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Smith’s
Top-Notch Team

Dean Anand's fantastic team of associate deans has a challenging task: to manage and lead the school’s diverse and wide-ranging academic offerings to more than 4,000 undergraduate, graduate and executive students. Meet the folks who do the business of running a business school.

The Problem-Solver

Patricia Cleveland, associate dean of undergraduate studies, thinks of the 2,900 Smith School undergraduates as “our kids,” and she enthusiastically sings their praises to everyone who will listen. Cleveland spends her days figuring out how to make things work in a program that offers not only academically rigorous management education but also a host of customizable learning opportunities through the Undergraduate Fellows Program, which bridges both academic and co-curricular activities. The Office of Undergraduate Studies provides student academic services—registration, academic advising, scholarship administration and the like—as well as managing student life, co-curricular activities and the undergraduate community.

One of the most demanding components of Cleveland’s job involves the development of undergraduate study trips. Last school year Smith offered three undergraduate trips to four locations around the world. To put those trips together, Cleveland and her staff spend a lot of time on planning and logistics such as booking hotels and plane fares, but also on developing a robust educational component with classes, tours of factories and stock exchanges, and visits to high-level executives and officials.

Staff development for her large crew of academic advisors, Fellows program directors and admissions staff is also a significant portion of her responsibilities. “We are always doing something new,” says Cleveland of her department. “Part of my job is to figure out the best way to do a new thing and then teach that to my staff.”

She also works with the alumni community. “A huge amount of the wonderful, generous scholarships and sponsorships that support our students comes from our alumni and corporate partners, so I work very closely with the Office of Development and Alumni Relations,” says Cleveland.

It makes for busy days, but Cleveland’s pretty high-energy. After getting her PhD from the University of Kansas, Cleveland became the first academic advisor to the athletic program at Bowling Green State University, shortly after new academic requirements for student athletes were instituted. “I got to be in on the ground floor of something brand-new,” says Cleveland. “While creating that program, I learned how to make and run a system that would fulfill the goals and the vision of the university. All the administrative skills I use today I learned in athletics.”

Cleveland went on to the University of Hawaii’s business school, where she was in charge of the office of student academic services, giving her a chance to learn about both the undergraduate and graduate student programs. After a brief stint at American University, Cleveland joined the Smith School in 1998.

Since then the school’s undergraduate program has grown in reputation and complexity and is currently ranked #17 in the nation by U.S.News & World Report. Most days, Cleveland is racing from one meeting to the next. And after her busy work day she gets to attend undergraduate events—by the end of the semester she’s headed off to a different event every night. But despite her hectic schedule she’s made it a priority to be available to students, who appreciate her warm, approachable style, and the fact that they are “her kids.”

Learn more about the Smith School’s undergraduate studies program at www.rhsmith.umd.edu/undergrad.

The Strategist

Hugh Courtney, associate dean of executive programs, calls himself a “pracademic”—an academic who focuses on the practical application of knowledge to problems. Courtney, an economist by training, got his PhD from MIT and took a teaching position at George Washington University. “I realized I didn’t know much about real business and economic issues, having gone straight to grad school from undergrad,” says Courtney. So he went to work at McKinsey, becoming one of the leaders of its strategy practice, serving clients on six continents in a number of industry sectors. But he also filled a teaching/training role within the organization.

Courtney enjoyed it so much that he started to think about academia again. But he realized he didn’t want to teach macro-economic theory. What he really wanted was to be at a business school, teaching a good mix of theory and practice. It made him a perfect fit for the Smith School’s management and organization department and its executive education program, where he has taught for the past six years.

As associate dean, Courtney now oversees all of the school’s executive programs, including the Executive MBA programs in the U.S., Europe and Asia; custom programs for companies such as SAIC, Black and Decker, and Lockheed Martin; and open enrollment non-degree programs and courses. Courtney also oversees the office of global programs, the umbrella office that includes the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER), international study trips for graduate students, and semester abroad programs.

Courtney is enthusiastic about the opportunities for growth he sees in executive education. “We have high-quality programs and services right now, but they’re relatively small,” says Courtney. “Given our location, our intellectual capital, our incredible faculty, our great staff—we should be doing more.” And even though the economy is tough, Courtney is strategizing how to best use the school’s resources to pursue the right opportunities.

