Robert T. Sumichrast
Dean and Simon S. Selig, Jr. Chair for Economic Growth

Published: July 3, 2008 | Vol. 1, Issue 3

I have been dean of the Terry College for one year. The time has flown by, as we have all been busy with our ongoing activities and changes to improve the college.

One of our key accomplishments has been receiving continuing accreditation for six years from our accreditation agency, AACSB International. This assures that all programs in the Terry College — from undergraduate to doctoral — have the stamp of approval of the world's premier business school accrediting body. Overall, the report is very complimentary to Terry. Among the strengths noted was: "Students in all programs of the Terry College spoke highly of their educational experience and access to faculty members." I especially am grateful to our former associate dean, Mel Crask, for his work in compiling the college's self study and organizing so many details of the team's visit, and to Ben Ayers for similar work on the separate accreditation of the Tull School of Accounting. While Mel and Ben played lead roles, our accomplishment was truly a collegewide effort, involving students, faculty, staff and alumni.

Many faces have changed in Terry over the past 12 months as we dealt with retirements of several senior team members. Associate deans Sandra Gustavson and Mel Crask retired, and we reorganized as we replaced these key positions. Mark Dawkins was promoted to associate dean for academic programs and Don Perry to senior director for finance and administration, while Daniel Feldman's administrative role was expanded and his title changed to associate dean for research and international programs. We also appointed two new department heads. Chris Cornwell, a Terry faculty member since 1988, is taking over the Economics Department leadership from Bill Lastrapes, who has decided to return to his faculty duties full-time. We recruited Charlotte Mason from UNC-Chapel Hill to lead the Marketing Department. She will succeed interim head Rich Fox, who will return to focusing on teaching and research. You can read more about these leadership changes in the section of this newsletter on "four administrative hires."

Adding faculty — especially assistant, associate and full professors — is essential for Terry to improve the quality of its educational programs and enhance its reputation. By conducting national searches, we were able to hire eight highly qualified tenure-track faculty members. We can be very proud of their accomplishments as teachers and scholars. However, we had a larger number of faculty retire or resign than we had forecast and our net increase of faculty was smaller than we were hoping for. We will be even more aggressive in recruiting faculty next year.

We have been highly successful in developing new initiatives to connect the college with the business community. And we have continued with successful programs already under way. The 2008 Economic Outlook speeches that I gave throughout the state were very well attended, and it gave me a chance to share our Selig Center economic forecast with alumni and the broader business community. We created a new organization of business leaders from across the country called the Terry Dean's Advisory Council. This council, chaired by Taylor Glover (BBA 1973) of Atlanta, is involved with updating the Terry strategic plan and advising me on a range of projects, including how to improve our facilities in Athens. As you can see from the feature photo and related stories in this newsletter, the Alumni Awards and Gala on May 3 was a huge success. And to channel the enthusiasm of our more recent graduates, our Alumni Board has created the Young Alumni Board — many of these new board members were at the gala and other college events through the year.

So, thank you. It is the alumni, students, faculty and staff who made my first year at Terry so enjoyable. I look forward to working with you over the next year as we move the college toward greater national prominence.

Robert T. Sumichrast, Dean
Terry College of Business