E-Archways

October 2012

• Stephen L. Mangum Named Dean of College of Business Administration
• UT College of Business Administration Again Ranked Among Nation’s Best
• ThrottleUp! Finalist: Credit Virgin Focused on Credit Ratings of College Student
• Alumni Honor Dr. Bob Bohm
• Stocking the Shelves
• Alum Spotlight: Dorothy Jones
• Faculty Spotlight: David W. Williams
• Student Spotlight: Charles (Chucky) McDaniel

Stephen L. Mangum Named Dean of College of Business Administration

Stephen L. Mangum has been named dean of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, College of Business Administration effective March 1, 2013. He is currently the senior associate dean at The Ohio State University Max M. Fisher College of Business.

“Dr. Mangum brings a broad range of administrative experience and a strong track record for leadership,” said UT Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor Susan Martin. “He will help build upon the many strengths of the college.”

Mangum will replace the retiring Dean Jan R. Williams, Stokely Foundation Leadership Chair, who has served on faculty of the college since 1977 and as dean since 2000.

“I am honored to be selected as the next dean of the UT College of Business Administration,” Mangum said. “I am mindful of the strong legacy of the college, which has been built over the years, and the trust that is being placed in me to work with others building upon that legacy.”

Mangum earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in human resource management from the University of Utah. He earned a doctorate in economics from George Washington University.

He taught and conducted research at George Washington University before joining the faculty of The Ohio State University in 1983. He taught in the Department of Management and Human Resources for several years before managing the department. He has served as senior associate dean of the Fisher College of Business since 1996. From July 2007 to April 2009, he served as the college’s interim dean.

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UT College of Business Administration Again Ranked Among Nation’s Best

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, College of Business Administration and supply chain management/logistics program again are ranked among the nation’s best public institutions, according to U.S. News and World Report’s 2013 undergraduate rankings.

The undergraduate supply chain management/logistics program ranked fifth among public institutions and seventh nationally, same as 2012 and up two spots each from 2011. The college rankings remained at 27th place among public universities.

“Our enhanced programming in supply chain management, data analytics, international business, and entrepreneurship and innovation is paying rich dividends and differentiating our programs from other schools. We are proud that our rankings reflect that,” said Jan R. Williams, dean and Stokely Foundation Leadership Chair. “Our college’s strong national reputation is one of our most important assets as we prepare the next generation of America’s business leaders.”

The university keeps close tabs on lists such as the U.S. News annual rankings as it continues its journey toward being a Top 25 public research university. The Top 25 initiative includes efforts to make strides in recruiting and retaining excellent students, hiring world-class faculty and staff, and strengthening capacity and productivity in research and scholarship.

Areas where UT has improved in the U.S. News ranking criteria since last year include the overall graduation rate, reduced class sizes, more faculty resources and financial resources, and the percentage of college freshmen who are in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating classes.

U.S. News and World Report ranks universities based on academic reputation, graduation and retention rates, student selectivity, resources, and alumni giving. The list includes 281 American colleges and universities offering bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees.

The UT College of Business Administration also is one of the world’s best business schools for its full-time MBA program, according to the 2013 rankings in the Princeton Review. This is the fifth year in a row that the program has received that recognition.

The review’s “Best 296 Business Schools” publication praised the college for its “good social scene, cutting-edge classes, and happy students” and the “solid preparation in teamwork, presentation skills, and computer skills.”

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ThrottleUp! Finalist: Credit Virgin Focused on Credit Ratings of College Student

Nate Buchanan, a native of Hendersonville, Tennessee, completes his MBA at the UT College of Business Administration, Knoxville, this December. In a recent interview with teknovation.biz, Buchanan talked about his experience since winning the UT Business Plan Competition during his junior year at UT and becoming an entrepreneur fellow in the full-time MBA program. Buchanan is the recipient of the John G. and Katherine L. McLeod Entrepreneurship Fellowship that requires he start a new venture during his time as a MBA student. He said that he “cycled through a number of business ideas” before deciding upon his new company, Credit Virgin, which he will present during the upcoming “Entrepreneurial Imperative 2012” conference.

Read more about Buchanan’s experience at http://www.teknovation.biz/2012/10/08/5183/.

