AlbersBrief - Winter 2005 Page Two

In October, Safeco Chairman and CEO Mike McGavick, gave a presentation entitled “Responsible Business Leadership: Special Times for an Eternal Need,” to almost 200 faculty, students and alumni gathered in the Campion Ballroom at Seattle University. McGavick is largely credited with engineering the corporation’s dramatic turnaround.

McGavick discussed the current environment of mistrust and made suggestions for ways to improve it. He agreed that there is a need for transparency in corporations but not by narrowly legislated rule. McGavick also spoke about the drop in interest of those wanting to become a CEO. He concluded his remarks with comments on the importance of diversity in the workplace stating that corporations must lead the way. After his remarks, McGavick answered questions from a panel consisting of an Albers undergraduate student, graduate student and alum and later concluded the night with questions from the audience.

In November, the Albers School hosted Microsoft executive Jeff Raikes, Group VP of the Information Worker business area at Microsoft, as part of the Albers Executive Speaker Series. He is responsible for overseeing the development, marketing and strategy for Microsoft Office System. Raikes is a member of the company's senior leadership team and along with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, is responsible for developing and guiding Microsoft's core strategies. Raikes drew a packed house of students, faculty, staff and alumni at Seattle University's Campion Ballroom for his talk entitled, "Challenging Dynamics in Technology Markets."

Raikes shared experiences from his 23 year career at Microsoft and spoke candidly about some things that motivated him. His wife was in attendance so he shared the fact that they met at Microsoft, were the first of many Microsoft couples to marry, and that he hired a young MBA intern names Melinda who would later become part of the most famous Microsoft couple. Raikes went on to discuss key business and competitive challenges faced by Microsoft's Office group in the past, how they dealt with them and what they were doing currently to address new business challenges. He then answered questions from a panel and the audience.

Beginning January 29 and through the month of February, Seattle U. has become temporary home to the 100 homeless women and men who comprise the Tent City 3 community. The group is located on the tennis courts a few blocks from the university’s main campus. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, this is the first time a university has hosted a homeless community.

Along with Albers, various schools are participating in learning and service opportunities developed in consultation with Tent City 3 residents. Activities include: preparing hot meals, raising funds and gathering donations of food, flashlights, etc., as well as educational site visits and panel discussions.

On February 10, Albers faculty member Barbara Parker organized a group of sixteen faculty and staff from the Albers School, who participated in the cooking, serving and clean-up of a turkey dinner with trimmings for camp.

For the 30th year, Albers School accounting students will volunteer their time to prepare tax returns for low and middle-income individuals and families, and small business owners.

Some 60 students and 10 alumni will prepare more than 600 returns starting Feb. 5. The service, housed at Seattle’s Mount Zion Baptist Church, is free and offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

Before students can become volunteers, they must successfully complete a quarter-long tax course and enroll in two workshops dealing with various tax laws and issues that may arise in tax preparation. Through VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance), students provide an important service to the community, while gaining professional experiences, says Susan Weihrich, Accounting Chair. “They learn to interact in a professional way with the client and learn to use professional judgment,” said Weihrich, now in her 15th year with the program.

Former SU accounting professor John Harding established VITA at Albers in 1975, when the Internal Revenue Service sought volunteers to help the public work through the complexities of tax returns.

For more information, contact the accounting department at 296-5790 or via email: vita@seattleu.edu

Instead of having fun in the sun this summer, under represented high school students of color can choose SU’s campus as their destination to attend Albers’ third annual summer Business Institute, sponsored by Qwest communications and Washington Mutual. The program kicks off June 26 and runs through Thursday, June 30. The student program is designed to give college bound students a taste of college life, expose them to abbreviated business courses, such as accounting, economics, and business ethics, and introduce them to some of Seattle’s business leaders.

“We want to raise awareness that a business student education will create wonderful opportunities for all students, and that business school is accessible, regardless of their financial situation,” said Joe Phillips, dean of Albers.

