In my first few weeks—18 months ago to be exact—of becoming the dean of the Merrick School of Business, one of my Advisory Council members told me that I should never forget that Merrick School graduates are the backbone of Baltimore business. Indeed, I see strong examples of that evidence at almost every business event I attend. While I have many more alumni to meet, I can attest that our graduates are moving business forward here in Baltimore and throughout the state, with the same strength that a backbone provides to the human body.

What I find most incredible is how embedded into the region's professional and business network our alumni are. For example, Merrick School has more alumni who are managing partners in accountancy firms in Maryland than any other school, and that is not just this year, that is for more than 15 years and counting. Our alumni pop up at some of Baltimore’s flagship companies like Under Armor as well as entrepreneurial start-ups found throughout the state. Our alumni are everywhere, and their impact is helping Baltimore move forward.

One of my favorite things about the school is something that you can really feel when you walk the halls or move around campus: the deep diversity of our students. When I step back and look at our students, and where they come from, I sincerely believe that UB is a life-enriching and life-changing place to study.

Recently, I visited a university in Asia and they proudly showed me the brochure they had produced for an exchange program with a very good private college in the Midwest. To me, the brochure exhibited a deliberate balance of gender and ethnic diversity, showcased in a photo of young students posed on a lush college lawn. Maybe it was all that lovely green grass, or maybe the cashmere sweaters—but to me, it seemed inauthentic. It certainly was not Baltimore, not the Merrick School of Business. After taking a look at the brochure, I told the school’s dean: "That's a great partner to have, but if your students come to Baltimore they will study with students from the real America."

I mean no offense. But allow me to brag: our location is one of the best places anywhere to study business. Baltimore is a proving ground for every industry you can think of, every bleeding-edge kind of company you can imagine.

The fact that Baltimore is a port city makes us a prime contender when it comes to reaching out to international partners. We’re working diligently to build our global reach. Recently, we signed letters of cooperation with schools in China, South Korea, the UK, Switzerland and Germany. More will follow. Also, we will continue the rich tradition of our Global Field Studies program, made possible by the Wright Global Scholars Fund—an endowed fund to help students study abroad. In the last five years, the fund has allowed an average of 41 students to travel to two to three different countries each year. Next year, we’ve planned courses to the Philippines, Italy and South Korea—three more on our growing list.  

Looking to the future also includes parting ways with one of our partners. Since 2006, the MBA program has been jointly offered with one of our University System of Maryland sister institutions, Towson University. The Memorandum of Understanding for the jointly offered UB/Towson MBA expired in October 2015, and both universities decided not to renew it. That decision was ratified by the USM Board of Regents. We are committed to students in that program to ensure that they graduate under the terms in which they enrolled. For new students and for our alumni, you can be confident that the UB MBA—which has been offered since 1972 and is now being reestablished—will remain the high-quality program that you should expect from a leading professional school.

Our vision includes moving away from being a "leading professional school of business" to a "nationally recognized professional school of business." We know this is ambitious. But our students, alumni and the city of Baltimore deserve a top-notch business school. We are proud to be an "applied school," where students see practical applications of their work in the classroom and beyond. These applications must be built on sound, and indeed, leading research and knowledge creation. To that end, we have faculty who are writing and conducting research on topics such as:

• entrepreneurial baby boomers
• robust optimization
• big data
• board independence and its impact on the cost of debt
• innovation processes in emerging economies
• African social enterprise
• the role of trust in stock market reactions to earnings announcements
• the role of knowledge parks and science cities in innovation-based economic development
• mobile information systems in the workplace
• the roles of anger and advocacy in promoting organizational change
• trends and convergence in global housing markets

Most recently Mikhail Pevzner, associate professor of accounting, along with his co-authors, received a best paper award from Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory for “Audit Quality: Insights from the Academic Literature.” This accomplishment covers a three-year period of research.