Alumni Honor Dr. Bob Bohm

When Dr. Robert (Bob) A. Bohm retires at the end of the year, he will leave behind a legacy that has impacted thousands of economics students from all over the world. Those who perhaps know Bohm the best, members of the Economics Advisory Council, have made a generous gesture to show him just how much he has meant to the Department of Economics at UT. Many of them former students, the council members all give of their time, talent, and treasure in supporting the department. This time, they are supporting its long-time leader.

Dr. Samuel (Sam) R. Carter Jr. (’77,’84) was Bohm’s first doctoral candidate and the “ring leader” behind a grass-roots effort to recognize his mentor’s years of service.

“The relationship between you and your major professor is a special one,” said Carter. “We (members of the advisory council) wanted to honor Bob in a way that would live on, so he will be remembered in perpetuity.”

Carter coordinated efforts to create a faculty award named in Bohm’s honor, the Robert Bohm Economics Faculty Award Endowment. He, along with fellow council member Randy Burleson, made the leadership gift to establish the award and went on to collect generous donations from 100 percent of the advisory council members. Additionally, Dr. Jimmy Cheek’s Chancellor’s Faculty Support Challenge will match a portion of the funds so that the award may be established and generate earnings immediately. The group surprised Bohm the night before his last meeting with the advisory council in September.

“We want Bob’s successors to have the tools they need to recruit and retain exemplary faculty,” said Carter. “This endowment allows us to honor Bob and creates a way for others to honor him moving forward.”

Those wishing to contribute to this newly created endowment in Bohm’s honor may contact the Office of Development and Alumni Affairs at 865-974-6083.

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Stocking the Shelves

Supply chain, simply put, is the flow of products, associated services, and finances from suppliers to customers. The process, however, is anything but simple. It involves a complex web of people and facilities working to ensure products are made at the lowest possible cost and arrive to the customer at exactly the right time, place, and price. Any hiccups along the way could mean an alienated supplier, an unsatisfied customer, or a huge financial loss to a company.

UT’s logistics and supply chain management faculty, housed in the College of Business Administration, have built an international reputation of excellence by helping companies improve their processes. They are continually researching best practices to advance the industry, preparing students to be better managers, and reaching out to partners around the globe to help address worldwide supply chain issues.

“It used to only be about cost,” says Ted Stank, the Bruce Chair of Excellence in Business and professor of logistics and supply chain management. “Now, it becomes a strategic element. We’ve seen firms compete not just about the product, but how fast and well they can get it into your hands.”

UT supply chain faculty see themselves as social scientists whose laboratories are the businesses with whom they work.

“Business scholarship must be closely linked to business application,” Stank says. “Academic business researchers cannot retreat into the ivory tower; the research questions they address are driven by industry need, which means that the researchers must engage regularly with industry leaders. Our faculty have studied the processes of some of the nation’s leading companies, such as Dell, Walmart, Pilot Flying J, Bush Brothers & Company, Brunswick Boats, and Alcoa Inc.

“We engage managers and try to understand problems they are confronting, techniques they’re using to overcome those problems, and places where they’re not succeeding,” Stank says. “This typically leads to increased sales and better inventory planning.”

To facilitate the interaction between academia and industry, the college recently established the Global Supply Chain Institute as an umbrella for all its supply chain offerings, including its biannual Supply Chain Forum, a meeting for US-based corporate leaders, professors, and students to share ideas and discuss the latest issues. It currently has fifty-two member companies and brings together more than 150 participants.

In response to the “flattening” of the business world, last year the institute began hosting a yearly Global Supply Chain Forum, drawing leaders from international business giants such as Caterpillar, Procter & Gamble, and Honeywell. It has also formed strategic partnerships with institutions in Paris, Singapore, Budapest, and Rio de Janeiro.

UT is home to the top supply chain management scholars and research leaders in the world. In 2012 alone, they have published five books and are ranked first worldwide in research productivity according to the International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management. Their big ideas are helping to drive business decisions. Here’s a glimpse into some of their recent efforts.

In March 2000, Coca-Cola built a factory in the village of Plachimada in the state of Kerala, India. Within two years of opening, villagers began complaining that the company was taking too much of the shared water supply, creating severe water shortages and contributing to pollution. They filed lawsuits against Coca-Cola, which led to the eventual closure of the factory in 2004.

John Bell, assistant professor of supply chain management, often shares this case study with his students.