Expanding alumni opportunities for lifelong learning is also one of Courtney’s strategic priorities, particularly for alumni who live within a few hours drive of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region. “The question is not whether to do it, but which ones to do,” says Courtney. “One of the things I’m doing is going around to departments, talking to faculty and figuring out what programs we should offer. I am confident we can create some very attractive opportunities for alumni.”

Strategically speaking, Courtney thinks executive programs can play an important role in cementing the school’s reputation as a world-class source of management education. “Five years from now I’d like to see us having a much greater impact on business practice,” says Courtney. “I hope we will be serving more clients in more countries, tackling their toughest problems; that we will have flagship EMBA programs around the world with elite global partners; and in our own backyard, an even stronger presence in Baltimore and D.C. This will also allow us to generate more revenue to reinvest in all of our programs and improve the school’s brand overall.”

To learn more about how you or your company can benefit from the Smith School’s executive education programs, visit www.rhsmith.umd.edu/execed.

The Cheerleader

Robert J. Krapfel, associate dean of MBA and MS programs, has been at the Smith School since 1982, when it was located in Tydings Hall. “There were just 60 faculty members,” says Krapfel. “There was one person managing the entire MBA program, with the help of two graduate assistants. We were a tiny little operation. We were not a big deal.”

The Smith School’s role and place in the life of the University of Maryland has changed dramatically in the past 26 years, and Krapfel has been here to see it all. Krapfel received his PhD from Michigan State University, and after four years working at General Motors came to the Smith School as a member of the marketing faculty. He has since held a number of administrative and leadership positions. As associate dean, Krapfel now oversees every aspect of the masters’ degree programs, from curriculum to community-building to faculty-student relationships, for full-time and part-time students on all four U.S. campuses.

Krapfel is committed to creating the highest-quality experience for students in the school’s highly-respected master’s degree programs. “We promise students when they arrive here that we will give them the opportunity to acquire a top-class business education, and we have to deliver on that promise,” he says. “So a good portion of my responsibilities lie in quality assurance, in guaranteeing the integrity and rigor of the master’s degree programs.”

But he is not just a taskmaster. He is also committed to building an energized and enthusiastic Smith community. “I’m a cheerleader and an advocate,” says Krapfel. “I love the students who enroll in our programs and take our classes. I want to see them challenged and I want the program to be rigorous, but I also want them to have a good time. I want them to connect with faculty and staff. So part of my job as a community-builder is to help bring faculty together with students outside of the class setting.”

Krapfel has a global sensibility and deep appreciation for other points of view, born from the years he spent living in Brazil, Italy and Portugal. That experience helps him listen to, and learn from, the school’s diverse MBA community. More than a third of the school’s full-time MBA students are international.

Krapfel also keeps an eye on the world outside the Smith School, trying to keep ahead of things that affect MBA students so the school can better serve their needs. This involves new product development: the school is in the final stages of discussion for a new MS in Finance, with a new MS in Information Systems also in the pipeline. It also involves shaping current curriculum. “For example, if there are going to be profound changes in financial institutions, in business/government relations, what implications does that have for curriculum?” says Krapfel. “Even prior to the financial crisis we saw an interesting trend among incoming MBA students, who expressed greater interest in the non-profit world and a hunger for knowledge about corporate social responsibility and sustainability. So we made curriculum improvements to bring more prominence to those things in the core curriculum.”

Learn more about the Smith School’s MBA and MS programs at www.rhsmith.umd.edu/mba or www.rhsmith.umd.edu/ms.

The Visionary

J. Gerald Suarez, associate dean of external strategy, is always looking at the big picture—a definite plus in his task of creating connections between the Smith School and the big world beyond the walls of Van Munching Hall. The newly-created Office of External Strategy comprises recruiting, career management and marketing communications, for the first time uniting all of the school’s outward-looking functions under a single umbrella.

