Today is Friday December 10 2010. We're doing an interview for the Arizona
State University retiree association video history project
and our interview, he is Larry E. Penley were located in Siegman Institute
in the center point building in downtown Tempe. My name is lee muk feeders
and I served as associate dean under Larry in the W. P. Carey School of
Business. Our technical support staff here today is Roger carter who's
operating the camera, David Schatzi who is filling in with audio and also
in attendance is linda Vance Coy, chairman of the CSU Retirement
Association video history project. My name is Larry Penley. I was dean of
the business school at the W. P. Carey School of Business for 13 years,
including the one year as interim dean.
Why don't you give us a little background on yourself uh and on your
career before you came, I'd be happy to do that lee but but I I should
thank you at the beginning for doing the interview. You and I worked so
closely together in the school of business for so long that it's really
quite special to have you do this interview rather than someone else. So
so thanks for doing that. I did come here in 1985 as the chair of the
Management Department and Professor of Management and prior to that I was
associate dean and a member of the faculty at the university of texas at
san Antonio. And before that I grew up in East Tennessee. Born in Virginia
went to school at Wake Forest University where I perhaps mistakenly
studied psychology rather than economic share field but then went on to
rectify that only slightly by getting a PhD in management at the
University of Georgia. We moved here in 1985 during a recession and as I
was thinking about this interview with a recession going on at the moment
, we recorded this interview, I thought, you know, recessions seem to be
associated with transitions in my life transitions from texas to Arizona,
transitions back here from colorado, a transition away from here when I
retired from a issue and and and left the university to become president
of colorado State University. So that's a bit about my background.
Let me sort of set the stage here. You became Dean with the departure of
john kraft and the School of Business really had not had a large number of
Dean's. There was of course Glen Overman Bill Siegman than john craft. I
wonder if just looking back you could give us your capsule impression of
the contribution each of those processes made for you. Of course, I mean,
I had the privilege of getting to know well both Bill Seidman and Glenn
Overman before they died. And of course john is still alive and Dean at
the University of florida's School of business today. Glenn was a very,
very special person. He really was the person who built the College of
Business at Arizona State University. Glenn built the school. He really
had a sense of its responsibility to Arizona to Arizona State University.
And and we, we have a great deal of debt, I think that we owe to to Glenn.
Bill came along after that very different dean as you know, from Glen
Oberman, a person who came out of business. Uh and it wasn't part Bill
Seidman and Bill Rife is associate dean. That represented part of the
attraction for me in coming to Arizona State University. Uh Bill Seidman
and Bill Right both really had strong beliefs about improving the quality
of the school. And particularly Bill Seidman wanted to engage the College
of Business as we called it at that time with the business community,
built the research centers. So it really was a different approach from
glens, but nonetheless, it was still a very large school of business at
that stage, john came along shortly after I arrived. Bill Seidman hired me
in 1985 and I think he lasted not quite a year before I before he left to
go off and head the F. D. I. C. In Washington and the Resolution Trust
corporation after that. Uh And and that was a huge disappointment to me
because I, I really did see uh Bill Seidman, did you come in directly as
chair? Yes, I came in directly as chair of the management department. And
it and it was Bill Siegman with with a bit of language I won't use in this
tape, who asked me why in the world, I would want to be chair of the
management department?
I think Bill thought that this was one of his more troubling departments
that he had, he probably thought all of them were troubling by the way.
But that was Bill Sigmund's view of it and but I really learned to love
him and appreciate him. And even as Dean appreciated Bill Sigmund's
surprise visits to my office, they were always wonderful. And the visits I
had with Bill in Washington when he was a commentator on television, that
was still a very special part of that relationship. John came along and
john had important contributions, although a fairly short tenure at issue
, jOHn really saw a need to build the research capacity of the institution
And he also started in his last year or two here, the full time NBA
program which was an enormous contribution and caused a fair amount of
controversy as john was, was leaving the university,
going back to your period as interim dean and then it was the first, a
couple of years of your time as dean. Of course there was a national
recession going on. We had seemed every year. We had what were called
revert mints, Do you recall that where the budget suddenly was slashed in
the middle of the year
describe some of the issues the problems just starting out as being in an
environment where the business school, I think it was getting a bit of
scrutiny under a a CSB as well. And of course there were budget issues,
there was the challenge to move the school forward. How did you prioritize
,
how did, how did you know what to work on first? Well, the first issue
obviously was the, what I discovered was a fairly significant deficit on
becoming the interim dean in 1990. Elmer Goody, who was then the provost
had had the confidence in me to ask me to be the dean. And when I sat down
with our our budget officer mike at that point and went through the budget
and saw the substantial and I do mean substantial amount of debt that we
had.
It was a bit daunting. I recall going to Elmer Gooding's office and
talking to Elmer about how in the world we were going to cut our way to
success.
And Elmer was a really good provost. One of the things Elmer did was allow
the School of Business to really not balance its books, it's books the
first year. That didn't mean he didn't expect me to cut a lot. He did
expect me to cut a lot. But that had been a problem for some time. As as
your question suggests, a CSP have been quite concerned with the size of
the school relative to its small budget. Well under $20 million weren't
with the largest business school in the country or close to It used to be
the joke about the largest business school of the Free world. But of
course, that doesn't make any sense today. Since there isn't quite the
distinction. But yeah, we were, we were probably the largest business
school uh, in the United States of that period. And the budget didn't
match that at all. During the period that jOHn Kraft was Dean, we actually
had an infusion of funds. The business community uh, went to the governor
at that stage and the governor was willing to infuse funds directly into
the business school. And I think that kind of put off a CSB major concern
at that stage, but that by no means resolved the problem. So in a way,
you're, you know, you're, we're back to a recessionary period. I came
during a recession. I became interim dean during a recession. And by gosh
, the recession was quite real for the university and the School of
business.
Let me ask you about the NBA program, You mentioned that john Kraft had
really set the business school off on a path to have a full time Day NBA
program. And as we entered the 19 nineties, it became apparent to everyone
that the way business schools are really evaluated, recognized and even
ranked is based on the quality of the NBA program. And
just interjecting a bit of my own experience and involvement with this,
you asked me to investigate what was the ranking, the A. S. U. N. B. A.
Program and we were able to make contact with us News and World Report,
which at that time was the the ranking media outlet for for NBA program
information and rankings and so forth. Anyway. The rankings came back, we
were 197 and I recall and there couldn't be any more than 200 M. B. A.
Programs in the country, full time programs. So that was not that was not
encouraging.
What do you recall about then? How you felt about that challenge to to
move everybody wants to be in the top 50, the top 30 and even the top 25.
