Graham, who is hardly a stranger to any challenge, is blazing a fresh path through academia with the goal of creating profitable businesses to encourage economic growth and help the underprivileged abroad.

Joshua Graham ’14 is combining studies at Mays and the Bush School with an eye towards bringing social entrepreneurship to the Middle East.

He is working toward two certificates at Mays in Entrepreneurship and Business, while pursuing his master’s degree in International Affairs with a focus on International Economics and Development at the Bush School of Government and Public Service.

“At A&M right now you cannot apply for two graduate degrees at the same time,” Graham explains. “I have a habit of creating paths and avenues and opportunities where many don’t exist.”

Graham applied to numerous joint MBA/Masters of International Affairs programs, but wanted to come to Texas A&M despite the lack of a similar program. So Graham improvised, choosing the master’s program at the Bush School and selecting two essential certificates at Mays.

“The business education will provide me with the necessary skills to be a successful entrepreneur and have the basic business skills and education that are important to success in the private sector,” he says.

This is Graham’s second go-around at Texas A&M, having first attended the Bush School in the spring of 2003 for a graduate certificate in Advanced International Affairs. In the fall of 2012, Graham returned to Aggieland with a very unique goal in mind.

“I’m wanting eventually to do social entrepreneurship in the Middle East,” Graham says of his future. “I want to basically be in a capacity to build companies, hire locals, sell off the companies and use profits to build orphanages and schools in places like Gaza or the Palestinian camps of Lebanon, or the slums of Cairo.”

Specifically, Graham wants to bring Western technologies to the Middle East that are applicable in emerging markets. While working at the Office of Technology Commercialization at Texas A&M, he has been exposed to some of the technologies he’s thinking of. For example, a technology that can effectively remove harmful materials from water and soil could revolutionize agriculture in the Middle East and help spur economic growth in the area.

Graham’s relationship with the Middle East is not just a future plan, but something that has been developing since his first visit there in the summer of 2000. The trip came three months before the half-decade long period of violence known as the second intifada began between the two countries. This and other experiences abroad gave Graham a new perspective on the world, and when he returned to the United States, he decided against his original plan to be a high school history teacher and basketball coach.

“I changed my career path and went to D.C. for an internship on Capitol Hill,” Graham says. “My first day on Capitol Hill was 9/11.”

That was when Graham’s interest in the Middle East intensified. Instead of moving back to sunny L.A. to resume his original life plans, Graham enrolled in the Trinity Forum Academy on the Chesapeake Bay in eastern Maryland.

“I researched the Islamic civilization, the Islamic way of war, [and] religion’s role in international affairs.”

From there, Graham worked in various roles for the government, including working for members of congress and serving side by side with the military in the Middle East. He has certainly come a long way from that first visit. His vision for the region at first seems out of place coming from a man who spent Easter Sunday in 2008 in a hardened bunker in Iraq instead of a chapel, but he hasn’t let all of the negative experiences cloud his perspective.

“It’s gone from kind of a pure frustration-fascination with the history, to a hate-love relationship to a love-hate relationship and then finally, one that wants to be engaged with it for my career,” Graham says about how his feelings towards the Middle East have evolved over time. “I can always learn from other people, no matter their background, their nationality, or their perspective. To serve your fellow man is a tremendous privilege.”

In the business specialty rankings, the management program at Mays ranked 9th among public schools and tied for 15th overall.

“We are obviously pleased with our movement forward in the recent U.S. News rankings,” said Mays Dean Jerry Strawser. “To be recognized among the top business schools in the country is an honor, and reflects the high quality of our students and faculty and the success of our students upon graduation.”

The undergraduate business program rankings are based on a survey of deans and senior faculty at each business school accredited by the AACSB.

In the winter of 2010, David Mims sat at his desk in Midland, Texas talking about the university that had meant so much to him. He remembered his days in the Corps of Cadets, the friendships he forged around campus and the difference that his time spent at Texas A&M had made in his life. It was during this time that he made the decision, with his wife Becky, to establish a scholarship at Mays Business School to invest in future generations of Aggies.

