Message From The Dean

This spring, with earth-moving work underway to prepare the site, one of 
our major goals is being realized: Within eighteen months, the UTD School 
of Management (SOM) will have a state-of-the-art building to call home. 
Breaking ground is a major step forward in consolidating and upgrading our 
resources. It's also a step forward in addressing our pressing need for 
classroom space and faculty offices.

As construction begins, we continue raising our share of the matching 
funds required by the Regents of the U.T. System in 2000 when they 
allocated thirty million dollars for the thirty-eight million-dollar 
facility. We have received generous support toward our eight million-
dollar goal-with more than half the needed funds donated or pledged-and we 
have many corporate, alumni, and individual supporters to thank. You will 
find articles in this issue that report on construction, recognize 
contributors, and spell out details for the "Building for the Future" 
campaign now in progress to raise the remaining funds.

A second major goal has also been realized this spring with the 
announcement that our School has received full accreditation from AACSB 
International - The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, 
the premier accrediting agency and service organization for business 
schools. We received accreditation for our undergraduate, master's, and 
PhD programs in business and separately for our accounting programs. 
Accreditation is an important milestone. It verifies that we are providing 
a quality education and validates our efforts to create a model business 
school at UTD.

As our goals of accreditation and new facilities become reality, our 
faculty is gaining national and international recognition. We continue to 
emphasize hiring the most qualified professionals whose focus is on 
excellence in both teaching and research. Our efforts are paying off. The 
School now has a full-time faculty numbering eighty-four, and their work 
is being lauded at the highest levels. In the last several months, the 
American Finance Association awarded Professor Yexiao Xu the prestigious 
Smith Breeden Award, its best-paper prize, for the paper on stock 
volatility he wrote with colleagues at the Federal Reserve Bank, 
Princeton, and Harvard. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics 
Engineers (IEEE), Inc. elected Professor Suresh Sethi an IEEE Fellow, an 
honor bestowed each year on only one-tenth of one percent of its members 
worldwide.

Attracting and retaining a high-quality faculty is our ongoing goal, and 
the story in this issue on named and endowed chairs speaks to some of the 
challenges and opportunities involved in that enterprise. This issue also 
highlights initiatives by SOM faculty in their research and interaction 
with the business community in the story on the School's academic centers. 
These centers provide excellent vehicles for input from industry on topics 
of research that address industry's needs. In addition, they extend the 
School into the business community by sponsoring forums and hosting short 
courses, and they give students experience with real-world business 
issues.

The growth in our faculty reflects the rapid growth in our enrollments, 
which have increased by fifty percent in the last three years. This 
spring, our enrollment totals slightly more than forty-three hundred, 
making The School of Management the largest school on campus and 
accounting for twenty-three percent of the University's total credit 
hours. Such growth speaks to the quality not only of our faculty but also 
of the programs and opportunities we offer students. The story in this 
issue on SOM's student organizations and programs relates several 
important aspects of our efforts to provide students with the best 
possible management education.

With these achievements, we are at an important juncture in our quest to 
become one of the leading public business schools in the nation. We invite 
our alumni and friends to continue helping us as we work to realize our 
goals.

Hasan Pirkul 
Visit our site on the worldwide web 
http://som.utdallas.edu