Mays communicators brought home six awards this spring from the Brazos Bravo ceremony, hosted by the Brazos Valley chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.

Among them was a Brazos Bravo (or best in category) award for feature writing for the Texas Aggie story “The Business of Building Leaders,” won by Dean’s Office Writer Sommer Hamilton and Communications Officer Pam Wiley.

Others:

• The Real Estate Center graphics, design and writing staff won an Award of Excellence for Tierra Grande
• Pam Wiley won an Award of Excellence for Wehner-Schnitzel, the faculty/staff “company picnic” held in the spring
• Sommer Hamilton, Mays Webmaster Matt Herzberger and Pam Wiley won an Award of Excellence for Mays Business Online
• Sommer Hamilton won an Award of Excellence for the Mays Business Online story “Shelter from the Storm“
• Pam Wiley, Matt Herzberger and Sommer Hamilton won an Award of Excellence for the virtual tour site, Explore Mays

Eight Mays professors and 10 PhD students were honored for their teaching, research and service during the business school’s spring faculty/staff meeting in May.

Two master teachers earned the year-long Mays Fellowship for Teaching Innovation. They are Marketing Professor Jeffrey S. Conant, who is also Department of Marketing head-designate, Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence and Eppright University Professor in Undergraduate Teaching Excellence; and Clair Nixon, the PricewaterhouseCoopers Accounting Excellence Professor.

Earning 2006 Summer Teaching Grants for assessment-related projects are
Marketing Professor Paul Busch, Associate Professor of Accounting Annie McGowan, Assistant Professor of Management Elizabeth E. Umphress and Clinical Assistant Professor of Information and Operations Management Dwayne Whitten.

Associate Dean for Graduate Programs Bala Shetty, the Jenna & Calvin R. Guest Professor, was honored with the Dan H. Robertson Distinguished Core MBA Faculty Award. The award’s counterpart in the Executive MBA program, the Executive MBA Teaching Award, went to Asghar Zardkoohi, T.J. Barlow Professor of Management.

PhD students were also honored for their service in the classroom and in the research field.

Earning the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Research by a Doctoral Student are: Kirsten Cook, accounting; Ariel M. Viale, finance; Arunachalam Narayanan, information and operations management; R. Michael Holmes, management; and Tarun Kushwaha, marketing.

Earning the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Doctoral Student are: Lale Guler, accounting; Brooke W. Stanley, finance; Jeremy M. Brann, information and operations management; William J. Worthington, management; and Ann M. Mirabito, marketing.

Also, Mays community members celebrating major milestones in years of service in 2006 together represent 430 years of experience.

Our veteran faculty and staff are:

• Kammy Baumann, Real Estate Center assistant editor, 20 years
• Paul S. Busch, professor of marketing, 20 years
• Jeffrey S. Conant, professor of marketing, 20 years
• Camille Crow, Dean’s Office business administrator, 20 years
• Nancy McQuistion, Real Estate Center associate editor, 20 years
• Arun Sen, professor of information and operations management, 20 years
• Linda Windle, Undergraduate Program Office assistant director, 20 years
• Larry G. Gresham, Jr., associate professor of marketing, 25 years
• Ricky W. Griffin, executive associate dean, 25 years
• James H. Leigh, associate professor of marketing, 25 years
• Marietta J. Tretter, professor of information and operations management, 25 years
• Rajan Varadarajan, Distinguished Professor of Marketing, 25 years
• Asghar Zardkoohi, T.J. Barlow Professor of Management, 25 years
• Charles M. Futrell, Federated Professor of Marketing, 30 years
• Steven D. Grossman, associate professor of accounting, 30 years
• Richard Haney, professor of real estate and finance, 30 years
• Lorence L. Bravenec, professor of accounting, 35 years
• Donald S. Fraser, Hugh Roy Cullen Chair in Business, 35 years

Senior marketing and accounting major Tania Hernandez has already done what many professionals dream about—coordinating and running an international workshop.

Hernandez, a student worker in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M, organized the Multiphase User Roundtable-South America in Isla Margarita, Venezuela, in February. The conference hosted 103 participants from industry, government and academia to discuss developments in the field. The discussion-driven roundtables provided the forum for this interaction.

Hernandez was responsible for planning the event from the ground up, from selecting the venue and scheduling hotel arrangements to developing the program and securing sponsorships. She attended the roundtable discussions, provided on-site support and oversaw every last detail to ensure that the conference ran smoothly.

It was the first roundtable the department has held in South America. “I had to build relationships with company representatives in Venezuela, which was a challenge,” Hernandez said.

Being ready to expect anything and being able to adapt is essential in the business world, Hernandez found. “The language barrier was a real issue, but Venezuela is an extremely high-interest area,” she said. “Our audience spoke mostly Spanish, and we had to use translators, which was also a first for us.”

Marketing PhD student Thomas Dotzel is one of four recipients of the American Marketing Association Services Special Interest Group Liam Glynn Award.

As part of the award, Dotzel earned a $1,500 travel grant to attend the Frontiers in Services Conference in Australia this July. He’ll be recognized at the corresponding awards dinner. Dotzel’s research is in services marketing and service innovation.

