Published on Friday, May 23, 2008
What a year it’s been! The tempo continues to be fast and furious, moving the School to new heights. My summary below of recent successes is lengthy, but I think you’ll be excited to hear of our progress and accomplishments on so many fronts.
1. On Saturday the 17th, amidst the pomp and beautiful pageantry of CGU’s Commencement, we celebrated the entry of 86 new Drucker graduates into the ranks of alumni and lifelong members of what I call the “extended Drucker family.” What a moving and wonderful occasion it was…with inspiring keynote speeches and special seminars with honorary degree recipients (including Nobel Laureate Robert Merton). A special celebration for the graduates was held the evening before at the Burkle Building where 250 family and friends toasted the new graduates and their commitment to bring the “Drucker Difference” to organizations in every sector around the world. Professors Jay Prag and Vijay Sathe were bestowed by students with the award of Professors of the Year, an honor particularly significant at a School ranked in the Top Ten by Princeton Review for the quality of the Classroom Experience! How special it was that Doris Drucker, the First Lady of our community, was able to join us throughout.
2. Professor Joseph Maciariello has completely revised Peter Drucker’s classic, Management, which was published earlier this month in an initial printing of 50,000, with a forward by Jim Collins. This is a revision of Drucker’s classic work from 1973 and has the potential to become the managerial equivalent of the Physician’s Desk Reference. A launch party for Joe’s book will be held at the Wells Fargo museum in Los Angeles on June 10th. (www.cgu.edu/pages/4767.asp?item=2018)
3. "Connie Martinson Talks Books," was donated to the Drucker Institute Connie Martinson. The collection holds nearly 3,000 tapes Martinson has amassed since her television show debuted in 1979. Institute Director Rick Wartzman and his staff have compiled a list of 100 interviews, from Buzz Aldrin to Joseph Wambaugh -- representing the archive's wide-ranging nature -- to begin digitizing immediately.
4. Our Drucker Video Magazine is in its 6th edition! This outreach tool is unique among business/management schools and gives our constituents the opportunity to see classic Drucker clips, get exciting updates on new initiatives, as well as be introduced to current students, faculty and staff. In this edition Peter Drucker talks about what prompted him to write his now famous “The Practice of Management,” which laid the foundation for a new field of study. Be sure to check it out!
5. This month we received formal notification that the Drucker School has received reaffirmation of our accreditation from AACSB. This is a major milestone, as we were measured against AACSB’s stringent new standards regarding Assurance of Learning. The report by a prestigious panel of three business school deans (Babson, Tulane and Washington University) concluded that Drucker exemplifies “best-practice” in a number of areas including our focus on the Drucker Difference, our passion around mission, the success of our joint FE Program with Math, the quality of faculty-staff-student interaction, the strength of our creative Executive Management Program, and the development of the Drucker Institute.
6. Katharina Pick, a recent Ph.D. from Harvard, will join us this summer on a two year appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor. Ms. Pick has done impressive research on corporate governance and boards of directors. She will teach organizational behavior, as well as a new course on women and leadership.
7. The Drucker School has signed on to become an initial and leading member of PRiME, the Principles of Management Education, in conjunction with AACSB and the UN Global Compact. I served on the AACSB Task Force that formulated the principles and was one of six deans who presented them to UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon in Geneva.
8. The Drucker School’s faculty continues to be unusually prolific and intellectually productive: Professor Craig Pearce received the 2008 Asia Pacific Leadership Award from the Asian Pacific Human Resource Congress in India this February. Professor Jenny Darroch has a paper under review with the Journal of Marketing: “Does marketing suffer from managerial myopia?” Professor Jean Lipman-Blumen co-edited The Art of Followership: How great followers create great leaders and organizations, described by James MacGregor Burns as a work that is expected to become a “landmark in the complexities of the leader-follower dynamic.” Professor James Wallace appears in the current issue of Applied Corporate Finance with a paper similar to his book, Value(s)-Based Management which is slated for publication this fall. Clinical Associate Professor Roberto Pedace’s paper, “Earnings, performance, and nationality discrimination in a highly competitive labor market as an analysis of the English Professional Soccer League” was published as the lead article in the current issue of the Journal of Sports Economics. Adjunct Professor Jeremy Hunter will present a paper at this summer’s Academy of Management entitled, “Mindfulness in the workplace: an exploratory study.” 9. The Drucker School has been retained by the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California to assist with a series of executive retreats with a focus on corporate governance. MWD and its 37 member board are responsible for providing safe, affordable and reliable water for the 18 million person Southern California region. Our Panda corporate executive education program is now in its 8th year, and our deep relationship with Edward Jones continues to strengthen. A new corporate executive education program with Fujitsu was launched this month, and we are actively exploring additional programs with two other major global corporations. 10. Associate Dean Hideki Yamawaki and I have held preliminary conversations regarding possible institutional collaborations with a number of educational institutions, both within the CUC and outside of Claremont. These range from potential joint or concurrent JD/MBA programs to new degrees in entertainment management; joint programs in business and design; and a range of collaborations with CGU’s new School of Community and Global Health, including a possible exciting MPH/MBA degree, and a new master’s program in global health systems management and leadership. 