J. David ’71 and Becky Mims

“Mentoring young people was important to him,” Becky Mims says of David. “His business degree had provided a good life for him and our family, so we talked about doing something to give back.”

Equipped with a management degree from Texas A&M and a master’s of business administration from Auburn University, where he met Becky, David and his bride moved to Houston in 1973 where David was a national bank examiner and worked for Southwest Bancshares Holding Company. Then, in 1977, they moved to his hometown of Midland and David joined his father in the insurance business – two things Becky said he swore he would never do. But David found success in that business due to his example of integrity that gave his customers comfort they would be taken care of when they worked with him.

“His priority in business was to be a man of integrity, to practice honesty. He treated people how he wanted to be treated. He was a Christian man of incredible values,” says Becky.

Becky and David shared these core qualities with their daughters Melanie Curtis and Allison Greer, and now the Mims family hopes to share David’s legacy with many more Aggie business students who receive their scholarship. David Mims passed away on September 11, 2011, but thanks to the gift that David started and his family’s promise to continue it in his memory, his impact on Mays Business School and the young people he cared so much for will live on.

“We are so thankful to the Mims family for their generous commitment to our School,” says Mays Dean Jerry Strawser. “Their decision to honor David’s lifetime and legacy of excellence will provide opportunities for our students for many years to come.”

About Mays Business School

Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School educates more than 5,000 undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students in accounting, finance, management, management information systems, marketing and supply chain management. Mays consistently ranks among the top public business schools in the country for its undergraduate and MBA programs, and for faculty research. Its mission is to create knowledge and develop ethical leaders for a global society.

(L to R) Aggie Olympians Deon Lendore ’15, Rita Medrano ’12 and Jaele Patrick ’12

The largest group of Texas A&M Olympians in school history – 23 students and two coaches – brought home four medals, including three gold. Aggie women’s swimming head coach Steve Bultman was on the Team USA staff and swimming letterman Rick Walker was on the Egyptian swimming staff.

The Aggies representing 15 countries saw action in four sports – swimming and diving (12), track and field (8), archery (2) and basketball (1).

Lendore, a freshman, anchored Trinidad & Tobago to win a bronze in the men’s 4x400m relay. The squad held off the British for the bronze medal position.

Hitt

To compile this list, the authors ranked 384 of the most highly cited management scholars of the past three decades based on both their number of academic journal citations and the web references to their work on nonacademic sites – those that do not end in .edu – indexed by the Google search engine. Hitt was ranked #1 as the most influential scholar in the world in management, based on the combined scores.

Other Mays management faculty members who were also included in the rankings were Murray Barrick, Luis Gomez-Mejia, Duane Ireland, Ricky Griffin, Michael Wesson and Lorraine Eden.

Hitt holds the Joe B. Foster Chair in Business Leadership at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School. He has won numerous awards and has served on the editorial review boards of multiple journals. He is a former editor of the Academy of Management Journal and a former co-editor of the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.

A 2010 article in Times Higher Education listed Hitt among the top scholars in economics, finance and management. He is a member of the Academy of Management Journals’ Hall of Fame and former president of the Academy of Management and the Strategic Management Society.

Jerry Strawser, Hitt’s dean at Mays Business School, calls him “truly a one-of-a-kind scholar. … The numerous awards and accolades he has received reflect the fact that his research findings direct the work of other scholars and course of future study in the academic profession. In addition, he studies relevant issues that affect the business world and impact economic development. In short, his research affects both the academic and business worlds and is used both in the classroom and in the boardroom.”

In other words, he is a gifted teacher.

He is also a prolific researcher with a knack for putting his research into action. He has coauthored or co-edited 26 books and authored or coauthored many journal articles, and the attention to his research on strategic management attracts rivals top scholars in other fields.

Academic excellence

Michael Hitt

A forthcoming article in the Academy of Management Perspectives recognizes Hitt’s scholarly influence on audiences outside his field – indeed, outside of academia – based on the number of citations and Google entries. And a recent article listed Hitt as one of the 10 most-cited authors in management over a 25-year period. The Times Higher Education in 2010 listed him among the top scholars in economics, finance and management and that he is first among management scholars (tied) with the largest number of highly cited articles.