If you can make it. We were of course in the bottom five or 10. What were
your thoughts about whether that was even feasible? Did you think that we
could go ahead and put a focus on MBA education or did you think with our
undergraduate program being so large that it was just gonna be a futile
attempt? Well, perhaps early on naively I thought we could, you know, I
mean, I came to Arizona state because I believed in Arizona State
University, I became the dean because I believed in the faculty and the
students and I believe we could do that. I do recall vividly and perhaps I
imagine it, but I think I even recall where you were seated and I was
seated when you came into my office and you did this in the way you mean
as you know, you're a great storyteller and people love the jokes and
stories that you're able to tell. And I recall you're not warning me ahead
of time, but coming into my office, sitting down, laying the papers on the
table and basically showing me where we were ranked at that point. Uh It
was it was a startling moment. It was not a moment that it was very
encouraging.
I recall been talking to a few of the chairs, craig, kirkwood and some
others among them. And people had no belief at that stage that we could
actually achieve what we wanted to achieve with the ranking and
recognition of the College of Business at Arizona State. If anything that
day just made it seem as if the whole that we were in was so deep that it
was almost impossible, but for whatever reason. And you and I and a number
of others had a sense of hope that we could do something with this, a
belief that the NBA program was a key to moving this College of Business
forward and really improving its quality and gaining the recognition that
we thought it merited. And that's very interesting because I can recall
distracters through a lot of the early years of really having known issues
College of Business and known it as a large undergraduate program who
found it really surprising that you and I and others were focused on the M.
B. A. To the degree we were without focusing on the undergraduate program.
I can't even recall my wife Yolanda saying to me, you're not giving any
attention to the undergraduate program trying to explain to people that
the NBA program was just as you have stated a moment ago, a key to the
quality of the school. It was a key to the recognition of the school. That
was really a very difficult thing to deal with. I can recall wishing and I
suppose many of us have wished our predecessor did something different. I
can call wishing. Why didn't glen build a larger NBA program instead of
just a large undergraduate program? But he did what was right in his day
and we were trying to do what was right in our day and use the
transformation of the NBA program as a foundation for the whole business
school including the undergraduate program. It was just that the NBA
program had to be addressed first. Uh If we were going to achieve what we
wanted to achieve with school business. This, this really was a profound
change. And what what is your recollection
as to how the central administration reacted to this, certainly they were
mindful of the fact that we had a large number of undergraduate students.
We had a reputation I think nationally as a, as a solid undergraduate.
Absolutely. Uh But to put a renewed emphasis on the N. B. A. Was that an
easy sell. Mhm. Across the street, as we say, Well, having been a
president, I've never been a provost, thankfully, perhaps. But, but having
been a president, you tend to look at things a little differently than
that a dean does particularly business dean. And and it was not something
I think that over in the administration building was met with great
enthusiasm when we did that. And again, you were key to this. You
developed the statement, the narrative associated with really a smaller
sized but a higher quality undergraduate program and a very substantially
larger NBA program. And we presented that to Milk Glick who was in the
provost to walter Harris, who was the vice provost at that stage. And uh
naturally I don't think there's any surprise that Milk click did not say
this is wonderful, variably go at it. Do this. He after all, had a very
large university he and Lady Cora did uh, that they needed to, to manage.
We had growing numbers of undergraduate students. Business schools are
very popular majors. They were then they still are uh laddie and Milt
understood that they needed lots of spaces for undergraduate students. So
, no, I I can't say that there was a lot of enthusiasm for the direction.
And there were some challenges, as I recall that certainly an M. B. A.
Program depends on the quality of the students, the quality of the
faculty. How did you go about changing the the focus of our recruiting for
MBA students which had always been drawing on local applicants. We needed
national applicants. We needed high test scores. We needed people that had
work experience and we've not been on the national scene with marketing.
We have not really had a faculty that we're focused on N. B. A. What were
some of the things that you and the chairs worked on two to improve that?
Stupid? Well, clearly you're correct. There was a transformation in the
student body that was required, the first class of full time NBA students
were, as I had mentioned briefly earlier, not very happy with their
experience in the NBA program when john was still the dean, uh, they felt
that we were not delivering on the experience that they had expected,
perhaps that we had promised. Um and there was a need to do a lot of
different things. One of the things we had to do was obviously create an
admissions office that was focused not just on Arizona, but nationally.
NBA students typically don't go to the same school as their undergraduate
degree. NBA students are a good source of growth for the business
community. So bringing in high quality NBA students from around the
country was a way to deliver something to the Arizona business community.
So this was an important issue, but it required an admissions office, it
required recruiters, it required people going out to the various events
that occurred around the country. It required changing the way we dealt
with the g mapped and that was only the beginning because on top of that
we didn't have the services and the experience that you expect from the
full time NBA program. I think it was you who really talked about that
that N. B. A. Experience that we really needed and that required
investment in those services that really made this an M. B. A. Program
that was comparable to other good NBA programs it demanded as well, a
career management program. I mean as you know, a great deal of the
evaluation of an M. B. A. Program has to do with where you place students
, what salary you place them at the whole, how quickly you place those
students. Uh And we didn't have any of that at the time. It was an
enormous transformation plus the facilities
plus we needed to have a curriculum that would cause students who have
many options to decide to come to A S. U. Do you recall how, how we handle
that? Of course. I mean, one of the difficulties was how do you position
this business school, an NBA program in Arizona for a national audience
and clearly to stand up and say well we're going to have a general envy
equivalent to stanford equivalent to warden. This was just not believable.
How would we possibly compete directly with them having come from the
ranking that you described earlier. Uh It required a different approach,
luckily and and this was one of the great qualities of Arizona State
University. It had real areas of embedded excellence. And as we looked
internally at where we were really good, we saw an opportunity, an
opportunity to take something that we now know is supply chain management.
It wasn't called that in those days and make that a specialty to look
over here in our marketing department where we had the services marketing
center then called the first interstate center I believe And basically
take services marketing and then eventually information systems as we
created a department in that area and turn those into specializations in
the second year. So that yes you received a very good full time MBA
experience in year one but you had additional knowledge and skills that
other NBA s did not have in a given area such as supply chain management
or services marketing, which made you more employable than a student
perhaps from a a more highly ranked school. So it was a deliberate
strategy that involved a lot of transformation of the school business,
including creating the department of supply chain management, which we did
not have. I mean how Furin had created a purchasing program originally in
the management department that had moved over to what was called in the
purchasing, transportation and operations department P. T. O. Just before
I came to Arizona State University. Then those folks eventually were
dissolved into other departments. So we didn't have even the P. T. O. The
purchasing department anymore When when I became dean? So creating that
new supply chain management department, giving emphasis to services,
marketing? When I think the marketing field still saw that as heartily an
area of prominence inside marketing and then creating a school of
accounting, information systems out of accountancy and faculty. A few
faculty and information systems from a department that we took apart at
that stage. This was a very different approach to an N. B. A. And not a
not not one that that you you saw around the country at all, which again
gave lots of people pause, Is this the right way to go?
