News & Events - Alumni Magazine

Historical Beginnings

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:00:00 MST

The oldest continuously operating business school west of the Mississippi had humble origins. Old Main was home to the business school for several decades, starting with a small space for the Commercial Department in 1889.

Old Main, Experiment Station, President's Residence, from the early 1900s
Dr. Vernon Israelsen's typing class in the 1950s
Business students admiring a new gizmo, 1950s
School of Commerce Agathon display, 1955
Business faculty discussing the ever-important trends in real estate, February 1959
First student body and faculty photo, April 1891
Students working in the College Bank, a mock bank at the School of Commerce, located on the third floor of Old Main, early 1900s

The George S. Eccles Business Building

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:00:00 MST

Construction of the Eccles Business Building began in 1968, and in 1970, the building was dedicated and the school was renamed the College of Business.

George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles with USU President Glen Taggert and business school Dean Robert P. Collier at the dedication of the George S. Eccles Business Building, 1970
Huntsman student athletes in front of the Eccles Building 2009
The George S. Eccles Business Building, 1970
Legendary Professor Vern Buehler with accounting students circa 1987
Laptops replace notebooks for many Huntsman students
Professor Paul Fjeldsted teaches students in a renovated classroom, 2010

The Huntsman Alumni Network Stretches Around the World

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:00:00 MST

The Huntsman School of Business has alumni in all 50 U.S. states and in 47 countries around the world. This fits nicely with the fact that 47% of our students speak a second language fluently. The school's international reach continues to grow. While China and Hong Kong are ranked number two and three, there are also 28 Huntsman School alums in South Korea, and even one in North Korea.

2nd Edition Published of David Stowell’s Investment Banking Book

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 MST

Elsevier’s Academic Press has published a second edition of “Investment Banks, Hedge Funds, and Private Equity,” by Utah State alum David Stowell. The author teaches at Utah State’s Huntsman School of Business, Northwestern University, the University of Utah, and BYU. In what Elsevier describes as “the only textbook on investment banking,” the new edition includes expanded coverage of international firms and markets, and illuminates issues related to the recent financial crisis. The book also describes, “the technical and procedural processes these institutions use to amass and wield global power and influence.”

AACSB Accreditation Renewed for Business and Accounting Degree Programs

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 MST

After a rigorous examination by the Peer Review Team of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, accreditation was renewed for the Huntsman School’s business and accounting degree programs. The AACSB accreditation is the hallmark of excellence in business education, and has been earned by fewer than 5% of the world’s 13,000 business programs.

Alum Brady Murray Accepts New Position

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 MST

Brady Murray was appointed as the President and CEO of MassMutual Intermountain West. He will be responsible for the overall growth of the company’s client accounts as well as the development and well-being of the company’s 52 advisors and staff.

Upon graduating cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in Accounting in 2005, Murray accepted a position to open an office for Beneficial Financial Group in Logan, Utah. In 2008, he moved to Boise, Idaho, where he accepted a position as Vice President of Allegis Financial Partners.

Murray currently serves on the board of directors of Wasatch Social Ventures, a non-profit designed to educate and provide funding for entrepreneurs in developing countries. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Reece’s Rainbow, a non-profit that raises awareness and funding for orphans with Down syndrome.

Another Perspective on the “Soda Tax”, from USU Alum Dr. Richard Daines

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 MST

Dr. Richard F. Daines, health commissioner for the state of New York from 2007-2010, and a USU alumnus, worked under then Governor David Paterson in support of a proposed New York state public health policy to add the tax to sugary soda. Dr. Daines spoke and wrote on the subject, up until his untimely death at age 60, in February 2011.

A headline in the New York Times back on April 4, 2010, read, “Health Official Willing to go to the Mat Over Obesity and Sugared Sodas.” That health official was Dr. Daines. (see his bio below)

Dr. Daines was defending a proposed penny-an-ounce tax on sugared sodas. The article continued, “The state budget office estimates such a tax would raise $1 billion a year when fully in effect, and reduce consumption by 15 percent, an estimate based, Dr. Daines says, on industry price elasticity models.” The tax proposal was supported by the health care workers’ union and the Greater New York Hospital Association, partly because the earnings were designated to be used to stave off health service cuts.