Hitt’s professional accolades are many: He is a University Distinguished Professor in management at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School and holds the Joe B. Foster Chair in Business Leadership. He received his PhD from the University of Colorado.

He has served on the editorial review boards of multiple journals and is a former editor of the Academy of Management Journal and a former co-editor of the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.

Teaching, research entwined

Hitt says the relationship between research and teaching is complicated and that the two can’t be easily separated.

“The detractors don’t realize how research changes what we teach in the classroom. For example, in my field, the textbooks in the 1980s did not have much text, they were composed of almost all case studies. Now the content of those books is almost all based on research that is translated for practice.”

Without research, instruction becomes static, Hitt explains. “Outstanding teachers always want to learn more about what is emerging. For me, what is exciting is what will benefit the undergraduates and the graduates – from the MBAs to the executive MBAs to the professional MBAs to the executive development programs. It’s not just my specific research, it’s reading what other people are learning. I don’t have to invent or discover everything, but I do think it’s my responsibility to be aware of all that I can.”

Hitt says the laboratory for research in the field of business is the workplace. “I study organizations – what the executives and the employees do – and I study entrepreneurs.” For his research, he collected data from 640 entrepreneurs across four countries – a task that took two years. “That information has implications far beyond what I am even going to be able to do with it.”

Jerry Strawser, Hitt’s dean at Mays Business School, calls him “truly a one-of-a-kind scholar. … The numerous awards and accolades he has received reflect the fact that his research findings direct the work of other scholars and course of future study in the academic profession. In addition, he studies relevant issues that affect the business world and impact economic development. In short, his research affects both the academic and business worlds and is used both in the classroom and in the boardroom.”

Kai Xu, who has completed her second year in the doctoral program under Hitt’s guidance, calls him “a very established but incredibly nice professor.” She says: “He always helps his students in a very insightful but also respectful way. Sometimes, you cannot even feel the help until someday you suddenly realize how helpful he is and how valuable his advice is in your research projects.”

Joanna Campbell, who recently defended her dissertation successfully and remains at Texas A&M, says Hitt is very passionate about research, and that his work has had an enormous impact on the field of strategic management. She calls him one of the most prolific management researchers as well as a great role model for young scholars.

“He has made major contributions to multiple research areas, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, and human capital. Yet, he is one of the most humble people I know. He also knows how to translate his research and make it accessible for people outside of academia, including executives.”

Campbell says Hitt’s patience is valuable when working with doctoral students. She adds, “while he always offers his input, he lets us make our own decisions, even if he disagrees with them. In the end, he is always right, but I think he would rather let us learn from our mistakes than force someone into doing something they are not comfortable with.”

Firms are increasingly recognizing this principle holds true when it comes to research and development (R&D) information sharing among firms.

Businesses form research and development alliances when developing new products. An R&D alliance is a formal relationship between two or more firms to pursue mutually beneficial goals. The firms remain independent entities, but enter into an agreement to combine their knowledge bases in order to expand and refine innovations. “It’s simple,” says Lorraine Eden, a management professor at Mays Business School. “Two brains are better than one.”

Ireland

Hitt

Eden

Many industries are involved in R&D alliances, including pharmaceutical, automotive, electronics and chemical companies. When the costs and risks of developing new products are both high, these firms are more likely to enter into an R&D alliance, says Michael Hitt, a University Distinguished Professor in management and Joe B. Foster ’56 Chair in Business Leadership.

Dan Li ’05, now teaching at Indiana University, worked at Texas A&M with Eden, Hitt and R. Duane Ireland, Distinguished Professor in management, Conn Chair in New Ventures Leadership and AMJ Editor, on a recent study to examine which type of governance structure is most effective for these alliances. They focused their research on multilateral alliances (three or more firms) and compared them with bilateral alliances (a joint venture between two firms).

