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Business School Professor Ranked as a Global Leader in Research in Mobile Information Technology
Professor Williams: A Woman to Watch
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Senior Accounting Honors Student is Maryland’s Sole Recipient of AICPA/Accountemps Scholarship
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MBA Student's Business Brings Joy to Others
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Subscribers can contact Danielle Giles, at dgiles@ubalt.edu or by phone at 410.837.4948 to share comments pertaining to the newsletter.
 
Murray M. Dalziel, Ph.D.
Message from the Dean

Every day I learn more about what makes the Merrick School of Business a unique place to earn a degree, as well as a place to work and live out our dreams. I’m really pleased to be a part of all that is happening at this great School. 

Since my arrival in August, I’ve been meeting with many of our stakeholders (faculty, staff, students, alumni, benefactors), and developing a sense of who we are now and what direction we might go in the next few years. One of my observations thus far is that our stakeholders are passionate about business—which is a good thing, because so am I.

Curiosity drives my passion for business. I’m endlessly curious about how it works, driven every day to make it better, and unabashedly optimistic about its future. As the dean of this well-established institution, I'm fortunate to have a background in both academia and business. I've worked here in the U.S. and in Europe. I’ve led teams and had clients on every continent. I hope these experiences will contribute the important task at hand. As I see it—and I believe my colleagues agree—that task is sharply focused on teaching, learning, research, and real-world solutions to the challenges that business faces every day.

Let me quickly share my thoughts on three ideals that I believe are essential for the Merrick School’s success::

  • leadership,
  • change, and
  • the amazing potential that business holds.  

We are fortunate that these are ideals that are deeply embedded in the Merrick School of Business. Taken separately, they may mean very little. But together, they are a formula for what our students, prospective students, business partners, faculty colleagues, alumni and friends understand and expect from themselves, and from us: leadership, change and potential are what we rely on as we aspire to be the best business school in Baltimore and a leading global professional school.

As for me, I’m feeling right at home because I live and breathe these as ideals too. For example, my passion for business starts with my background as a social scientist. I'm intensely interested in how things really work. As a profession, social scientists are concerned with the structure of groups, neighborhoods, cities, societies, and so on. I have never lost this perspective. You can’t be successful in business if you are not intensely interested in your customers. And you can’t be a good manager if you aren’t deeply involved in what’s working—or not working, and why that’s the case.

For me, I found that pursuing a career in business fulfilled another great need: I take great satisfaction in seeing things get done. Those of you with lots of experience in business know that this is not as easy as it sounds. There are multiple ways to accomplish tasks, meet goals and enact strategies (and also multiple ways to screw things up).  So it is immensely gratifying when you get what I like to call “living, breathing results.”  The University of Baltimore’s tagline is “Knowledge That Works.” I hope that what we provide at Merrick is place where our students can discover their passions for business—and also to know the singular joy of discovering ways to make things work.

I’m also passionate about leadership. I found very early in my career that it is not sufficient to have great insights. You need to take others with you. But I've also learned that great leadership is more than inviting folks to go for a ride—great leaders consistently make others feel strong, capable and inventive. That is why great leaders create great organizations, and why leadership should be seen as a vocation rather than a task. At Merrick, I like to think that we initiate our students to that vocation and that they carry that passion about leadership throughout their lives.

I'm a big believer in change as well. No, not change for the sake of change; I wrote a book way back in 1988 about how to make everyday changes happen—and one of its key tenets is that change has to be purposeful! I see business as an instrument for good and for positive evolution in our communities. Think of the things we buy every day that we often take for granted—like soap. It may surprise you to think about it, but the action of washing hands has been quite transformative over the past several years. There was a time when only moms and doctors preached the practice regularly. (And did we listen? Well….) Now we understand that washing our hands can eliminate disease and improve lives. It can even increase productivity, in the sense that we may avoid some sick days. This is business at work, changing our world for the better.  

Whether or not business has a direct goal of making life better, its impact can be deep—perhaps unmatched by any other endeavor we know. My hope is that our students will go on to satisfying careers, contributing to companies but also making a big difference in our communities. For me, and for our friends from Baltimore to Dubai, from London to Sao Paulo, this is the proof that Merrick creates knowledge, and that we put it to work.

Thank you for being part of this—the Merrick Way.

Sincerely,

Murray M. Dalziel, Ph.D.



Dean
Merrick School of Business

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