Uh Meanwhile we had always had a reasonably healthy evening NBA program.
Uh And as the budget pressures built up, uh we began to think about a way
to take this locally based evening N. B. A. And turned it into a source of
revenue and a source of value for companies that would like to move some
of their employees upper management. And the idea was to charge additional
supplemental fees. This was something I believe that that was allowed for
by the board of regions but virtually unheard of in any kind of size that
is, you know, $50 fee's $100 fees were commonplace, but we thought that
perhaps we could put a fee attached rafi to the evening N. B. A. That
really reflected the value that was created by the graduate, having
enhanced skills,
improved knowledge for success in their company. Now, this required, of
course, going to the central administration, going to the board of regions.
Do you recall at all how that process went? And over time of course the
fees increased to the point where that was a major source of revenue. Tell
us a little bit about your recollections of that whole process. It all
started as, as I think we at least I recall is with steve. Apple. And
steve was then dealing with the Evening NBA program. And, and steve has
always been a good advocate for the program that he ran. What steve did
was recognized that the Evening NBA students um had demands that we were
not meeting at that stage. And in part, those demands arose out of a kind
of jealousy, a sibling jealousy. They saw what we were doing with the full
time NBA program and they said, well, we want these things to, we want the
N. B. A. Experience that you have and that they were right by the way. And
, and really what Bill Seidman had brought us, its focus on the business
community made it even more right because all of these students were
coming from, our local banks are local high tech businesses. Uh, these
were the people that we really had a responsibility to serve to really
build the quality of the labor force that was already employed in the
Arizona area and particularly in the phoenix metro area. So there was a
responsibility. So steve began to say, well, we needed that experience and
he represented the voice for that in conversations with you and the chairs
and other individuals. And so steve came up with the idea and I don't
recall exactly how we did all of this at that time leave, but it was a
combination of feed them dinner when they get here. That's right. At one
point we were a major food service operation. Yes, to to our dismay when
we woke up and realized what we were doing and how much we were spending
on food service, but this was part and parcel of beginning. We wanted
people to get through this program. The dropout rate in the evening NBA
program was high at the time it took to get through the NBA program meant
that this was a 35 year commitment on somebody's part taking a course here
and of course there in a program that really didn't hang together in an
integrated way and, and in addition to to the idea of charging something
which again causes central administrations problems because they'll hear
from the Dean of the Liberal Arts or Sciences or our fine arts programs
saying, my goodness, you're going to let them charge and you're not going
to let us, uh, so this treat them all equally. Uh, issue caused us a great
deal of difficulty in getting that past. And then we added another twist
to it that caused ourselves difficulty not only with the central
administration but with our own faculty. And that was when we came up with
the idea of proposing a lockstep evening program for people who are
working full time roundly believed by most people as the death of the
evening NBA It was as if we had decided how to kill it and this was the
way to kill it, but it struck me that if we could give people a sense of a
realistic timeframe, uh from which they could enter an M. B. A. Complete
an M. B. A. That they knew which courses were offered when and you were
right there in the middle of our doing that by giving them a two year
program by giving them a lock step program with realistic expectations of
you enter this program here in less than two years, you graduate from this
program. Uh That was an amazing distinction in an evening NBA program,
something that almost no one else across the country that I know of was
doing at that stage. Uh And of course it didn't kill the evening and via
program at all, it it caused that program to grow. Well, one of the
features that were we implement,
We needed to find a way to have people graduate in two years. We needed to
find a system that would guarantee that 99 students would be able to
graduate in two years. They come in as a group, they take the classes as a
group. They graduated as a group, they would pay supplemental fees and
they would have their books provided they would have first class graduate
experience. The question is this, how do you get a full 48 hours In two
years as a part time student? And the innovation of course was the
trimester rattle where the courses were compressed. They still had full
contact hours. You simply spent a lot of time in class and this at first
was a burden for the faculty classes were longer. It was something new in
terms of scheduling. It was something new just in terms of how the central
administration assigned rooms and so forth. Um, tell us a little bit about
how you sold that, uh, both to the chairs and to the central
administration and then eventually to the faculty, You used the word sold.
Uh, it was a true, it was a marketing effort. I know it was a tremendous
change to the College of Business at that stage And resisted. I think
almost nearly universally, there weren't many people early on as we
discussed that idea who thought that it would work. Uh, you're absolutely
right. It lengthened the class time because we moved to what were
essentially 10 week trimesters. It lengthened class time from Less than
three hours to four hours in the evening. It was a very long class. It
made the need for intensive electives, innovative electives absolutely
essential. I can recall again, uh, the proposal that we put together and
you put that together and we went to see again, provost Milton Glick and
Vice provost walter Harris. And of course they saw immediately many of the
problems. The fact that this is a university operating on semesters and
these were this, this was a day when we didn't have the student
information system that many universities have, uh, the capability of
flexibility within those frameworks. And among the many problems. As we
were starting one course, we're ending one course in the, you know,
towards the end of a semester. But well before the end of the semester,
starting the second trimester before the end of the first semester and
carrying that went over and trying to then apply the grades required. We
had to hire staff, You had to hire staff to deal with that. This was a
logistics. It was a nightmare to make it all work. And there was nothing
in the information system that made it work so, so again, milk and walter
understood correctly that this was not going to be easy at all. This was
going to be very difficult. But nonetheless, it was a critical piece of
giving you this lockstep NBA program integrated in a different way and
allowing us to move these students through here in a short period of time
to receive their NBA degrees. I mean essentially what you and I were doing
was proposing a quarter system inside the university that was operating on
a semester system. Now some universities have made these changes from
quarters to semesters or semesters two quarters. It usually takes years,
lots of discussion and it isn't well liked by most people. So we were
introducing some real change. What I think began to help the chairs
understand this was the extent to which you could give faculty a more
concentrated time frame to do their research with a concentrated time
frame to do their teaching by virtue of the trimesters you had time off,
you might teach and trimester one and trimester three that gave you
trimester too. Uh from, you know, november to february or so to basically
do your research right. And you still have the same number of contact
hours, a number of contact hours. You were still freed up to do more
research than under a semester system. And and my recollection is the
faculty really, I began to appreciate that. And there was a turnaround.