“Don’t be that guy at Coke who spent $16 million to open a plant, only to have it shut down,” he says.

Bell and Chad Autry, associate professor of supply chain management, are co-authors of a book that challenges managers to look beyond the short-term view of running a business and making profits. They believe paying attention to changing worldwide trends will be critical to directing a successful business over the next twenty-five years.

“Making money is great, but these days, great isn’t good enough,” Autry says. Business leaders must balance financial goals with social and environmental goals—namely their businesses’ interaction with the communities they serve and their relationship with the planet. Their book, Supply Chain Management in a Transforming World, which they are writing with Thomas Goldsby of The Ohio State University, is scheduled for publication in late 2012.

For thirty-two years, Paul Dittmann held various executive positions overseeing the supply chain processes of the Whirlpool Corporation. Seven-and-a-half years ago, he brought that expertise to the College of Business Administration, where he now shares his knowledge as a lecturer and executive director of the Global Supply Chain Institute.

An exploration of how a company’s supply chain processes drive shareholder value led Dittmann to write an article for the Harvard Business Review, titled “Are You the Weakest Link in Your Supply Chain?” The article eventually became the premise of a 2010 book, The New Supply Chain Agenda, which he co-authored with Reuben Slone, senior vice president at Walgreens, and the late Tom Mentzer, UT Chancellor’s Professor. The book outlines five successful supply chain strategies and shows ways to avoid mistakes that can harm a business.

Dittmann’s latest book, Supply Chain Transformation: Building and Executing an Integrated Supply Chain Strategy, sets forth best practices for creating a world-class supply chain. It includes real-world success stories and testimonials from managers at companies like Amazon, Lowe’s, and Colgate.

Every day, companies receive products returned from customers for a myriad of reasons. Diane Mollenkopf is interested in returns management, or what happens to those goods when they come back.

“Too many companies look at returns as a loss,” she says. “I focus on the value opportunities. Value can be created by reclaiming parts, refurbishing and remanufacturing products for resale, minimizing waste in landfills, and ensuring that customers are satisfied in the trading relationship.”

Mollenkopf, McCormick Associate Professor of Logistics and director of the supply chain management PhD program, researches reverse supply chain because it dovetails into another interest: sustainability.

Mollenkopf helps companies think about repurposing items or innovating processes in light of the planet’s limited resources. “Recapturing parts and precious metals out of electronic equipment, or refurbishing outdated carpeting provides an input for companies when they manage their reverse supply chains,” she says. “It makes it easy for them to be environmentally responsible.”

In his many years as a US Navy Supply Corps officer, Kenneth Petersen served in various capacities that included purchasing, logistics, and operations management. That professional experience translated well into an academic career working with industry to improve purchasing and supply chain processes in order to drive business performance.

Petersen, the John H. “Red” Dove Professor of Supply Chain Management, is currently working on a book with Stank and Mandyam Srinivasan, titled Global Supply Chain Management: A Regional Approach, that explores which countries have burgeoning economies, good infrastructure, and are places where companies might want to do business.

“We are the evangelists for why the status quo doesn’t work,” Petersen says. “The world is changing and you have to change with it.”

Alum Spotlight: Dorothy Jones

As vice president of marketing at Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, Dorothy Jones directs the organization’s global and domestic marketing and strategic brand identity, furthering Komen’s mission to save lives and end breast cancer. Leading a team of marketing and creative professionals that touch all of Komen’s marketing platforms, Jones oversees the creation and execution of marketing campaigns, cause-related marketing programs, and large-scale events to grow and mobilize the Komen family.

Prior to joining Komen, Jones was a senior director with Frito-Lay, Inc., a division of PepsiCo. There, Jones led teams in several areas including brand marketing, innovation, and sales, most recently directing channel innovation, sales integration, and governance for Frito-Lay’s innovation portfolio.

Jones’s journey at Frito-Lay began in 2000 when she joined the company as associate product manager. She quickly advanced within the company, holding various strategic brand management and integrated marketing roles.

Throughout her time at Frito-Lay, Jones’s record of proven results earned her various awards, including the 2001 President’s Award for best new product, 2003 PepsiCo Chairman’s Award for outstanding contributions, 2004 Silver Effie Award for advertising effectiveness, the Grand Ogilvy Award for “The Orange Underground Cheetos Brand Campaign,” and the Gold Ogilvy Award for “Outstanding Advertising Research in Packaged Goods.”

