as they’re ordered. And we handle storage, printing and distribution for several new internet publishers, like AuthorHouse, iUniverse and Xlibris, where for $1,000 or $1,500, you and I can get our books published.” John acknowledges the formidable challenge of running a company that must stay on the cusp of evolving technologies to thrive – a challenge made even more compelling because Ingram is privately held. “When your name’s on the door,” he says, “you take particular interest.” Steve Gruver : Orchid in Bloom
When Orchid International President and co-owner Steve Gruver was pursuing his degree in mechanical engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the late 1980s, he never imagined that, within 10 years, he would be leading a growing manufacturing business. “Rochester had a co-op program, and after I graduated, I went to work for a division of Grumman Corp., where I had done my co-op,” Gruver recalls. Grumman, which manufactures large delivery trucks, assigned Steve to a new plant in South Carolina. There, he met his future business partner, Grant Bibby, an engineer who had started his own automation company, Orchid, in Canada. “I was 22 and he was 24,” Steve recalls. “We hit it off, and I ended up joining him.” Steve moved to Cambridge, Ontario, where Orchid operated out of a small leased facility. Within six months, he had returned to the states to open the growing company’s U.S. sales office. “It was actually a bedroom in my apartment,” he confesses. The company quickly attracted a number of loyal customers. Within a year, Orchid International opened a formal sales office in Brentwood. “Ninety percent of our customer base was in the U.S.,” Steve says. “We chose the Nashville area because it was central to that base.” Today, Orchid’s corporate offices are still in the same Brentwood location Steve and his partner chose in 1991. But in the intervening years, Orchid has evolved from a small automation company engaged in the business of helping other manufacturers set up plants to an innovative metal stamping and manufacturing company in its own right, with more than 650 employees and $140 million in annual sales. “In the automation business, we put a lot of time and thought into automating our customer’s plant,” Steve says. “Early on, we realized we could put our expertise to work for ourselves.” Becoming a manufacturer also gave Orchid the financial stability of a recurring base of revenue, which enabled its management team to continue to expand their business. “Automation is a tough business,” Steve explains. “You live from one project to the next. You put in all this work over a short period of time, and then you’re on to next customer. When you get a stamping contract, you can retain that program and customer for years.” Orchid established its first manufacturing plant in Mount Juliet, TN, in 1994. Plants in McAllen, TX; Markham, Ontario, and other locations followed in rapid succession. The growing company attracted the attention of a group of Owen EMBA students. “One of the ladies in the group worked at a company right next to our plant in Mt. Juliet,” Steve says. “Orchid became a strategy project for her group.” The group’s final presentation “blew me away,” Steve admits. “After that experience, I was sold – I needed to try to get into that program.” Steve and Will Lamb, Orchid’s director of product development, completed their EMBAs in 2001, and two other Orchid partners or executives – Business Development Director Kerry Meacham and Operations and Engineering Director Craig Woodard – have since completed their degrees. “We were working with investors and bankers, looking at acquisition opportunities, and I needed business skills in addition to engineering skills,” he said. “I could apply the things I was learning at Owen immediately. And having the same skills has been a huge help in enabling our management team to make good decisions.” One key decision was the recent sale of Orchid’s two remaining automation plants. “That allows us to focus on what is now our core business – metal stamping and assembly,” Steve says. “We realized the time we were spending managing the automation portion of our business could be better spent growing our core business. “ Orchid now operates five manufacturing facilities, many located near the plants of its customers, and produces metal stampings and assemblies for more than 25 customers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Its customers include GE, John Deere, Toshiba, Philips Lighting, Dura Automotive, Johnson Controls, ArvinMeritor, Eaton Corp., and other major manufacturers. Steve believes the biggest benefit he gained through the EMBA program is the ability to analyze opportunities, such as Orchid’s recent acquisition of a manufacturing plant from AdvanceTransformer Co., a division of Philips Lighting. “Now, we really think about strategy in a different way,” he says.
Congratulations Walker Management Library on celebrating the 20th Anniversary of BIS! The Business Information Service (BIS) of Walker Management Library is a not-for-profit fee-based program which conducts research for corporations and individuals. BIS offers customized research, information and fast delivery of news or business articles. The service isbased on membership in a variety of levels: Corporate Affiliate, Research Affiliate, Alumni and Non-Member. BIS membership fees are waived for Owen alumni and services are provided at a discount. Walker Management Library is happy to provide complimentary quick answer service for our alumni. A librarian may spend up to 15 minutes researching each question without charging any additional costs. For more information on BIS, send an email to bis@owen.vanderbilt.edu or call Leslie Reynolds or Rahn Huber at 615-322-2728.
September 24 & 25 An intensive two-day program developed by the Law & Business Program at Vanderbilt to address director education and the best corporate practices in the wake of recent scandals and reforms. Sponsored by the Law School and the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. Click here for more details. October 20 A live satellite event presented in cooperation with BusinessWeek brings together a powerfully diverse group of the world’s leading business authorities including: Donald Trump, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jim Collins, Peter Drucker, Ken Blanchard, and many more. Sponsored by Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. Click here for more details. November
5-6 All Owen alumni are invited to come back for Homecoming and Reunion weekend. Classes ending in 4’ and 9’s celebrate their 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 year reunions. You don’t want to miss this weekend of fun, recreation and education. Click here for more information. |