“Very few have studied multilateral alliances,” Hitt said in describing the research’s uniqueness. Eden adds: “People have been researching bilateral firms for the past 20-30 years, but there’s been not much written on multilateral ones.”

Hitt describes information sharing between firms as “a real balancing act.” Individual firms must manage the information they share and the information they protect. “In a joint venture,” says Hitt. “If everyone invests money, there’s an incentive to share information and be fair.” They wanted to learn if this remained true when the number of partners increases.

According to Eden, much of the intended knowledge sharing within the alliances involves “tacit information” — information that must be thoroughly explained and demonstrated by one firm to another. She argues that selecting the type of governance (equity-based or contractual) structure can be critical to the success of the R&D alliance since equity ownership, where one firm owns a piece of the other firms, can help facilitate planned knowledge sharing among them.

At the same time, however, sharing knowledge often leads to “unintended information leakages,” which causes problems among the R&D alliance partners. “There’s a real hesitancy,” Hitt says. “When you’re in an alliance, you have to trust your partners, who are potential competitors, to be fair.”

Their study examined 2,500 alliances — 1,700 bilateral and 750 multilateral. The researchers also compared governance structures in two types of trilateral R&D alliances: chain and net. The study found that 18 percent of trilateral alliances use a chain-based approach, which involves a passing of information from one firm to another, and 82 percent of alliances use net-based approaches, or group sharing.

As the complexity of the alliance increases, the probability of cheating also increases. For example, the alliance between pharmaceutical companies becomes more complex if the companies are from different countries, mainly because intellectual property rights vary internationally. Additionally, the more firms involved in an alliance, the more likely there will be a “free-rider,” or a firm that wants information from other companies without sharing any of its own. This is more likely the case in net than in chain trilateral alliances, notes, Eden, because it is “easier for the cheater to hide.”

The research found that equity governance structures, rather than contractual structures, combat the uncertainty of information-sharing firms face as complexity escalates in multilateral alliances. Equity ownership can help compensate for complexity and free-rider problems, while also helping to facilitate intended knowledge transfers. The greater the emphasis on equity share, the smoother the facilitation and transfer of information, the research notes.

The authors found that, for both knowledge sharing and knowledge protection reasons, firms were more likely to use an equity governance structure in multilateral than in bilateral R&D alliances. Similarly, net trilateral alliances were more likely than chain ones to use equity governance structures.

Eden suggested that the study offers a confirmation for firms interested in governance mechanisms. “Companies will be able to look at the findings and determine what type of governance is best for their alliance.”

Texas A&M University System officials, CNVE advisory board members and other stakeholders toured the program’s office space in Research Park. (view more photos)

During their out-of-town and local visits to incubators, MGMT 489 students interviewed incubator managers and community leaders with experience in economic development. As students learned more about the business incubation industry, the incubator research project evolved—making for quite a challenge near the end of the semester as MGMT 489 students became more involved with their sister class in the College of Architecture. ARCH 485 students produced space plans and custom furniture designs for a proposed “student startup space” at Texas A&M University’s Research Park, based on end-user needs articulated by MGMT 489 students.

Both teams of students revised their course deliverables several times to incorporate new data as it was developed and shared. For MGMT 489 students, this meant working to rewrite their business plan for a campus incubation program to assist student entrepreneurs. In response, ARCH 485 students had to “redesign the redesign of their redesigned architectural design plans,” as one senior noted. Students in both classes agreed that the process was like launching a startup business because collaboration between students was required to produce a cohesive, feasible product.

At the end of the semester, both classes presented their proposals to Jeffrey Seemann, vice president of research at Texas A&M University and chief research officer for the Texas A&M University System, during a stakeholders presentation that included Jorge Vanegas, dean of the College of Architecture, and other university and Texas A&M University System officials. An estimated 70 guests, including Richard Lester, executive director of the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship, and CNVE advisory board members, convened to hear students’ presentations and participate in tours of the student business incubation program facility.