The NBA began to attract the research faculty at that point, that was
really significant. I think that was just one of a kind of a lift off sort
of time period where the NBA began to be respected, I think by our own
faculty. Well, and you you were a you you had that message very clearly
stated early on, we had to have the research faculty the most well
recognized faculty in NBA classes and not looking for an elective over
here to teach or an elective over there to teach. We knew that at Wharton
and stanford uh excellent faculty teaching the NBA program. We had to have
the same. We also had to have a business school that was a good teaching
program and a good research program. And you had to build the research
capacity of faculty and give them the capacity to do that. This approach,
You're absolutely right. Was very well liked by faculty once they
understood it because it it meant a number of needs that they had and it
meant needs that we had as an administration to push quality into the NBA
program. I can recall teaching in 1986, I think My 1st NBA class at A. At
A. S. U. When I was a chair of the management department, not an
assignment that anyone quibbled with me about. No one really wanted to
teach the required management class in the NBA program. I could easily
assign myself that. It was not in demand. That's because that wasn't of
interest to anyone. Certainly not to the quote best faculty in the
department of management, you know, as as you're describing the efforts to
implement the trimester teaching schedule. I'm having flashbacks, just a
number of other things we implemented and I think that during this period
as we went into the mid nineties, this is the time when there began to be
I think so, whispers about what is the business school up to. That is we
wanted our own our space. This was a time when the university actually
controlled the classrooms. We couldn't get the trimester classes we wanted
because the university was set up to schedule them on a on a semester
basis.
Over time, things that seemed to be totally unthinkable came to pass. We
did get our own space Central Administration. Ultimately, it gave us a
wing in the business school building that we remodeled for, N. B. A.
Really call it a lounge, but it was a meeting area, There were study rooms
, there were computer facilities and then I think the most unthinkable
breakthrough of all was when the Central administration agreed to allow
evening M. B. A. Students to park in the parking garage after hours. So
there were a number of things that happened during that period that I
think, you know, really established the business school is one of the most
innovative schools.
College is really on campus.
Part of that I think has to do with your leadership. And just insistence
that the N. B. A. Is our private. It's interesting because what you're
really talking about lee is something that I think is important for any
manager to understand and that is how do you create sustainable change?
You can inject quick change into a system into an organization that
doesn't last very long, but but injecting sustainable change is a real
challenge. Um I I used to talk about uh my orthodontic metaphor that
cultures of organizations were like crooked teeth when you went about to
change them, you needed to put braces on and keep the braces on for a very
long period of time. Otherwise the teeth were returned to their old state.
And I can recall thinking about our culture at that point early on in the
early nineties and how that culture had to be transformed. Mackenzie has
back from the seventies what they call the seven S model of change. And
they really focused on structure and systems and staff and a whole set of
things that have to be integrated and what you were talking about a moment
ago. From the parking garage to the facilities to addressing the rooms are
at A. S. U. Which many universities have and getting control of those
facilities. Those were all big changes. At the point I became Dean, we
have two buildings. Bill Siegman and Bill Rife had built what was then the
new building, which was considered by many people fairly low quality and
whole set of issues Glenn Overman had in the original building that was
there, Not the first building that the business college had. That's
another building, but in the building that was then called building number
one or the old building. We had old traditional rooms, one of which was
the room that you'll recall perhaps your favorite with the stove and all
of the trappings of kind of a cabin. Uh There was designed, there was the
room that was the bank room that hold all of the antique banks in it that
gradually were disappearing. Those rooms have been decorated at fairly
significant expense with carpet and furniture and decor by glenn years and
years ago and they were in considerable deterioration. We didn't have
control of the classrooms, We didn't have facilities that matched what we
were trying to do on the undergraduate program level or the, the, the
graduate program level. So seeking control of the rooms and then beginning
to take the money that we were building, the revenue and on our own invest
that in the renovation of those facilities, the restructuring of the
undergraduate admissions office, the structure of the career management
office. The creation of classrooms that looked looked looked modern and
particularly this was an age when, when digital education and the issues
of digitization and information technology were coming along and our
classrooms had lighting that didn't work. We didn't have power point
projectors, we didn't have electrical, that, that that met the needs that
we had. So there were a whole set of things that had to be done. And
sometimes I think we forget how much the infrastructure really matters in
bringing about sustainable change and again it was people like you who
said, we really must invest in facilities and of course at that stage,
given what we talked about earlier with the budget deficit of the College
of business, the financial problems of the state, the revert mints that
the university was still going through investing money and facilities.
When you needed it for student services, you needed for hiring new faculty
, you needed it for salary increases to retain faculty. It seemed like the
last thing you wanted to do, but something as, as in a way seemingly
trivial or unimportant as the facilities were part and parcel of building
the sustainable change that ultimately, I think helped move the school
toward prominence.
But meanwhile, we had an undergraduate program. Am I correct on this? I
think we came close to accounting for what was it? 1 4th There? Certainly
1/5 of all the graduates at any graduation ceremony would be from the
school of business. And I think there was just a view that being so large
, the quality really couldn't, couldn't be there yet. It was very popular
, major. Uh, and I think that even with rising standards, we still had far
more applicants than we could really handle. Talk about the graduate of
the undergraduate program a little bit and how that fit in with what we
were trying to do at the graduate level. Well, it would be a mistake to
believe that in those days it wasn't a good undergraduate program. It was.
And you heard that from a long night, You heard that from students in the
program, were they unhappy with some things? Sure they were unhappy that
classes weren't always offered in a way that met their needs and they
couldn't get the class that they needed. We were very large and that made
it difficult to meet their needs. Um We taught core classes and very large
classrooms um for really outstanding students. There wasn't much of a
special experience for those really, really bright young people at that
stage. But but it would be a mistake to think that it was not a good
program, it was a good program. But as we were building this N. B. A. Over
here, we were building expectations, not just for the full time NBA but
for the evening NBA students and for the undergraduate students. And it
would be a mistake to believe that we weren't already at work on
transforming the undergraduate program even as we were changing the M. B.
A. Program and expending a lot of effort. Ah yes, rankings were driven by
NBA programs, not undergraduate programs, but we knew early on that it was
clear that if you can rank M. B. A. Programs and sell US News and World
Report, you can also rank undergraduate business programs and sell more U
. S. News and World Report magazines. So it was evident that too, from it
was at your peril, if you had an undergraduate program not to focus in on
that undergraduate program and given just the felt responsibility that you
have for undergraduate education, I mean, this is, this is why
universities have existed Is for to a great extent for their undergraduate
education. We had a strong responsibility to that now a whole set of
things helped to really raise the quality of that undergraduate program
along the way uh in our earliest strategic plan dating back to 91, that
period where we engage the business community, clearly they expected a
better undergraduate program and we had that built into the expectations.