Jones’s talents and drive for success in the brand marketing realm then led her to a new hybrid role as senior director of marketing for the South Sales Division in 2008 in which she focused on marketing integration within the sales organization. In 2009, she became senior director of shopper marketing for Frito-Lay North America, responsible for developing retailer-specific shopper marketing programs.

Prior to joining Frito-Lay, Jones spent over three years at Nestle in brand management roles and several years at Tennessee-based National Commerce Bancorp in finance and consulting roles.

Jones earned her undergraduate degree in finance from American University in 1992 and her MBA from the University of Tennessee in 1998.

Jones’s reputation for getting things done extends beyond business results. Committed to building strong talent as well as strong brands, she mentors young professionals on the mastery on the “three P’s” of power – personal power, interpersonal power, and organizational power.

Faculty Spotlight: David W. Williams

David W. Williams, assistant professor of entrepreneurship in UT’s Department of Management, wants his students to think “entrepreneurially.” Williams joined the faculty of UT’s Department of Management and Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ACEI) in 2010 after completing his PhD at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. He also has an MBA in international economics and trade from DePaul University and a Bachelor of Arts in international studies from Millikin University.

Prior to pursuing his PhD, Williams worked in sales and consulting for nearly a decade, helping entrepreneurial firms with their international expansion endeavors, including regulatory compliance, market choice and entry mode selection, and selling to multilateral development banks. During this time, he also served as an affiliate instructor of international business at Bradley University and became a National Association of Small Business International Trade Educators (NASBITE) Certified Global Business Professional (CGBP).

At the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Williams’s research focuses on how entrepreneurs identify and evaluate opportunities to start and expand their businesses. He has a special interest in entrepreneurs’ decisions to expand their firms internationally and the cognitive processes and factors that influence these decisions. This latter topic was the focus of Williams’s dissertation, which was recently awarded the Heizer Doctoral Dissertation Award in New Enterprise Development, a highly prestigious annual award given by the Academy of Management’s Entrepreneurship Division.

In addition to working with graduate students in entrepreneurship, Williams teaches the college’s introductory undergraduate course in entrepreneurship, which focuses on taking students through the “entrepreneurial process” and helping them discover if “entrepreneurship is for them.” In the course, students must come up with a new idea for a business, research the idea, and write a feasibility analysis determining how viable it is to build a business around the idea. Students also take part in the “$5 Challenge” in which they are given $5 in seed money to start a business, run it for a week (with the goal of making the most money possible), and then shut it down. Entrepreneurship, as an academic course and career, is a hot topic around campus, as indicated by the approximately 60 percent growth in enrollments in the course over the past year.

Williams, a Chicago-area native, enjoys following the exploits of the White Sox and Bears. When not exploring all that Knoxville and East Tennessee have to offer, Williams can be found scuba diving with his wife, Julie, a marine biologist and aquarist at Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Most recently, they fulfilled a lifelong dream of diving Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Student Spotlight: Charles (Chucky) McDaniel

UT College of Business Administration junior Charles (Chucky) McDaniel is staying busy, majoring in international business and business analytics and taking honors courses as part of the college’s Global Leadership Scholars (GLS) program. In addition to the rigorous demands of his coursework, McDaniel currently serves on the university’s Government Affairs Committee and is the National Society of Collegiate Scholars’ social chair and Phi Delta Theta's philanthropy chair. He also regularly attends First United Methodist Church of Sevierville.

In 2011, McDaniel interned in the Washington, D.C., office of U.S. Senator Bob Corker. In 2012, he interned with the Outward Bound Trust in London, England, as part of his GLS study-abroad semester and with Diverse Concepts and FranklinCovey in Knoxville, Tennessee.

After McDaniel graduates in the spring of 2014, he plans to pursue his MBA. He then plans to enter the workforce and one day run for the U.S. House of Representatives.

McDaniel is a native of Sevierville, Tennessee, where he lived with his grandparents. He graduated as valedictorian and president of Sevier County High School and received Boy Scout's Eagle rank during his senior year. He also was involved with Student Government, Teen Board, and Beta Club. He chose to pursue a degree in international business and business analytics because he believes that these fields will prepare him for the future as businesses work to cater to customers’ needs.