This 4,704-square-foot office space, dubbed “The Startup Space” by students, served as the campus classroom for MGMT 489 students. A Phase II course, “MGMT 489: Incubator Implementation,” will be offered to a small group of undergraduate at Mays in the same space during the first summer 2012 semester.

“Ten years ago, I thought we were going to run out of means for energy,” president Dan A. Hughes ’80 said to a group of students during a recent conversational lunch. However, with the discovery of the Barnett Shale and other sources, Hughes’ company has seen a plethora of opportunity in Texas and Louisiana and in countries such as Colombia, among others.

Dan A. ’80 and Peggy Hughes ’82 (center) visited Mays to speak with students as part of the Dean’s Distinguished Executive Speaker Series.

Hughes received a management degree from Texas A&M and then a graduate degree in geology. When asked how he got into the oil industry, Hughes responded, “My family is full of geologists, with my father being in the oil industry. On several occasions, I went on trips with my dad where I learned about energy.” With his experience, Hughes has led the company to greater heights in discovering and extracting natural resources all across the world.

However, as Hughes recounted, these achievements do not come without risks or challenges. Discussing the future of the oil and gas industry, Hughes addressed the difficulties of international expansion, including political atmosphere and volatility. In some situations, unrest has caused several drilling locations to shut down temporarily in order to make sure that the company’s employees stay safe. However, putting people first is not an attribute that is uncharacteristic of the company.

“It’s all about the people,” Hughes said when discussing the challenges that his company faces in the energy industry. The Dan A. Hughes Company allows employees the opportunity to become partners in the private company, earning a tangible interest in the livelihood of the business. Hughes attributes this “family-like environment” to the company’s ability to retain employees. “Our people have been there for a long time with hardly any turnover. That is something we are very proud of.”

Hughes and his wife Peggy ’82 experience ties that span further than the oil and gas industry, including heavy involvement as Texas A&M alumni. Currently, Peggy sits on the board of directors for the 12th Man Foundation, an integral group in the Kyle Field renovation discussion.

“The [Southeastern Conference] is the elite conference in the nation. A renovated Kyle Field will only add to its greatness,” she said.

When asked about the proposed plans for Kyle Field, Mrs. Hughes noted that the contractor, Populous, will be seeking students’ and others’ input.

To illustrate all the speculation surrounding the stadium, Mrs. Hughes gave a humorous example. “It’s funny, people come up to me and say, ‘This is what is going to happen to Kyle Field.’ I just smile and say back, ‘Really? I didn’t know that, and I’m on the board!’”

Ending the discussion, both of the Hughes talked about one of the largest blessings in their lives – giving back to Texas A&M. “Start making the time to give back in as many facets as you can, especially to the school that you love so dearly,” he said.

Zimmerman

Through the annual program, the College of Education and Human Development provides a unique opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate Texas educators.

Since its inception 21 years ago, more than 400 educators have been recognized at the Dean’s Roundtable, which has the dual purpose of honoring educators and providing funding for the college. More than $400,000 has been raised for scholarships and various college priorities.

At the inaugural event in 1991, six honorees were recognized and more than 50 donors contributed gifts of $25 to $1,000 to fund sponsorships. Modeled after a similar event at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College, the Dean’s Roundtable was founded by Jane Stallings, Texas A&M University’s first female dean.

“The roundtable at Vanderbilt provided an opportunity for donors to recognize individuals who had influenced their life or the lives of others. It was a wonderful event that helped to raise funds to advance education,” Stallings said. “I wanted to bring something similar to the college when I became dean, with a specific focus on recognizing educators.”

She continued: “Over time, listening to people from all walks of life, I have learned that the best teachers are those who make students feel cared for and who provide opportunities for them to develop their potential. They love to teach and make it fun to learn. These are the educators who are celebrated each year.”

Zimmerman is a recipient, along with two co-authors, of the Academy of Management Human Resources Division’s 2006 Scholarly Achievement Award for the most significant paper in human resource management. The article (“Consequences of individuals’ fit at work: A meta-analysis of person-job, person-organization, person-group, and person-supervisor fit”) is the most frequently cited in the fields of human resource management and organizational behavior published since 2003.