Dean Angelo S. DeNisi
As I sit here at my keyboard, I have a big smile on my face. First of all, on Sunday night the New Orleans Saints defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win their first ever Super Bowl. The Saints are a great symbol of this wonderful city, and I’m sure everyone who loves New Orleans shares in my excitement at seeing the Saints finally reach the top of the profession.
Of course, there is also some great news about the Freeman School that has me smiling. The Financial Times provides head-to-head comparisons of all the MBA programs around the world. They have very transparent criteria, and they truly value internationalization in many of the ranking categories. Each year, as part of the ranking process, the Financial Times contacts the students in one of our MBA alumni classes. We provide the names and contact information and they send out surveys. Last year the response rate from the targeted alumni class was not sufficient, and, as a result, we were not included in the rankings.
Two years ago, we were ranked 80th globally and 45th in the U.S., but it seems as though missing a year really helped us. This year, we were ranked 61st globally and 35th in the U.S. These are the best rankings we have ever received from the Financial Times, and they are a tribute to all the people here who have worked so hard to make the Freeman School the best it can be.
I am also happy to announce four additions to the Freeman School faculty: Eric Hamerman in Marketing, Shittu Ekundayo and Xiaoyue Jiang in INFO/Energy, and Cindy Devers in Strategy. All four will be joining us this year, and our recruiting efforts will continue as well. We may be able to add three more tenure-track faculty members to this group before we are done.
We have had some other positive developments as well. A few months ago, Joe LeBlanc, director of our Trading Center, organized a unique trading competition. More than a dozen schools from around the country competed, and the top 28 students were then invited to New Orleans for the final competition. Joe was able to get a group of 21 traders and senior managers from New York, Chicago and Houston to act as judges, and we got a lot of attention and praise for all of this. Oh, and students from Tulane placed second and fourth overall in the competition. (If we’d placed first, it might have looked like a fix!)
Also, Adrienne Colella, professor of organizational behavior, was elected president-elect of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. This organization (which also serves as Division 14 of the American Psychological Association) represents 10,000 Industrial/Organizational psychologists worldwide. Actually, among our five full professors in the management area, Adrienne is the third faculty member elected president of SIOP, along with two presidents of the Academy of Management (19,000 management faculty worldwide), four fellows of SIOP and the American Psychological Association, three fellows of the Academy of Management, two former journal editors and one associate editor.
In case you needed any proof, we really have a great group of faculty at the Freeman School.
I will close by saying that things are also looking up at Tulane as a whole. We continue to receive record numbers of undergraduate applications, and thanks to some heroic efforts by all those concerned, it looks as though Tulane will be close to retiring its operating deficit this year. This is at least one year ahead of the most optimistic forecasts, so things are really looking up here. Of course, with the Saints winning the Super Bowl, Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest right around the corner, things will be jumping here for a while. This would be a great time to come back and visit!
Angelo DeNisi
Winter 2010