Steve Happel had done something marvelous when I was still chair of the
management department and I don't think I even understood at the time how
important uh this particular change was steve had come up with the idea or
he was at least the sponsor of the honors program in business to create a
small group of students that got a special experience as honors students.
No, that was, it was very small at that stage, I think less than 30
students as I recall, but certainly not a great deal more than that. If it
was that large, that was an integral piece of the change process. The
strategic direction that we set for the undergraduate program played a
role, the work that we did to improve the quality of the core classes and
create integration across those core classes and communication among the
faculty who taught those basic large core classes, uh that took quite a
bit of effort to really revise those classes. So we went to the heart of
curriculum change to really deal with that. We focused in on that
undergraduate honors program and built a very substantial undergraduate
honors program to the point at which I can still, I told laddie core this
and a he didn't brown at me too much, but I I used to sit on the stage at
graduation, obviously with the rest of the Dean's behind the president as
he gave his speech and we would joke about laddies speech. Laddie even
made it clear when he gave his speech that he was giving the same address
that he had always given since his first days as president of Vermont. And
we all essentially knew the speech by heart, we do it almost as well as as
the president core do the speech. So clearly paying attention to it was,
it was not what was required, I can recall thumbing through the program
and basically counting the number of business honors students that we were
graduating with their theses And looking at the total number of honour
students. And and and saying to myself, uh we have 45% of them this
graduation, we have 40% of them were over 50% of the honor students in the
university. And this, this gave me a sense of personal pride that we had
focused in on the quality of the undergraduate program, used the honors
business program in conjunction with what has become the Barrett honors
program, uh to really create a quality experience at the upper end for
undergraduates, while also driving quality into the rest of the program.
Uh We were the largest source of honors graduates at that time. I would
sit there also and say to myself with very good liberal arts program, very
good fine arts program, a very good engineering program. Why in the world
should the business school be the essentially the largest source of honor
students in some ways. From a university perspective, it was out out of
expectations, but it was part and parcel of what we were trying to do to
raise the quality because it it built a sense of pride in the program. And
of course we went on to create the road l program where we were engaging
honors business students and developing plans to improve the quality of
high school education and graduation rates of at risk students in high
schools across the valley with those honors students developing business
plans to do so again, an outcome of that, but along the way as well. And
perhaps I've spent too much time answering this question, but we did
something else that two other things that that really mattered to the
undergraduate program. One thing we did was propose an admissions program
, you'll recall that
not exactly something that everyone in central administration jumped up
and down about it said this is a great idea, but I do remember that this
whole issue of inability to get the courses that you needed in order to
graduate
caused a lot of concern among students. They think they can graduate in
four years or 4.5 years, but of course is aren't there? The courses are
full and through the admissions program, I believe that problem just
dissolved. It went away, it did go away. It went away though at a time
where the university had a lot of students who never graduated from the
institution who couldn't find majors and get through them. So we were
proposing a restriction on entry to the undergraduate business program. At
the same time, the university was trying to resolve low graduation rates
and high numbers of students who could not really stick with a major. Uh
so what we did were several things in combination that I think mattered
both for the business school and for the university at large, Obviously
for the business school, assuring some degree of of reasonable expectation
of graduation timeframe expectation that you could get a class that was
all essential. The admissions program allowed us to know predictably how
many students we have. It had other side benefits in that it created the
same sense among the undergraduates that you had in the N. B. A. A sense
of camaraderie, a sense that we're the selected ones. We've been admitted
to the fraternity or the sorority and others have not. So it's kind of,
you can argue with whether that's a good feeling or not, but that feeling
was clearly there as a result of that. And we created two kinds of
admission, a direct admission ultimately, as a freshman, um, and also an
admissions program when you transferred in from the community college
where you have started your program elsewhere in the university and wanted
to come into the program. Again, this was a lot of resources, but not
surprisingly
from from the rest of the university people would say, well, what you're
really going to do is push these students off on our program and and
enlarge our classes, not not exactly what you would want to have happen in
the rest of the institution. So what we did was create a business minor, a
set of courses that were designed to have fairly large enrollments
available to the entire institution so that you could be an architecture
major or fine arts major or an engineer and get access to business
education. And we all knew that lots of young people end up in business
without business degrees. And basically we could do something that
mattered for those young people along the way, resisted by the way, not by
central administration, but by on the faculty at the time. Central
Administration saw this as something that offset what we were doing with
the restriction and enrollment through the admissions program to a
specific number of students, but what we did at the same time was
according to some faculty at that stage, perhaps allow people to claim
that they were business majors when in fact they weren't. Uh so this would
depreciate the quality of a business degree if we offered a minor in
business, uh that was severely resisted, but the outcome for all the
faculty who also felt that there had been too much attention to the NBA
program and there needed to be attention to the undergraduate. We were
engaged and finally, from their point of view, really delivering to the
undergraduate program, that kind of focus the kind of services that that
that would matter to the quality of that program that ultimately allowed
it to be acceptable, even though there was still fear about these students
who had a minor in business.
Well, fundamentally, it's about curriculum, but it it's really a broader
topic. It's it's about really the focus and the evolution of the business
school. The topic would be globalization
during the nineties. There was an opening up of eastern europe, of course
, the emergence of china and recognition that students should have better
global understanding.
Talk about some of the things that uh that you did, that you thought were
important during that period to further globalize the school of business
from the earliest strategic plan in 91 or 92, we had made globalization a
piece of that plan. Uh we had made globalization of peace, interestingly,
in terms of, of transforming faculty and helping students go abroad. Uh
those were the two pieces of that plan initially. Uh and the transforming
faculty piece, the professional development of faculty was very important
as faculty when we go through these doctoral programs. Uh we we get in our
heads I think, even though we know we have still lots of learning that
we're somehow prepared, that we know what to do. Um and we knew that we
needed to help faculty to be more international. Uh Arizona is not a
wealthy state. Our students were not wealthy students, many of them we
knew just like most americans would never go abroad yet to be a good
business student when these undergraduate students needed an international
experience. So, so we did a number of things. We gave grants that helped
to internationalize courses that allowed faculty time to develop
international experiences. We found, we looked for ways to encourage
faculty to go abroad and became more flexible with that at the
undergraduate level. We deliberately developed close ties with schools
abroad so that it was easy to transfer back not just a history course or a
french course or a spanish course, but to transfer back business classes
which had never been done before. You only transferred back the elective
classes, which meant that many students made very little progress toward
the degree programs and going abroad. Again inconsistent with our desire
to help an undergraduate student get through the university in in a
reasonable amount of time, joe Breda directed international programs. And
joe just did a marvelous job of working at that joe obviously. Uh you know
, his family checked refugees. He understood europe, he still went to
europe a lot, still does today. He had done a number. I mean, he
understood what, what the value of an international perspective was for a
business student. He understood that we could create exchange
relationships with a given school in a situation where you had a partner
that had high quality or reasonable quality undergraduate business
education. He understood that you needed someone at that school, whether
it was in chile or in Scotland who was a dependable person. If there was a
problem, we could call that person up and get a resolution to the problem.