11. The Drucker Institute recently added two new members to its impressive global board: John Byrne, Executive Editor of Business Week, and Allison Graff-Weisner, founding Executive Director of CityYear LA. The second Drucker Society Global Symposium will be held at CGU June 11-13, and is expected to attract delegations from twelve Drucker Societies in eight countries in four continents, as well as at least four prospective new Drucker societies. The Drucker Institute has recently created an impactful slideshow entitled “Closing the Responsibility Gap,” which asserts that the need for effective management and ethical leadership is the moral equivalent of global warming. The presentation has already been made to a dozen local audiences (most recently at CalTech and at CGU’s Alumni Day) and will soon travel to Dallas, Texas and Nanjing, China. Since my last report in January which announced nearly $1 million in new pledges and funding, an additional $470,000 has been pledged by a board member over the next five years to support core activities of the Drucker Institute. 12. The Drucker School is reaching out to the larger community in new ways. For instance, we inaugurated a Drucker School Leadership Conference: Create Your Own Future event that attracted some 50 students from the Claremont Colleges, working professionals, current Drucker students and prospects. The School’s Net Impact chapter is becoming active with a speakers series, including world-renowned social entrepreneur Iqbal Quadir, the founder of Grameen Phone and director of MIT’s program on social innovation to combat poverty. The Drucker School’s Women in Leadership Association (WILA) hosted a spring conference featuring a keynote address by Prof. Jean Lipman-Blumen, with panels on women as entrepreneurs, corporate social responsibility, healthy living, and non-traditional leadership. I have joined the board of the Alliance for Commercialization of Technology (ACT) that is attempting to make the Inland Empire more attractive to entrepreneurs, and am now contributing a monthly column on issues of interest to the region in the Sun newspaper. Most recently “Why the Inland Empire Matters in Bad Times” (http://www.sbsun.com/search/ci_9219673) 13. Enrollment at Drucker this year exceeded 260 FTE, above budget, and the first reversal of declining enrollment trends in several years. Next year generally looks positive again, with a sustained commitment to achieving our Q-squared strategy of improving the quality and quantity of our student body. While FE applications are up 23%, the rate of increase in FE will slow, in order to consolidate gains and to ensure a greater representation of U.S. students. MBA will sustain this year’s remarkable increase in GMAT scores (by 44 points!) of entering students, while attempting to grow the program slightly. MBA applications are up by 19%. EMP is slated for a dramatic increase. MAACM, our joint program with Arts and Humanities, may yet become a fourth major cylinder of growth in future years with the recent addition of Laura Zucker, the Executive Director of the LA Commission on the Arts, as our very capable and credible (part-time) director. Laura is likely to help dramatically increase interest, awareness and applications to our renamed Arts Management Program going forward. Please keep sending talented prospects our way! 14. Faculty searches continue in the two named Drucker chairs, plus marketing, finance, and leadership. Consultant Arnie Miller has introduced us to several distinguished faculty who would otherwise never have replied to a traditional advertisement. To compensate for three faculty members on sabbaticals next year and the vacancies left by Richard Smith’s leave of absence and Richard Ellsworth’s retirement, we have retained the services of a number of talented affiliated and adjunct faculty to teach new courses. These include management consultant Joseph Lee, “Management Consulting: Profession and Practice;” Professor Jack Pearce (Villanova), “Entrepreneurship;” Professor Julia Liebeskind (USC), “Sustainable Business Innovations;” Professor Paul Zak (SPE), “Moral Leadership and the Brain;” former Drucker School Dean Sid Harris on “IT and Management;” and Edward Jones’ John Bachmann on “Lessons on Leadership.” 15. Richard Ellsworth will be missed greatly as he heads into retirement. His contributions to the Drucker School and the great Drucker Community have been many. I tried to capture a portion of his impact in the proclamation I penned for the occasion which reads in part, “Richard Ellsworth represents the heart and the soul and the core of the Drucker Difference and everything that makes us so special – including a love of teaching and an emphasis on values. Dick has modeled those values and practiced what he preached and served as a good citizen and a great and gracious colleague. Dick always made people want to be better and listened and heard and respected everyone in the Drucker community and touched all who experienced his grace and statesman-like bearing: Now therefore be it resolved that the Drucker School and CGU community express their enormous admiration, affection and gratitude to a colleague who walks the talk and will always stand tall as an example of excellence in scholarship, teaching and service, and a commitment to values-oriented management education for future effective managers and ethical leaders in all sectors of society.” As mentioned in the most recent edition of the Drucker Video Magazine (www.cgu.webvideovision.com), we’ve generated tremendous momentum and we are on a roll. The Drucker Community in the end is a partnership. To sustain our performance and continue to improve, as Peter would have counseled, we need you to partner with us to ensure continued progress. Please call me with your thoughts, get involved as a mentor, set up an internship with your organization, or send a check. Each and every level of support matters. Together we will see the Drucker School reach new heights.
With gratitude for your continued interest and support,
Ira A. Jackson Henry Y. Hwang Dean and Professor of Management Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate of Management Claremont Graduate University
