Nicole Woolsey Biggart, a founding member of the faculty of the Graduate School of Management, took the reins as dean July 1.
Currently holding the school's Jerome J. and Elsie Suran Chair in Technology Man-agement, she has had a distinguished career teaching and researching organizational theory and the management of innovation.
Now nearing the end of her first academic quarter as dean, Woolsey Biggart paused to talk with Dateline about her vision for the school -- including its potential synergies with other campus units and its contributions to the region's economic development -- as well as her views on magazine rankings and an undergraduate business major at UC Davis.
What do you see as the school's current strengths and challenges?
Our current strength is our small size. Most business schools are quite large, and, while all good business schools can teach marketing and finance and other business disciplines, our small size gives us an opportunity to give a far more intimate and personalized business education. I think people who come to the GSM get a different kind of education than most MBA students.
On the other hand, our small size is also a weakness in so far as we aren't on the radar screens of some employers. Our small size also makes it difficult for us to compete in business school rankings, which are, unfortunately, I think, very important in the way people make choices about where they'll apply.
What do you want to characterize your leadership of the school? I think that under Dean Robert Smiley, the school really had to firm itself up as an organization, as a school. He was very much central in seeing that was done. I'm taking the helm of the school at a very different place in its development. It's now very well run, well organized. So I'm devolving power to faculty. I've appointed faculty directors for four program areas and asked them to run with them: technology, wine education, joint degree programs and executive education. Among staff, I'm really working to create more collaboration among the different units that we have on campus.
What are your priorities for your first year as dean? To see that this decentralization takes hold. The other thing that I want to do is to see where the school can collaborate with other units on campus. We're too small a school to go our own way, which many business schools do. I don't think that is an intellectually good thing to do, and I think it makes no sense for us. So I'm talking with other professional schools as well as with the Division of Biological Sciences about things we might be able to partner on.
What partnerships do you envision with other UC Davis units? UC Davis has become a very fine life sciences and engineering campus. Tremendously exciting discoveries are taking place on the main campus and at the medical center. We can play a role in helping to develop entrepreneurial skills that will help commercialize some of these new discoveries and inventions. The students are already helping to develop entrepreneurial skills on campus through the Big Bang! business plan competition that they run for hopeful startups. I am working with the Office of Research and the deans of engineering and DBS on a course that develops early business plans for potentially commercial discoveries taking place in laboratories. This is great experience for GSM students and might lead to new businesses for the Sacramento region.
Talking about the region's business, what role do you see for the school? My long-term goal is to see the Sacramento business community be developed and for UC Davis to be an important part of developing the Sacramento region's commercial and industrial potential. Our primary contribution will be in creating a sophisticated and thoughtful cohort of managers for the community.
I also see the GSM playing a role in the not-for-profit sector. We have alumni making contributions to the management of the environment, to public television and to education. Current students do pro bono consulting for not-for-profit and philanthropic organizations, and they volunteer a huge amount of time to the Special Olympics and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Sacramento.
Are new facilities for the school on the agenda? We have the opportunity to have a new building across from the Mondavi Center, an absolutely wonderful site that the chancellor has designated for us. We've been wanting in our facilities for a very long time -- 22 years to be exact. To have adequate space would be marvelous. We have a challenge in raising the funds to take a basic office building and turn it into a proper business school. And that's going to require my effort and the effort of those who support our mission to help make that come about.
Does UC Davis need an undergraduate business major? Well, probably the students and their parents think so, but I'm not sure that's necessary. I think business is best learned after one's had some business experience. We have an undergraduate technology management minor, and we're able to contribute some understanding of business principles to science and engineering majors. I think that's an appropriate place for us. We don't have the faculty to do more than that. Our primary mission is MBA teaching.
The GSM was not among the top 50 MBA programs in the 2003 Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive survey of corporate recruiters, was tied for 35th in U.S. News & World Report's 2004 rankings of graduate business schools, and was among the top 70 MBA programs noted by BusinessWeek in 2002. What's your view on rankings?
Unlike undergraduate education where they separate out small four-year liberal arts colleges from major universities, business schools -- no matter what their size -- are all ranked together. It would be the equivalent of having Amherst College or Wellesley College compared with the University of Michigan or UCLA. They're just very different kinds of educational experiences. So we suffer from providing a small-school experience when we're ranked with very large programs. So while we strive to do well in the things we can control -- like the quality of faculty and the quality of students -- there are just some things that a small school cannot attempt to achieve.
As dean, how might you continue with your own research and teaching? I am going to try to keep my research and teaching alive -- modestly. And it is important to me. I've enjoyed my role as a faculty member and researcher, and I'm really loathe to give that up. I'm going to teach a class in the spring. I see students every day, but it's different when you're not engaged in an intellectual endeavor with them. I really miss it, so I'm going to try to teach one course year.
I also have an active research collaboration with Tom Beamish, a faculty member in sociology. I'm hoping to do a little more of that next spring after I've had a few months under my belt as dean. I'm always interested in the social structure of markets. Because I'm here at Davis where life science and engineering are so important, I'm working with Tom Beamish and Rick Delbridge of Cardiff Business School in Wales to start a research project on the development of life science industries. It's a nascent industry. It's a very interesting time to see industry development take place.
Who are you when you're not all business? I'm riding. I have three American Quarter Horses that I used to show English and Western style. Now I'm happy with an occasional trail ride. I also have a mule and two Welsh corgis and two cats. I'm at home on my 10 acres in Pleasants Valley with my husband, who's a vet, and enjoying my animals.