Twenty-year Mays veteran and Tenneco Professor Benito Flores is featured in the “!Siempre! Hispanics at Texas A&M, Celebrating 130 Years” exhibit at Cushing Memorial Library, which opened in May.

The exhibit relates to the history and contribution of Hispanics at Texas A&M, and will be on display on the second floor of Cushing through August 2007. Sections of the display are devoted to student life, on-campus workers, and to Hispanics who have served on the faculty and staff and in leadership roles on campus.

Flores joined the business school in 1984 and was named Tenneco Professor in 2001.

Mays was recently notified that federal funding for its Center for International Business Education and Research has been renewed to the tune of approximately $1.5 million over the next four years.

The grant, awarded through a competitive process with the Department of Education’s federal Centers for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) program, allows the Mays CIBER to continue its mission of international education outreach. To prepare Mays students for global business, the CIBER advances international awareness with courses in international business, study abroad and reciprocal exchange opportunities, and through educational enrichment initiatives such as a new “global learning community” set to debut in spring 2007.

“These funds help us internationalize our students, our faculty and our programs and advance innovative educational and research initiatives,” says Kerry Cooper, executive director for international business programs at Mays and holder of the Cullen Trust Chair in Business. “Our philosophy is that all business today is international—you really can’t separate the global aspects of business from the teaching of business itself. Mays students should be prepared to do business anywhere in the world with anyone from any part of the world.”

Mays Fellows put their business skills to work this spring in senior leadership development projects. In one group, six Fellows partnered with Hope Pregnancy Center to help increase awareness of the non-profit organization and its services to unwed pregnant women seeking support.

The team, called Consulting4Hope, worked with Hope Pregnancy Center to help gather and analyze data to reevaluate its marketing plan. The group gathered more than 450 surveys through kinesiology classes to obtain information that helps them better reach the college audience.

Fellows were tasked this year with fulfilling a community need in a project that would bring about $5,000 worth of benefit in man hours, fundraising or volunteer support. One group partnered with the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life to recruit the largest number of relay teams ever for Aggieland’s walk. Another group teamed up to mentor special-education students at A&M Consolidated High School in College Station.

The Hope team sought a project that would combine the business knowledge gleaned from the classroom with real experience to make an impact in the community, says member Lindsay Malecha. The research and data this group provides Hope will help form a new marketing campaign for the organization to increase awareness of its services and to reach more college students.

A wireless console that interprets your car’s check-engine lights and a color-coded technology that indicates wear and tear on industrial belts are the top-winning big ideas in the fourth annual Ideas Challenge. In the challenge, hosted in May by the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship, 10 student teams from across campus took away $13,000 in start-up cash that could help make their products and processes a reality.

Senior engineering technology majors Matthew Johnston, Kurt Richardson, Jud Chilton and Cody Thurston took first place—and $3,000—for their Expandable Vehicle Information System. EVIS is a Bluetooth-enabled dashboard console that can interpret your auto’s malfunctions and give steps to correct them as well sound alerts from rear bumper sensors.

Users of industrial belts in medical equipment, automobiles and petroleum fields usually have to halt work and measure the tension on a given belt to be sure their machines are running smoothly. The team of senior industrial distribution majors Adam Krazer and Kevin Wood took the second place prize of $2,000 with their idea to show strain in industrial belts through a color-changing top layer of the belt.

More than 170 students in 40 teams competed in the challenge, greeting panels of mock investors and industry experts with five-minute “elevator pitches” detailing their ideas and the potential commercial viability of their plans. Students were coached with entrepreneurial mentors in four workshops and drill sessions prior to the May 3 event.

Lynntech underwrote the Ideas Challenge, with some prize money and T-shirts sponsored by Paragon Innovations and PKF Texas.

Each of the remaining top 10 teams earned $1,000. For more on those winners, visithttp://www.tamu.edu/tamunews/News/stories/06/050906news-2.html.

Mays’ Undergraduate Program Office was selected as the 2006 department/office recipient of the Texas A&M Disability Services Diversity Award Partner in Learning Award of Excellence.

The office receiving this award typically goes above and beyond the average criteria for working with students with disabilities. UPO staffers recruit, advise and mentor undergraduates at Mays.

The Department of Marketing hosted its first-ever research camp on innovation and new product management, designed to bring the work of established and emerging scholars together in one spot. Faculty from the University of Texas, UCLA, USC and North Carolina joined Mays’ marketing faculty and doctoral students to discuss their latest findings in the two-day camp in late April.

Thinking about innovation in organizations is a hot topic among researchers and practitioners alike, says research camp organizer and Brandon C. Coleman, Jr. Chair in Marketing Venkatesh Shankar. Research questions will continue to evolve alongside the innovations themselves, he explains: “How do we get new ideas—new products, new processes and new business models—to the marketplace?”

The camp opened the door to feedback on ongoing scholarship and above all is expected to generate new ideas in the growing research culture among marketing faculty. Learn more about presenters and topics at http://wehner.tamu.edu/mktg/Research_Camp/index.html.