If we needed to bring an additional student, we had somebody who could
make that happen if the student did not get a room quickly enough when
they arrived, there was somebody who dealt with that. So joe insisted on
that the program also had to be in an attractive area. We're faculty would
want to go as well as students attractive to faculty by virtue of the
quality of the faculty of the school attracted to faculty and student, by
virtue of its location, a place not in the middle of nowhere, but a place
that was interesting and fun to go to. Uh ultimately, uh, somewhat like
the honor situation, the business school became the largest source of
exchange students going abroad of any college at the university at the
undergraduate level. And it really had to do with setting up this
infrastructure that joe brady has set up and really giving emphasis
through our strategic direction to that. But but that's really as you know
, only part of the story because in the mid nineties and I can't recall
the whether you were in the conference room with joe Breda and back pay
and me or not, probably you were as we worked on my white board that I
loved to rethink the were you there? Uh huh I don't recall specifically,
We were rethinking could have been there. You probably were, we were
rethinking, we were rethinking the strategic direction of the
globalization piece of our strategy from the early 90s. And this was about
1994,
And what we did that day was to to recognize that if we were really going
to fundamentally move forward with globalization of the business school
and the experience of students. Again, the faculty had to be the focus.
Not only did the faculty had have to be the focus, we have to be very
deliberate about which sectors of the globe we focused on at that stage.
So those were the two things that really received emphasis in that meeting
that day, sectors of the world and faculty transformation recognizing
already that we had an international exchange program for undergraduates
that was working reasonably well in getting those students abroad on the
geographical side. We looked at western europe, we looked at latin America.
Both were already attractive. We considered at that stage, uh eastern
europe and ultimately we did make some forays into eastern europe. Ah but
we also recognize that as these countries and the business schools were
just coming out of, of communism, that this was going to be a one way
street. We could decide that it was our goal to help them develop, which
we did in Macedonia for instance, to a great extent with a grant from the
federal government. But but if we were going to partner with a Russian
business school or partner with a check school at that stage, The
probability was a one way street. So we decided that that may not be where
we wanted to put a lot of emphasis early on, although ultimately we did go
to Russia. Ultimately we did go to the Czech Republic. Ultimately we did
go to Macedonia with the program that was designed to really change that
business school from a communist and Marxist oriented economics program to
a business school, but instead we focused on Asia and perhaps because buck
pay was in the room, but but I think also because one could see what was
going to happen with china, one could see It's growing competitive
character, one could see what was going to happen to its position in the
globe even 15, 20 years ago. One could envision that. We knew that we
needed to focus in on china and that was critical to us at that stage. We
said okay if we want to focus on china and we want to get faculty there to
learn about china so they can bring that learning back to their
undergraduate students. Here are their NBA students, how do we get back?
We'll tea in china. Uh They're not going to know mandarin. Uh We don't
have the money to send them again. This was not a business school that was
wealthy even with our fees that we were charging at that point for the NBA
program. And ultimately the undergraduate program. So we came up, we
hatched an idea to find a business that needed an M. B. A. Program for its
employees in china. And it was my job to go out to all of our business
partners and begin to talk with each one. Well you have some work you're
doing in china over there in the mining area or you're doing it in this
area. You're doing it in that area. Uh here's an idea. We have, could we
help you by educating your employees ah one company as you well know bit
so to speak. They saw an opportunity and that was Motorola. We obviously
had a wonderful relationship with Motorola. Gary Tooker was the Ceo at
that point. We knew lots of people, we had educated, lots of young people
, uh, and who went to Motorola to work with educated, lots of engineers
who had obtained NBA program, N. B. A. Degrees from us. So Motorola said,
well, this is very interesting. And you and Buck and I and Peter from
engineering. Uh, Peter Peter Crouch. We went to Beijing and we talked to
Qinghua University and a number of other universities, Tianjin, a number
of them. Because we knew we needed not only a university, we needed
Motorola, but we needed a university as a partner to because we wanted to
link faculty back to the university. What we realized ultimately, and the
partnership became one between Arizona State University. Um, chihuahua
University generally considered the M. I. T. Of china and Motorola uh,
that we could create a very intensive education program building on our
trimesters. Uh, at that point we had built lots of digital capability in
terms of curriculum delivery at that stage as well. So building on what we
have done in the N. B. A. Building on what we had done with instructional
technology and instructional design. We could deliver an NBA there where
faculty went for a reasonably short period of time and given the trimester
situation, faculty had time to do that because they had time during the
year where they weren't teaching a regular course during one of the
trimesters and Motorola had its own need Motorola had and I recall looking
at the org chart and we sat in the room in Tianjin looking at the
organizational chart and noting of the 13 top executives in, in Motorola
China, only one was from the People's republic of China. Everybody else
virtually was a somebody who had chinese background but had been invited
into the country uh, to work at Motorola. We understood that the
government wanted Motorola to, to educate, to train uh, its own citizens
and the people's republic of china to become the key executives. Motorola
had felt responsibility to do so. So we knew they understood that they had
a lot of education to do. We were an opportunity to deliver that education
10 Qinghua great school, but still like so many schools. And even more
obviously when we visited Tianjin University with their Marxist economics
program there, uh, Qinghua was further along. But Qinghua understood that
they needed to learn how to deliver an N. B. A. And a specific Mbia. Uh,
you'll recall the day you came to me and said Larry, have you looked at
the enrollment of our NBA program, our evening MBA. It's mostly engineers
yet. We're not teaching an M. B. A. Program that responds to them. You
recall that this is a digression, but it's important to our ability to do
the globalization pieces, you know, and we created from that a technology
M. B. A. In collaboration with Honeywell intel Inside Roll Qinghua saw
that Tech N. B. A. As we called it in those days, a huge opportunity for
them to educate engineers in the business area. So they became a willing
partner with us in that program. Uh from that of course we created the
program in shanghai which is still going on today. The college has had or
the school has had an M. B. A. Program in china now for more than a decade
uh reasonably profitable for a nonprofit institution. And I way to
transform our faculty and a way to build students out there.
