Annual Report 2004
Exceeding Expectations
Letter From the Dean
Dear Alumni and Friends:
The Isenberg School of Management is hot! Applications for all our programs are up significantly: 25 percent for undergraduate admissions and 35 percent for full-time graduate programs. The school’s part-time, summer, and online programs will enroll more than twice as many new students as last year.
We have five new faculty members arriving this fall, and the faculty and staff from Sport Management are moving into the second floor of the original SOM building as I write this letter. While we were at it, several alumni made it possible for us to renovate adjacent space for our hardworking Ph.D. students. It is all air-conditioned and is in keeping with the beautiful Harold Alfond Management Center completed just two years ago!
Why are things going so swimmingly, you ask. The state budget is stable with no cuts for the coming year. Thank you to our legislators who have stemmed the cuts and made the decision to support the university in a year when cuts were still required in most discretionary spending categories. The new building, student spirit, good press, great people working very hard, online revenues, alumni interest, all make a difference. Our efforts to make the student experience at the university as good as the students themselves have worked and the word is spreading. Your gifts made it possible. Thank you!!
The faculty are working hard and doing important research while following the tradition of excellent teaching and easy student access. A sampling of their good work is featured in this report.
The price of success is high, too. We plan to build a new classroom wing to add a dozen new classrooms of the quality of the rooms in the Harold Alfond Management Center. That will allow for the conversion and renovations of the old classrooms into space for new faculty and the faculty and staff of Hospitality and Tourism Management (HTM) now housed across campus in Flint Laboratory. The top floor of the Campus Center will be renovated next year as part of a larger renovation of the building, and Hospitality and Tourism Management will take over what used to be the Top of the Campus. It will become a food and beverage laboratory and dining/function room, managed and staffed by HTM faculty and students. That investment will upgrade their facilities to be competitive with the few programs that rank more highly. The cost of all these wonderful projects will be $25 million, in addition to what UMass Amherst has spent to relocate Sport Management and will spend on renovating the rest of the Campus Center. And we want to name something really big after you!
Please visit! Please hire student interns and new graduates! More good things are happening than anyone can summarize.
Sincerely,
Thomas O’Brien, Dean