The Dean's Corner:
Weyerhaeuser Hall and the School of Global Commerce & Management
By Kyle B. Usrey
Dean, School of Global Commerce & Management

Christmas came early for the School of Global Commerce & Management. In mid-August, just before the start of the fall semester, we moved from Alder Hall to the top floor of Weyerhaeuser Hall, the newly completed, $7.3-million jewel of the campus. On the third floor, in addition to our faculty suites, we have three high-tech classrooms, each with different seating configurations, plus a conference room that we use for meetings and capstone seminar classes. The entire building is wireless, and the conference room is equipped for video-conferencing anywhere in the world. The second floor houses three more classrooms and the departments of sociology and politics & history, while the first floor has the Robinson Teaching Theater, which seats more than 225 people. We are blessed and overwhelmed with gratitude for this magnificent structure that will help us do our jobs better.

Weyerhaeuser Hall, current home of the School of Global Commerce & Management.

Throughout 2004 we continued to bring in speakers from all over the globe and right here in Spokane. Several of our alums have gone on to graduate schools, including some doctoral programs. And once again a student from MIM was selected as one of five American grad students (and one of only 80 students worldwide) to participate in a special UN/WTO program in Geneva that dealt with issues of economic growth, poverty and the environment. Our Herbert B. Jones Foundation grant continues to shine, helping us to develop a culture of entrepreneurship among our students and faculty. And we've made some new hires: Craig Hinnenkamp, Ph.D., who brings many years of organizational business experience to our management students in all three programs (undergrad, OM and MIM); and Mauro Amor, a young visiting economics professor from Argentina via the University of Washington.

Finally, after a three-year process of surveys, benchmarking, and research, we've proposed a completely redesigned business core, along with some revisions to several of our undergraduate majors. Our preparation and hard work paid off, as the whole package of proposals was passed unanimously by the entire college faculty in early December. The business core and majors had not been examined or revised in more than 15 years, and with all the changes that have occurred in business since then, we had some serious work to do. The nature of business education is such that we will always be monitoring our curriculum and pedagogies to make sure they are responsive to the global market in which our graduates must compete, and to that end we have begun an annual survey of alums and friends to help us stay on top of business and economics in the 21st century -- you may have already received an email about those surveys! We now have two advisory boards up and running for our various programs, and we are exploring how we might help prepare our students to engage in the college-wide poverty initiative. Not many business schools get involved in poverty work, but many of our students, faculty, and staff have a heart for community service and appreciate the opportunity to use their business and economics skills to enable the entrepreneurial poor to find or even create job opportunities for themselves. Professors Doug Laher and Jack Gambill, along with Entrepreneur-in-Residence Nigel Davey, have taken the lead in developing viable business plans for working-poor individuals and teams that might be overlooked by traditional "angels" and V.C. financiers, here and abroad. All in all, some wonderful work is going on at the School of Global Commerce. We welcome you to visit us or contact us anytime.

Blessings,
Kyle

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