During the program, high school students will be treated like college students. They’ll stay on campus, dine at the student center and work on business model as teams. Undergrad business students will mentor students on project assignments and share their experiences at SU. The high school participants will also spend a day at Costco headquarters and Washington Mutual, lunching with senior executives and learning first hand what skills they need to become successful job candidates. There is also a module on the college application and financial aid process.

Planned for over a year, Summer Business Institute was designed to introduce African American, Latino and Native American students to university life and provide an overview of business degree programs. Gary Thomas, department chair of business and marketing education at Garfield High School, is the program director and helps identify a good mix of students who have the necessary grades and coursework to attend college.

“I often encounter students of color who cannot come up with one reputable personal reference from private industry for a job application.” Says Thomas. “Choosing a college major is as much about exposure as it is about personal self discipline or intellect.”

On the final afternoon of the program, students compete for prizes by presenting their findings, in teams, to a panel of business executives and faculty. “My most challenging task” mentions Thomas, “is to get them to stop working on their presentations by midnight so the can get some rest.”

As with college life everywhere, hard work is balanced with fun. Summer Business Institute students bond quickly with Albers students who serve as counselors – who are also students of color - selected for their outstanding academics and leadership skills. Somehow, in between the various academic pursuits, they find time for bowling, volleyball games, and reflection. Garfield High senior Markeesa Phelps echoed an oft-heard complaint at the end of the intensive five-day program, “I wish it were longer.”

“Well, Markeesa, it is” jokes Thomas, “4 to 6 years: depending on whether you want the bachelors or the M.B.A. See you next fall.”

Summer Business Institute was touted last summer in the Seattle Times as a positive local college prep program accessible to students in the Central District. Currently, ten percent of the Albers undergraduate student population reflects under represented minorities.

It’s likely countless Albers graduates have offered themselves for public service, bun non have ever found themselves in quite the same position as one prominent alumni in the forefront of state news for the past year: Dino Rossi.

Rossi, who graduated from Albers in 1982, has starred with opponent Democrat Christine Gregoire in an election drama in the race for governor unlike any ever witnessed in Washington. The pair initially found themselves separated by the slimmest margins: Rossi led in the first county by 46 votes. Two recounts later, Gregoire was declared the winner by 129 votes, and sworn into office in January.

Republicans responded by calling for a second election, and filing a court challenge to recount that handed Gregoire her victory.

The day Gregoire was sworn into office, surrounded by the marble halls and chandeliers of Olympia, found Rossi at his temporary Bellevue campaign headquarters, where folding chairs and marker-scrawled county-by-county posters of vote totals covered the walls. Tie-less and casual, Rossi excluded calmness and perspective. His handlers gushed about how he never raised his voice during tension surrounding the election and subsequent recounts.

His inner calmness has always been a part of his professional life, Rossi said.

“You deal with people fairly and straight forwardly, that’s kind of my philosophy… and it will all sort itself out in the end,” Rossi said. “In my 21 years in commercial real estate, I’ve never been sued.”

In his seven years in the state Legislature, he held to his principles of peace and civility. He always keeps one thought in mind: “How do I help people be successful? That’s kind of philosophy I brought to Olympia. I was known for seeking out a philosophical majority, not a partisan one.

“When I became chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, I had one philosophy… if it’s a good bill, I passed it. If it’s a bad bill… it didn’t see the light of day. I never, ever, put a deal together by yelling or screaming.”

That consensus-building personality, in turn, fit the new image state Republicans wanted to craft, of candidates that do not exude partisan stridency, but rather collegiality and willingness to work with both sides of the aisle on core issues like gridlock, schools and medical insurance.

Rossi is a local Seattle boy, born and raised, and followed in the footsteps of his school-teacher father when he attended SU. He initially thought he’d be a teacher as well. But from his earliest years, his impulses were toward business: at age 7, he sold golf balls, then candles as a teenager. His father gently told him to follow his heart –“He said, ‘Son you’re a businessman’ “-and Rossi chose Albers.