Okay buck pay associate dean for asian programs Really if you had to
identify one person that is really turned our chinese programs into really
notable nationally and internationally recognized programs. I think it is
certainly it is buck pay uh the day we all entered china for the first
time on that cold winter it was buck pay who couldn't get through
the the the customs and the inspection and that sort of peace. You and I
and everybody else had gone through quickly. Uh buck had grown up in
Taiwan was an american citizen. His name picker. We had bucks on his
passport at that point as his first day and the chinese were not happy.
They knew he was chinese and they knew his name was not right. So it was
buck who had the interrogations as we entered at that stage. It was yeah
it was buck pay and buck if you'll recall as we sat around and we visited
one university after another. And we argued at the end of the day about
what we had learned that day and what we needed to do. It was not an easy
situation. But buck was the one who saw clearly how to make that work. It
was buck who saw the opportunity in shanghai. Uh It was buck who realized
that working with the Ministry of Finance would serve us well which we did
with that program in shanghai. The one thing I know buck had real
heartburn about in our relationship was as we were trying to to start the
NBA program in shanghai.
The chinese were resisting. We had our partnership with Motorola had been
a huge advantage basically. Motorola paid us for the NBA program. When we
started the program in shanghai, we were dealing directly with the PRC's
Ministry of Finance and they wanted to pay us in RMB. RMB were useless to
us. Uh you had to spend RMB only in one place in china. And so buck had
come back time after time with these negotiations and saying Larry, I
really think we need to do this. But they they can't pay us in dollars.
It's a non convertible concurrency. And I said buck, you're going to have
to go back and tell them that you're Dean says we will not do this program
if they cannot give us a dollar account, buck says they will not give us a
dollar account. They can't give us a dollar account. We're not investing
anything in the country like Motorola or intel only for people who are
investing from the external marketplace that gives you a right to get a
dollar account. Well, you're going to have to go back and tell them I
won't do it. We can't afford it, we can't spend the money that we've
earned up here in Beijing and are earning and spend that on shanghai. Well
, he came back and of course, the, the program has been a success and is a
success because the Ministry of Finance went to the Bank of china and
petition to the Bank of china to give us a dollar account. And I suspect
if we were not the first dollar account uh, since 1949, when the
communists took over, we were one of the very earliest dollar accounts
associated with a non large corporate business that had huge investments
in China. Our investment in china was different. We were transforming the
, the people of china and that was the investment that I think the Bank of
china and the Ministry of Finance saws value.
You've mentioned budget issues related to practically every every topic
here. Um, tell us a little bit about development activities, The
involvement with the business community in particular. Um My sense of the
background there is that it was Bill Siegman that really Established
uh, that first outreach with the Dean's Council 100 setting up the
economic club of Phoenix. So those were in place, but a whole lot more
needed to be done to move the business school into a position of national
prominence. What were some of the challenges related to working with the
business community, the fundraising development issues we owe Bill Seidman
an enormous debt for what he did in creating the economic club of phoenix
and the Dean's Council of 100 all of the research centers that he created
along the way. At one point I was in Washington and Bill and I were
talking about the business school and he said to me, well, how's it going
? And I said, well, Bill, the finances are really a struggle. And I said
to be honest, you left me with a whole set of research centers that had no
funding any kind of Riley smiles and looks at me and said, well, Larry, I
wanted to leave you something to do. Uh and indeed he did leave us
something to do. And as I became Dean, it was clear that the business
community's expectations from the days of Bill Seidman had been high and
from their point of view, their engagement with us had not fulfilled those
expectations. That was the reason we started that strategic planning
effort. That was the reason we created uh, the retirees group that worked
with NBA students as tutors and mentors. We needed to engage the business
community with the business school And only through that kind of
engagement could we hope that they would deliver on, on money that we
badly needed. So maintaining that Dean's Council of 100 and the membership
in it was critical at an early stage. As you know, the economic club is a
vehicle for us to reach out to the community and even though you pay dues
, most of the dudes are consumed by the lunches and the expenses of the
economic club. But, but the Dean's council 100 provided us the summer
research grants that helped to retain faculty. It provided us with a great
deal of the money that we needed to, to globalize the business school. Uh
, to really work on instructional design for our specialized NBA programs
that really demanded that to increase the digitization of the curriculum
at the undergraduate level. So, so the money was critical along the way.
Um, getting the business community to provide those donations was
absolutely essential. So there was a lot of work to do to deal with that.
We had to create, uh, an alumni database that was accurate. We had to go
out and hold alumni events around the country, which we did, we had to
retain the local business community here. Those who had no reason
necessarily to support us like Bank one, which named your center at that
stage. Uh, there was no reason that they had to do that, but I think mike
Welborn kind of, who's still here today. Uh probably explained best how we
made the change with the business community. I was in his office one day
at Bank one and Mike said to me for whatever reason, and Mike was a
Harvard M. B. A. Who was very involved with our business school. And
certainly the reason, I think for the naming out of Bank One, but Mike
said, Larry, I can do your story about the business school as well as you
can. I've heard it so many times and I said, that's wonderful, mike,
you're a lot more believable than I am. Mike could indeed tell our story
and in many business people could tell our story uh in ways that uh made
it more credible than just our telling our story. Marketing. It was
essential to the transformation of the recognition of the business school
, but having business people who could do our promotion for us for free,
that that that that that was great. So, so the fundraising was critical
along the way, laddie core initiated a capital campaign for the university
that we played a major role in. Uh and we were very successful during that
capital campaign. It was really only after the capital campaign that the
naming came along. But the work towards that began. Well, what, well
before that, during the capital campaign,
tell us about the naming the initial outreach to William polk Carey, um,
how that all, how that all came about. He's a Wall Street figure thousands
of miles away from Arizona, how did he come to name the School of Business
? Bill Carey does seem like, I think lee an unlikely source of the money
and the name for this business school in many ways. Uh, it's less a
mystery when you understand Bill's relationship to Arizona State
University and his relationship to people here in Arizona. Um Yolanda and
I, my wife often went to a lot of christmas parties and like so many
things that we did, the party was part business and part enjoyment. Uh,
and that was what we did for lots of events. The wind singers, Reggie and
Leila had invited us to their home a number of years to a christmas party.
And unfortunately because of all the commitments, we said, oh Reggie
Leila, we can't come this year. And Yolanda said to me, Larry, we must go
, we've been telling them for two years now that we were unable to make
their party, we must go. So, so we drove to their house sometime prior to
the christmas holidays. Um and Reggie and Leila were welcoming and warm
and had a house full of people. Um and Yolanda had, by the way, fallen
just before we went into the house and we started to turn around because
she had just fallen on the sidewalk, but she said no, we're going to this
party. So it went to the party and along the way we were introduced to
this fellow Bill Carey, whom I had never met before, didn't know much
about the W. P. Carey company at that stage. I found him a very, very
interesting human being. Someone who understood education, not just higher
education because his grandmother was involved in a very important private
Baltimore school in founding that, but interested in higher education and
the broader K through 12, he obviously loved warden was involved in the
big business schools on the east coast was on the board of johns Hopkins
University.