People in the soft-drink industry had argued that the link between soda consumption and obesity hadn’t been proved. Dr. Daines replied, “It’s obviously scientifically plausible that if you reduce consumption of excess calories, you reduce obesity.” The proposed tax failed to pass, and a revised version of the bill changed the sales tax to an excise tax that would have brought in some $450 million to help stave off imminent health cost cuts. The revised bill also failed to pass.

Today, in 2013, 33 states have a soft drink tax, but New York isn’t one of them. In addition, one third of U.S. adults are considered clinically obese, along with 20% of kids. Some 24 million Americans have type-2 diabetes, often related to poor diet, and 79 million have pre-diabetes symptoms. A group of health advocates asked the FDA in February “to regulate the amount of caloric sweeteners in sodas and other beverages, arguing that the scientific consensus is that the level of added sugars in those products is unsafe.”1 The medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was estimated at $190 billion for 2005, in the Journal of Health Economics.

Most recently, in February 2013, New York State Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling struck down a separate law formulated in May 2011 that would have banned the sale of sugary soft drinks larger than 16 ounces in New York City. The ruling overturned the law one day before it was to be implemented, with Justice Tingling calling the proposed limits “arbitrary and capricious.” The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed against the law by the American soft-drink industry.

USU Alum Dr. Richard Daines Had a Noteworthy Healthcare Career

Richard Daines grew up in Logan, graduated from Utah State in history in 1974, and then graduated from Cornell Medical School in 1978. He practiced medicine in the Bronx for 22 years at St. Barnabas Hospital, making good use of the Spanish he learned on his LDS mission in Bolivia. He then served as president and CEO of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, one of the leading teaching hospitals in New york, from 2002-2007. From 2007-2010 he was New york state health commissioner. In that position he oversaw a staff of 6,000 and a budget of more than $50 billion. He died in 2011, at age 60.

April 2013 Issue of Public Choice Tackles Some International Issues

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 MST

The new issue of the journal Public Choice, edited by the Huntsman School’s Dr. William F. Shughart, II, examines some particularly interesting international issues.

An essay by Cristina Bodea, for example, examines the fiscal performance of independent central
banks in post-communist countries, all filtered through the prism of “regime type.”
Another essay, by William Pyle and Laura Solanko, studies Russia’s business lobbies, particularly their composition and interests.

Inequality in developing economics is dissected by Adalgiso Amendola, Joshy Easaw, and Antonio Savoia, specifically to understand the impact of institutional development on that inequality.

At USU TEDx Talk Professor Ronda Callister Advocates Reducing Barriers to Women’s Contributions

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 MST

Two thirds of the illiterate people in the world are women—500 million women, to be exact.

Building on that stark fact, Huntsman School of Business Professor Ronda Callister spoke at the first ever TEDx event held at USU, in November of 2012. She used her requisite “18 minutes of innovative ideas” to describe the powerful, world-changing effects that could result from enabling women to become full contributors to human wellbeing and progress.

Dr. Callister, a professor of organizational behavior, also led a six-year, $3 million National Science Foundation grant-funded project “to improve the recruitment and advancement of women faculty in the sciences and engineering.” The work resulted in documented significant improvements in both recruitment and advancement of women at Utah State over six years, from 2003-2009.

Brady Rasmussen Promoted to Vice Pres of Aministration for Questar Gas

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 MST

Alumnus Brady Rasmussen, ’94, accounting, has worked at Questar for 18 years. Now he has been promoted to yet another management position, this time as vice president of administration for Wexpo, Questar’s natural gas development and production arm.

Mr. Rasmussen had been a general manager of accounting, and has worked in various accounting, supervisory, and management positions at Questar since the start of his employment.