It was the right fit.

“The School of Business was a good place for me to be,” he said: the classes challenged him, and the professors were very accessible. He still remembers having problems with one particular mid-term. Rossi called the professor, who gave him directions to his house. That evening, Rossi and his professor sat on his porch and discussed the test- something that likely doesn’t happen much at large universities, he said.

Just as important as the small classes was the emphasis on theology and how ethics were interwoven into all aspects of academic life at SU, Rossi said. “I think it reinforced what my mom and dad taught me, to be fair and honest with people.”

Rossi, a self-made millionaire, these days lives the life of a flourishing businessman-politician. He, his wife and their four children live on the Sammamish Plateau and he busy sells and manages commercial real estate. But his earlier life bore no veneer to the upper crust.

As a single woman, his mother moved herself and his five older siblings form a small town in Alaska to Seattle after leaving a marriage rife with alcohol and abuse. She eventually moved her family to a housing project, waited tables by day and attended beauty school at night to support her family. She later married widower John Rossi, Dino Rossi’s father, and she herself recovered from alcoholism. She would hold AA meetings in the family’s living room.

To attend Albers, Rossi held numerous jobs, most famously, polishing the floors of the Space Needle, along with working as a janitor and in construction. After graduation, he traveled through Asia before returning home where he started selling apartment buildings.

As for the future, the state clearly hasn’t heard the end of the Rossi-Gregoire match-up. But whether he moves into governor’s mansion or not, Rossi said he’s at peace.

“No matter what happens, everything in my life has worked out in the end,” he said. “I was happy before and I’ll be happy after.”

The Redhawks men’s soccer team brought Seattle University in its first NCAA Division II championship title. The Redhawks beat Southern Illinois-Edwardsville 2-1 on Dec. 5, to remain undefeated.

With the win the Redhawks are the first sports team in the university’s history to win a championship title in NCAAII action. The men’s team concluded regular and post-season action undefeated in its division (22-0-1), and with a regular season record of 20-0-1, were only the 31ste team in the division to win 20 games in a season.

Nine players on the championship team are business majors at Albers; Jacob Besagno, Jason Cassio, Pat Doran, Hans Esterhuizen, Erick Forner, Chris Hodges, Jordan Inouye, Anthony Sardon and Jeff Stock.

Both men and women’s teams reached NCAA Division II quarter finals, breaking a record for the first school to do so in the same season. The SU women’s soccer team lost its Nov. 21st match in Denver against eventual champion Metro State 1-0 penalty kick.

The Men's NCAA II National Championship Soccer team's Banquet and Ring Ceremony is on Friday, March 4 at 6 pm at the Campion Ballroom. All SU Soccer supporters are welcome. Tickets are $35. RSVP to Lacey at 206.296.6400.

Lucas McIntyre, a junior in the Albers School, has been selected to attend the prestigious Woodrow Wilson School Junior Summer Institute at Princeton University this summer. With this award, he is recognized as among the nation’s top students with potential to be an influential policymaker domestically and internationally. Selection for the Institute is highly competitive –two years ago there were 501 applicants from across the United States, and only 33 were chosen to attend the seven-week program.

Lucas is an Economics major who came to SU form Mariner High School in Everett, Washington. Although just starting his business classes, he lists Economics Professor Dean Peterson as on of his most influential. “He is an amazing professor who can convey complex ideas in an understandable and approachable manner” sates McIntyre. “… what makes him stand out is his willingness to go above and beyond what is required of him.”

Lucas McIntyre is in the SU honors program and a Sullivan Scholar. He fulfilled the international study/service requirement for the Sullivan scholarship by working six months in India, first serving alongside Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity caring for the poor of Calcutta, and then working in Kerala in Southwest India to assist a non-profit micro-credit lending organization that funds women’s small businesses. Lucas has also been an Orientation Advisor, a member of Multifaith Works AIDS Care Team, and will lead a Habitat for Humanity trip during the upcoming spring break.