Few other schools have combined functions in this way, but Suarez thinks it is vital to coordinate the activities that interface with the world. “Recruiting the best possible students and placing them in the best possible positions is what brings recognition, relevance and consequence to what we do. It elevates the school brand,” says Suarez

Suarez earned his PhD from the University of Puerto Rico and spent a number of years working for the Navy, then the Undersecretary of the Navy, then spent 11 years at the White House before joining the Smith School in 2005.

As Director of Presidential Quality for both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Suarez was responsible for bringing best business practices to the White House. One of his challenges there was finding a way to make a bureaucratic monopoly sensitive to the need for continual improvement. At the Smith School he is focused on improving the total Smith experience. “We need to continually look at what we do from the perspective of the most important customer we have—the students,” says Suarez. “How effective are we, how accurate are we, how much value do we bring to them? We’ll continue to make changes internally to better serve their needs.”

Suarez also feels a keen responsibility to make connections between recruiters and Smith students. “We owe our students a good opportunity to connect with the right employers and the right opportunities, because after all, they entrusted us with an important piece of their lives and their future,” says Suarez. “When you make a decision to come to the Smith School, it is because you believe that tomorrow will be better for the experience—that your opportunities will be greater, that a better life is possible. We can’t let them settle for the wrong job. There is no more important metric for us than the success of our graduates.”

To effectively connect the Smith School to the wide world, Suarez embraces an outward-looking vision and integrates it with a big-picture perspective on the school’s people and programs. An industrial psychologist by training, Suarez thinks of the Smith School as a whole, as a system—like a car, in which all the parts are necessary to achieve forward motion. He is eager to position the Office of External Strategy to help the Smith School move forward.

“We have the opportunity to renew and revitalize the school’s vision for the future,” says Suarez. “We have the opportunity to really build something in a collaborative fashion that has a significant impact on the lives of students.”

The Mediator

Susan Taylor, senior associate dean and associate dean of faculty, compares her job to that of chief “Good Listener.” She oversees faculty governance; faculty hires, promotion, tenure and the faculty merit review processes; parts of the administrative interface with the university; and selected faculty human resource issues and related school operations. And from time to time she also mediates inter-departmental and inter-personal issues, monitoring team dynamics and striving to keep the school’s many disparate elements working together smoothly. It is a job that requires a general knowledge of virtually every facet of the school, from external relations to strategy, from the school’s program portfolio to the external environment.

The Smith School is a giant operation, with hundreds of staff and faculty and thousands of students, both in College Park and at satellite campuses in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Being senior associate dean, says Taylor, requires being available to people across the organization, having a willingness to listen to their problems and seeing inter-connections between those problems and the problems of other Smith faculty and staff. Listening is key to keeping the whole thing running smoothly, because listening delivers information that helps grease the administrative wheels around the school.

All this listening is right up her alley. Taylor, who is Smith Chair of Human Resource Management & Organizational Change, has been conducting research on procedural justice in the workplace and employer-employee relations for many years. Taylor received her PhD from Purdue University and taught at University of Wisconsin-Madison before coming to the Smith School’s management and organization department. She was department head and is co-director of the school’s Center for Human Capital, Innovation and Technology (HCIT), which helps organizations with change, leadership development and innovation.

HCIT works with the problems Taylor likes best, the ones that have implications she can take back to managers. At the Smith School she does something quite similar, assessing problems and moving information from around the building to her fellow associate deans. “At one time or another I get information that can potentially help make other associate deans more effective, and I take that to them and give them specific feedback about what I’ve heard, with some suggestions,” says Taylor. “I do hear an awful lot, and I try to spread that knowledge around where it may be beneficial on a larger scale. And I try to always hear both sides of an issue, because there are always two sides to an issue.”

Taylor hopes to see the Smith School develop an environment that promotes community-building among its many constituents. This involves more than just supporting the school’s community activities. Taylor must also strive to make community-building a priority for Smith School faculty, for whom the pressures of teaching, mentoring graduate students and producing cutting-edge research can overshadow the desire to spend their limited time at student—or even faculty—functions. But Taylor believes that building relationships with faculty is one of the most valuable aspects of a student’s Smith School experience—and often of the faculty members’ as well.

“Increasingly, if you’re going to provide students with an incredible academic experience, then community needs to be part of that,” says Taylor. “So we are encouraging faculty and trying to support them as they make time for community-building.”