CBBS Dean’s Blog

Dear CBBS Community,

Financial Crisis—Challenge Not Disaster:

The current economic challenge has been felt by most of higher education, including Clemson University (Clemson). However, Clemson and the College of Business and Behavioral Science (CBBS) have been able to deal with the budget reductions and still focus on the core mission—educating students. CBBS, like the other colleges at Clemson, is still focused on its five year plan. While some components of the plan have been delayed, the college continues to move forward. The goals of the college include enhancing the student learning experience, enhancing the international reputation of the college and increasing financial stability. I thought you would be interested in learning about a few of the initiatives that are helping CBBS accomplish these goals.

The international program has been expanded—increasing the student learning experience and enhancing our international brand. Last year Clemens Schmitz-Justen, the former head of BMW for the United States, was added to head the college’s international management team. Clemens was responsible this year for developing relationships with schools in Paris and Singapore. We hope to have joint programs with both schools shortly. In addition, he offered our students the opportunity to do a study abroad in Brussels this spring. Since Thomas Green Clemson was the first ambassador to Belgium, it is appropriate that we strengthen our ties with this European Union member.

CBBS plans to expand its presence in Greenville.  As President Barker stated in a recent GSA Business article, “There’s no better laboratory for our business students, specifically graduate students, than downtown Greenville….  It would give them a connection to one of the best business districts in the United States.” The college already offers its working-professionals’ MBA program in Greenville at the University Center. It anticipates moving all of its MBA programs, the full time and the working professionals’ MBA programs to Main Street in Greenville during 2009.

During these challenging economic times, it is important for the college to remain focused on development. Missy Ryan has done an excellent job of keeping the college and its mission foremost in the minds of our alumni. As a result, alumni have stepped up to support the college by providing discretionary dollars, rather than endowment funds, that can be used by the college to maintain its momentum. The college continues to focus on the future and the fact that it will come out of these economically challenging times even more competitive.  To ensure this, development efforts are been focused on three areas 1) student scholarships, 2) faculty support and 3) endowed chairs. All three help CBBS achieve the goals cited above.

As you know, we have eight departments and ROTC. I believe it is important for you to know some of the great things that are happening in these areas. So, periodically, I will provide you with information about specific areas.

Department of Management:

The management information systems program, in the Department of Management, at Clemson University is one of the most productive in the world, according to a paper published in Communications of the Association for Information Systems (CAIS).

Varun Grover, the William S. Lee Professor of Information Systems at Clemson, was ranked 4th of 3,404 published information systems researchers in the world based on the number of publications in the top six journals. The program’s Ph.D. students also received recognition. They are ranked first in productivity, along with the University of British Columbia and the University of Arizona, in the top six information systems journals between 2003 and 2007.

In rankings of the top three, six and nine information systems journals, Professor Grover was ranked among the top five researchers. This is the sixth study in the past 10 years that has ranked Grover among the top five researchers based on publications in major journals. A ranking of information systems faculty as a group at each institution also places Clemson among the top in the world. The Clemson faculty is ranked in the top 20 when listing productivity in the top nine journals, among the top 10 in a rank of the top six journals and among the top 20 on the list of top three journals.  They are ranked first, with the University of British Columbia and Case Western Reserve University on publications per faculty.

As the department of Management chair, Sri V. Sridharan said, “This is a testament to the role a senior scholar and endowed chair can play in building Ph.D. programs and research.”

The information published in CAIS was provided by University of Texas at San Antonio professors Jan Guynes Clark, John Warren and Yoris A. Au. The study examines the leading information systems researchers and their universities.  The authors reviewed publications from nine leading information systems journals from 2003 to 2007, during which time 3,404 researchers contributed 2,155 published articles from 610 universities in 48 countries.

ROTC:

The ROTC program continues to gain recognition. The AFROTC Detachment had an Air Education and Training Command Inspector General evaluation.  We received an “Excellent” overall on the inspection and an “Outstanding” in the training sub-area (preparing the cadets for commissioning).  Additionally, the Detachment was named the SC Outstanding ROTC Detachment of the Year by the SC Air Force Association.   

The Army ROTC unit hosted the 101^st Airborne Parachute Demonstration Team “Screaming Eagles.” The 101^st team provided tandem jumps for 14 ROTC students—and one dean. It was a lot of fun.

Claude