Harriet Stephenson always had a bent toward business. To put herself through college, she and her brother leased a swimming pool in their hometown of Walla Walla, Washington during summer vacation and charged admission. Then there was the asparagus growing business, and later, management and organizational consulting.

Add the fact that teaching was in her blood – her mother taught high school- and it all pointed inexorably to a career as a professor of business and management. Today, she is on of the longest-serving professors in Albers, and holds the Lawrence K. Johnson Chair of Entrepreneurship.

Stephenson in 1989 founded the school’s Entrepreneurship Center, dedicated to both creating jobs and adding value to the community, along with nurturing entrepreneurial leaders “who embrace the principles of responsible leadership, diversity and positive global impacts.”

Kent Johnson, and Albers MBA alum (’71), SU trustee and staunch supporter of the Entrepreneurship Center, endowed the Lawrence K. Johnson chair and credits Stephenson with the center’s success.

“I classify her as the ‘alter ego’ who made it happen,” said Johnson, managing director of Alexander Hutton Venture Partners.

Stephenson was in many ways a pioneer in her career. There weren’t a lot of women in the University of Washington business school when she studied as an undergraduate, receiving her degree in 1961. There were barely any women alongside Stephenson when she studied for her MBA, awarded to her the following year from the UW. And she was only the third woman or so to earn a Ph.D. in business on the West Coast, in 1967 (also from the UW).

“It was a challenge,” Stephenson said of her studies. “(Other women) were pretty sparse… I was the first female Ph.D. in business from the University of Washington.”

But she loved business, and she couldn’t imagine a career that didn’t involve the subject. After she received her Ph.D., Seattle University gave her the opportunity to pursue it. The school was a leader in hiring women, Stephenson said.

“That’s one of the interesting things about Seattle University,” she said. “Until five or 10 years ago, SU had the larges number of women with Ph.D.s of any college in the United States except for Colorado Women’s College.”

It’s true that although she loved business, she passed on a career in the corporate world, Stephenson said. It was though as a woman to make your way up the ladder when she was starting out, and academia had many pluses.

“The teaching route looked to be a really good way to go,” she said. “For a woman (then), it actually was really good for an income level. And raising a family, the flexibility made it a little easier.”

Both her daughters were born during the summer break, to take full advantage of that flexibility, she said with a laugh.

It’s a good thing for the university that Stephenson chose SU, said Catherine Collins, an Albers’ MBA graduate.

“Harriet Stephenson embodies the spirit of Seattle University and the Albers School. She takes all that is good in business – great ideas, creation of jobs, the ability to create positive change in society – and encourages her student entrepreneurs to build meaningful, vibrant enterprises that make a difference,” said Colins.

She added: “Personally, Harriet has been a tireless friend, coach and mentor. I chose Seattle University for my MBA program without knowing Harriet, but if I had to do it over, I would choose Seattle U. because of Harriet.”
Despite her career choice of academia, Stephenson said she “always had some business thing going on.” Some of that involved consulting, especially building on her interest in behavioral research, ethics and sustainability.

“Harriet’s focus on the importance of ‘planet’ and ‘people’ as well as profit encourages all of us to move beyond traditional approaches and models of business toward a more sustainable future,” Collins said. “Harriet ‘does’ business with vision and with grace, and continuously challenges us to ‘do’ business better.”

She had the best childhood anyone could hope for, Stephenson said, growing up in Walla Walla, then, like now, a solid farm community. Her mother grew up in that city, and her parents moved there when she was five from California to give their children the best possible upbringing. They lived on a “gentleman’s farm” – her father was an electrical engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, while her mother taught. They grew various crops and raised different animals.

“It was just a great way to grow up,” she said.

Since her beginnings at SU, Stephenson has taught a large variety of course offerings, but the challenging Business Policy Strategy, a.k.a. the senior capstone course, remains a favorite. In that course, students working in teams of four to six take a small business or non-profit, analyze its success and challenges, tackle potential ethical issues and create a business plan for future success. It is challenging, very challenging, for students, and requires hundreds of hours of work on their part, she said. It also sharpens their critical and analytical skills, a huge confidence booster before they leave to take real jobs, Stephenson added.

