Denise Whisenant, education coordinator at the Real Estate Center, won an outstanding education award from the Association of Real Estate License Law Officials for the development of the new state legal update and ethics mandatory course program.

Whisenant developed the course materials, and shares the award with the Texas Real Estate Commission’s Gwen Jackson.

Kathleen Seiders, a marketing PhD graduate and current associate professor at Boston College, is the 2006 recipient of the Thomas C. Kinnear/Journal of Public Policy and Marketing Award.

The award, meant to highlight high-quality research on public policy in marketing, honors Seiders’ Fall 2004 article, “Obesity and the Role of Food Marketing: A Policy Analysis of Issues and Remedies.”

Seiders was affiliated with the Center for Retailing Studies at Mays, and taught at Babson College before joining Boston College. She had a ten-year career in food retailing, with a focus on operations management. She has been a guest on BBC Radio, National Public Radio’s Marketplace and All Things Considered, CBS This Morning, CBS 60 Minutes and CNBC news. Her current research projects focus on service convenience.

With former director R. Malcolm Richards’ departure to accept a post as dean at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, long-time Real Estate Center associate director Gary Maler has stepped in as interim director.

Maler has been with A&M for 27 years, and has been a Real Estate Center administrator since 1991. As associate director, Maler shared responsibility for leading and managing the center’s research, education and communications activities. He directly managed large research projects, such as Harris Interactive’s 2004 “Homebuying Among Ethnic Groups” survey.

Along with members of the Texas Real Estate Commission, Maler served on a task force that examined problems with mandatory continuing real estate education. He helped facilitate the standardization of the curricula for the required legal and ethics courses. Under his guidance, the center took on the responsibility of writing new textbooks and teacher guides and training real estate teachers to teach these essential courses.

Maler is well known throughout the Texas real estate community, having facilitated hundreds of focus groups and strategic thinking and decision-making meetings. He has taught strategic thinking in the Mays Business School’s Center for Executive Development.

Each year, Mays honors the dedicated service and stellar contributions of faculty and staff.

The 2005-2006 honorees are…

Mays Distinguished Research Achievement Awards:

• Mary Lea McAnally, associate professor of accounting
• Trevis Certo, assistant professor of management

Mays Fellowships:

• Ekkehart Boehmer, assistant professor of finance
• Gilad Chen, assistant professor of management
• Ramona Paetzold, associate professor of management (a two-time Fellow)
• E. Powell Robinson, information and operations management professor (and two-time Fellow)
• Michael S. Wilkins, associate professor of accounting (and two-time Fellow)

Outstanding Staff Awards:

• Camille Crow, business adminstrator, Office of the Dean
• Pam Curry, administrative assistant, Center for Executive Development
• Sonia Garcia, recruitment coordinator, Undergraduate Program Office
• Pam Wiley, communications officer, Office of the Dean

Uzma Raja, a PhD candidate in information and operations management, has been competitively selected as an SAS Student Ambassador, which pays all her expenses to present a paper related to her dissertation in the March 2006 SAS Users Group International Conference in San Francisco. Raja’s paper is titled, “Investigating Open Source Project Success — A Data Mining Approach to Model Formulation, Testing and Validation.”

As a student ambassador at the 31st annual conference, Raja will interact with international audiences of SAS users from researchers and SAS experts to business leaders and industry specialists.

Neal W. Adams ’68, BBA in marketing, was recently appointed vice chair of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board by Governor Rick Perry ’72. Adams is chair of the Coordinating Board’s Strategic Planning Committee and was formerly a member of the Administration and Financial Planning Committee, Campus Planning Committee and the Legislative Relations Committee.

The Coordinating Board works with the Texas Legislature, the governor, the governing boards of colleges and universities and higher education officials to efficiently provide wide access to quality higher education throughout the state.

Adams is principal attorney and co-owner of the Adams, Lynch & Loftin, P.C., law firm in Bedford, Texas. He is a former member of the Board of Managers for the Tarrant County Hospital District, former member and president of the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District, former chairman of the board and co-editor of the Newsletter for the School Law Section of the State Bar of Texas, and former member of the Board of Directors of the State Bar Board of Legal Specialization.

The Center for Retailing Studies organized the second annual Retailing Hall of Fame held in January in New York, introducing A&M students to a crowd of famed retailers.

Nine Zale Leadership Scholars and two Corps of Cadet members helped host the ceremonies. Six executives were inducted into the Retailing Hall of Fame, nominated by members of the Retail Writer’s Guild, and ultimately selected by a board of senior executives. The awards honor the greatest leaders in retail, both past and present.

This year’s inductees include Marvin Girouard ’61, chairman and CEO of Pier 1 Imports and a 1995 Mays Outstanding Alumnus; Len Roberts, executive chairman of RadioShack Corporation; CEO Kip Tindell, Chairman Garrett Boone and Chief Merchandising Officer Sharon Tindell of The Container Store; and R. H. Macy, founder of Macy’s. In addition, Talbots was presented with the Maritz Research Retailing Leadership Award for its commitment to helping women obtain college degrees.

David M. Szymanski, founder of the Retailing Hall of Fame and director of the Center for Retailing Studies, said the Hall of Fame fills an important void in celebrating retailing and “represents the forum for permanently recognizing leaders in retailing.”

A portion of the proceeds to the sold-out event benefit the Retailing Leaders of Tomorrow Scholarship Fund, which provides two full-tuition scholarships to students pursuing retailing studies at Mays. This year’s recipients are junior marketing majors Heather Haralson and Lauren Rambo.

Visit http://retailinghalloffame.com to learn more about the Hall of Fame honorees.