March 3, 2008
Simon: ‘Our best measure is the success of our
graduates’
Simon Dean Mark Zupan (right) talks with graduate students at the business school.
scott.hauser@rochester.edu
Mark Zupan, dean of the Simon School since 2004,
celebrates the business graduate school’s 50th anniversary this
year and looks forward to the next two decades.
Considering Simon’s 50-year history, where
do you see the school going in the next few decades?
The Simon Graduate School of Business has long been
regarded among the world’s best business schools. Most recently, the Financial Times of
London rated Simon third in the world for finance, fourth in the world for
both managerial economics and accounting, and eighth in the world for
statistics. For the second straight year, Simon is ranked 22nd among
business schools in the United States.
We intend to become one of the nation’s 20
leading schools of business within the next five years. Our strategic plan,
approved by the Board of Trustees, outlines the steps needed to achieve
that goal. By 2026, our aspiration is to play at the top 10 level. In the
next five years, the school will increase both student quality and
enrollments, strengthen the faculty’s size and impact, enhance the
curriculum and the sense of community within the school, and launch a major
fundraising campaign.
We will do this by continuing to build on our core
strengths, namely our highly personalized environment for learning and
scholarship, our analytic economics-based approach, the excellent
reputation of our faculty and curriculum, and the diversity of our student
body.
What are the challenges for graduate business
education and where do you see opportunities, both at Rochester and in the
United States?
The challenges facing Simon are the same as those
facing all business schools—increased global competition for
students, faculty, and staff. At Simon, we have turned those challenges
into an opportunity.
In 2006, Simon set a national business school trend
when we established the Simon Early
Leaders initiative, aimed at attracting
premier MBA students with zero to three years of work experience. Simon has
long been open to all sources of talent, regardless of age or other
demographic distinctions. Many of our most prominent alumni came to Simon
directly out of undergraduate studies or shortly thereafter.
Our Early Leaders initiative will increase our competitiveness and has
been a key reason why we have grown our enrollments over the past two years
by 40 percent (significantly above the average of other top 30 business
schools).
Our enrollment growth hasn’t been accomplished
at the expense of quality. Simon is arguably the most improved business
school on admissions quality metrics. In addition, our diversity has been
further strengthened through the initiative: half of our Early Leader students are female
compared to 30 percent female for most MBA programs nationally. To keep
pace with enrollment growth, we intend to grow our faculty by 10 percent
over the next five years. We are very proud of the four new faculty members
we added this year, including Russian sisters Anzhela and Diana Knyazeva,
who joined us as assistant professors of finance, and the international
media coverage they’ve received.
What has Simon become known for over the past
five decades? Do you see the school’s focus changing over time?
Simon is consistently ranked among the world’s
top business schools. We have long been recognized for our analytical,
economics-based curriculum that gives students the tools to solve complex
business problems. Historically, our world-renowned faculty have produced
research, including pioneering work in agency theory led by Michael Jensen
in the 1970s, as well as positive accounting theory and organizational
architecture, that changed the way business is conducted in the boardrooms
of major corporations as well as in the classrooms of other business
schools.
Strengths lie in other areas as well including
marketing, health sciences management, general management,
entrepreneurship, systems-based consulting, and pricing.
We have built and/or are in the process of launching
four new centers and institutes: the Center for Pricing, in partnership
with the Professional Pricing Society; the Center for Information Intensive
Services; the Institute for Health Care Management and the Center for
Leadership Development. Simon will continue to build on its core strengths
while adapting to meet the needs of the marketplace in the years to come.
The business program began life as part of the
arts and sciences undergraduate program but has not had an undergraduate
degree for many years. Is there a place for an undergraduate degree
program?
Thirty-eight of the top 50 business schools have
undergraduate programs in business. It provides a good feeder to the
graduate programs and the undergrad program enrollments have historically
been counter cyclical to the grad programs in terms of volume of students.
We are actively reviewing our options for undergraduate minors as well as
majors.
In addition, through the generosity of trustee Ed
Hajim ’58, chairman and CEO of MLH Capital, we established the Summer
Business Institute @ Simon for college juniors and seniors or recent
college graduates. The Summer Business Institute is a three-week intensive
immersion in three key subject areas: general management, accounting and
finance, and marketing. Participants also have the opportunity to
network with regional CEOs at evening receptions and shadow them on visits
to their companies during the day. Simon also has established Direct
Admission Partnerships with more than 25 liberal arts colleges and
universities to provide Early Leader candidates to our programs.
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