Recent gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi (Albers ’82), remembers that class - and Stephenson fondly.

“She was tough but she was fair,” Rossi said.

In December 2003, students in one of Stephenson’s classes received the region’s Best Case Award for Undergraduate Comprehensive submissions in the Small Business Institute’s Case of the Year Award. The students went on to nab a runner-up award at the National Small Business Institute and Consultants meeting.

She’s constantly gratified by how hard her students work in the capstone course, Stephenson said. Many come from other countries, and they are working outside their native language.

“An interesting feature is that half and sometimes more than half of the students are international students with English as a second language,” she said. “They are a very diverse group.”

It is a class she herself devotes considerable time to. Stephenson said she believes it important to work with each student to ensure he or she turns in “A” work. A “C” is simply not acceptable in such an important course, she said, both in terms of encouraging students strive for excellence and to insure the business and non-profits they work with receive a quality product.

“I am just so proud of what they can do,” she said of her students. “I am very interested in making sure they do good work. I enjoy the opportunity to help people discover and push their capabilities.”

Peter Raven's article co-authored with Dianne Welsh, “An Exploratory Study of SME Management in the Middle East,” has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

Bill Weis had his article, “When the Interests of Industry Are in Conflict with the Public Health: The Case of Myopia,” accepted for publication in the Journal of Health Care Management. Another article, "Service-Learning Feedback with Graduate Students," was published in the National Society for Experimental Education Quarterly.

Meenakshi Rishi's article “Technological Innovations in the Indian Banking Industry: the Late Bloomer,” co-authored with Sweta Saxena, appeared in the November, 2004 edition of Accounting, Business, and Financial History.

Barbara Yates, Fred DeKay and Rex Toh had their article, “Independent Meeting Planners: Roles, Compensation, and Potential Conflicts,” accepted for publication in the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly.

Pat Fleenor, Peter Raven and Jerry Ralston have had their chapter, entitled “Project Based International Business Consulting,” included in Educating Managers Through Real World Projects. A book on innovative uses of learning projects in management education. It is edited by Robert DeFillippi and Charles Wankel and is the Volume Four in the Research in Management Education and Development series.

Eric Fang recently published two co-authored articles: "Goal-Setting Paradoxes: Trade-offs Between Working Hard and Working Smart: The United States vs. China," in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and “The Moderating Effect of Goal-Setting Characteristics on the Sales Control Systems-Job Performance Relationship,” in the Journal of Business Research.

Al Ansari and Diane Lockwood with Batoul Modarress, had their article entitled “Target Costing for Lean Manufacturing: A Case Study,” published in the International Journal of Production Research.

Naranjan "Chips" Chipalkatti and Meena Rishi authored a paper entitled, “Do Indian Banks Understate Their Bad Loans?,” which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Developing Areas.

Ekaterina Emm's co-authored article entitled, "The Global Market for OTC Derivatives: An Analysis of Dealer Holdings," will appear in the January 2005 issue of the Journal of Futures Markets.

Fiona Robertson's co-authored article, “Testing Dividend Signaling Models," will appear in the Journal of Empirical Finance.

Albers Volunteer Recognition Reception
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
4:30 - 6:00 pm
RSVP: pc-asbe@seattleu.edu

3rd Annual Seattle University Alumni Crab Feed
Saturday, March 19, 2005
6:30 pm Dinner, Student Center
Cost: $40 per person
RSVP: www.seattleu.edu/asbe/alumni

Bill Ayers, CEO of Alaska Airlines
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
6:00 - 7:00 pm
Pigott Auditorium, No RSVP Needed

Albers Alumni Golf Tournament
Friday, July 22, 2005
1:00 pm start at Trilogy Golf Course, Redmond
More details to follow