Dean's Column

This issue of Research@Smith highlights some recent stellar work from our marketing department. But the Smith School has bench strength in each of our academic areas.

One of the greatest strengths of the Smith School is the quality of our faculty. If you consider research productivity—the number of publications in top journals—then our faculty is always ranked among the best in the country by such publications as Business Week and the Financial Times. They publish research that influence the work of other academics and that is used by practitioners and policy-makers.

But their work also has impact out in the real world. Smith faculty work directly with corporations as consultants and regularly speak to executives through our Thought Leadership Speaker Series, held in downtown Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Smith’s Centers of Excellence are also a nexus for theory and practice, as organizations bring real-world, real-time problems to Smith faculty experts. In this issue you’ll learn more about a project that grew out of a research project Professor P.K. Kannan conducted with Black & Decker. Smith faculty have worked with every industry imaginable, and with federal, state and local governments and NGOs as well.

All this translates into impact—on academic disciplines as well as on the workday world. That impact is the hallmark of Smith faculty research. I encourage you to contact us if there are ways we can partner together.

G. “Anand” Anandalingam
Dean, Robert H. Smith School of Business
University of Maryland