The polk family had been the founders of the university of north Carolina
, the pope who became president. So he was related to them as well. So the
history of Bill Carey involvement with education went back centuries
literally what was interesting and what I didn't know was that it was his
relatives, particularly one of his relatives who had been responsible for
creating the legislation during the territorial days of Arizona that
created Arizona State University before it became a state. So his
relatives here in Arizona were also responsible for involvement in higher
education. Now Bill had very little knowledge of Arizona State University
at that time. Um, but it was such a fun conversation and I found myself so
intrigued by this businessman, uh, and his background and his interest and
his lively conversation, His intellectual capacity that we agreed that we
would see each other again. Um, and we did, we came to lunch here. He
spoke to some students, I went to new york. It was a long, long, um, kind
of building of a relationship, Was it a courtship? Well, I started to use
that word and I suppose it was a courtship in a way because as I got to
know Bill Kerry better in his company, I understood that both, he gave
away a lot of money and he had the money to, to name the business school.
And as you recall during the
capital campaign, one of the early things we had done was to create a, a
mock proposal for an unnamed donor to name the business school. And I had
that in my desk in the filing cabinet to the left stuck there waiting for
the day when it actually had to be uh, kind of completed for somebody not
knowing who that somebody was. So, so we always had our eye on who that
somebody could be. And Bill Carey was one of those people. What I realized
though along the way. And this goes back to what we were trying to do from
the earliest days of the business school is that Bill did not see the
university nor the business school as having the prestige that he expected
out of a good university and a good business school. I mean, he hired
students from Princeton and warden. Uh, he hired kids who came from what
were considered and still are considered the more prestigious schools in
the country. That was Bill Kerry's approach and that's what he did. And he
had a very good employees whom I met and I got to know them one of the
things and this goes back to the, to the role of the undergraduate program
and what we did with the undergraduate program and improving it. I said,
well Bill, why don't you hear some of our undergraduates as summer interns
?
And he was resistant. And we came back to that over and over. What
ultimately we did was to orchestrate Bill coming to campus, sitting in the
dean's conference room interviewing undergraduate students, mostly out of
our honors undergraduate business program. And I recall still Bill telling
me lyrics, they're as good as the Princeton once didn't I tell you that we
have really good young people here. We have a high quality undergraduate
program. It educates people well. He ultimately hired some interns. If
there was one thing that I think may have been most important to getting
Bill Carey to the table to name the business school, it was that set of
interviews, it was the sense that he developed that we may not have the
name of Princeton or Harvard. But when it comes to the quality of what we
do in the classroom, when it comes to the quality of the program that we
have at Arizona State University, it stood up equal with what he was
seeing on the East coast, uh, that led us and Mark Weiss, our development
officer at that time is critical to this. Mark was the development person
in charge of development. Mark had gotten to know Reggie Wynns singer very
well. Uh, he had talked to Reggie about whether indeed Bill might be ready
to name the college and Mark had concluded rightfully or wrongfully. Uh,
he had inferred that it was the time. Uh, and so Mark said, Larry, I think
you're, you should be ready to do this. I let Latino that I was going to
do this. The president, I had Bill in my office and I asked him, I said
Bill, what we'd like you to do is to name the business school. Um, and he
didn't say no, he didn't say yes. By the way, this was in the summer, well
before Laddie retired. So this was in, this was a day before the
graduation ceremony in May. Uh, so we were well ahead of, of Larry's
leaving. Larry got a media involved in calling Bill Carey and talking to
Bill and encouraging Bill Laddie then retired on June 30 and Michael Crowe
became the President. Michael went to visit bill in his office in New York.
Michael was invited to speak prior to his becoming the president at the
major event that Bill held in London that Yolanda and I intended and Bill
in a sense, as he looked at the transition from Laddie to Michael
concluded that this was a place he could bet on and he could invest. And
then we began from june through well into the fall, a long set of
negotiations about what bill would give, how he would give it with
ultimately the positive decision. And there were again many points at
which I I was ready to say and did say no, that won't work. We can't
accept, we want to accept and knowing that in saying that. And I sat in
the garage, the foundation had moved down Mill Avenue. At that point, I
said it in the garage in the parking lot outside the foundation office one
day talking to one of the assistants in Bill's office,
essentially saying it's over with it's clear to me that Bill is not ready
to do what we'd hoped he would do. I think he will be basically stopping
this uh at the they came back and of course ultimately We did receive the
very substantial $50 million dollar donation. We were as billet hoped for
, recognized among the top 25 business schools in the country and students
are extraordinarily proud to be W. P. Carey graduates today
when people think back on the tenure of Larry Penley as dean of the
business school here, what would you like them to think of as as the main
accomplishment?
That capsule representation
of your accomplishment. It's a tough question. It's a tough question
because there are a number of things that that made me very proud about
the W. P. Carey school of Business in Arizona State University. But I
guess here's what I'd like for them to remember.
We built a trajectory a very positive trajectory of national prominence.
National recognition, built on quality of the education and research from
that school of business. Oh they're obviously it was much more to be done.
There is much more to be done. But we we we put us on a trajectory that I
think really hasn't mattered. That may be the most important thing. No I
don't think it is. I think there are a couple of other things. I think
this engagement with the business community in a very real sense. I mean
we're a professional schools were a business school, we have a
responsibility to serve of that community. Uh That level of engagement is
something I'm very proud of. I'm also proud of what we did from the point
of view of globalization and from the point of view of information
technology and instructional design. But but in the end and this was where
I was headed. I think the thing that I'm most proud of is what students
say and how they feel about the school of business. You'll hear a young
person talk about being a W. P. Carey student about graduating from the W
. P. Carey school and they say that with pride there was a point in the
NBA program and you probably orchestrated this for all I know when the NBA
students in one of the events that was created by you where we were
recognizing students and having the, uh, those very fun, theatrical events
that make fun of faculty and students and all of us at the dinner at
graduation when some of the NBA students gave me a silly little trophy
called the penalty Lifetime Achievement Award. Um, I have always been as
proud of that silly little cheap trophy as I am a VIDi award I ever
received. And the reason has to do with just what I was saying. Clearly,
the students felt like they got value out of the degree program. And if
there's anything, I think that matters that matter.