Articles

From the Dean’s Desk
Ken Armstrong, Dean of George Fox School of Business
Greetings! It is another beautiful, sunny day in Oregon, and I once again thank God for the beauty of his creation.

We are off to a great start in the School of Business … yes, you read that right. We are now officially the George Fox School of Business. This name change is symbolic of the commitment to expand, improve and grow the School of Business that was recently publicly announced to the George Fox community by President Robin Baker. He identified developing a premier School of Business as one of the two top academic priorities for the coming years. More…

From the Director
What I Learned on My Summer Vacation
By Robby Larson, Director of Alumni Relations
The weather is getting cooler, the leaves around Newberg are turning fantastic colors, and I find myself thinking about summer. It’s not that I don’t appreciate fall, it’s actually my favorite season. Instead, my thoughts are due to a remarkable experience I had this summer. As a part of my graduate program here at George Fox, I traveled to China for a ten-day study trip with 8 members of my cohort and Linda Samek, dean of the School of Education. This was an incredible trip that broadened my perspective of the truly global nature of higher education. Looking back, I’m also struck by what this trip taught me about relationships and the way that I approach my job as director of alumni relations. More…

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Events

Quarterly Speaker Series
Our seventh event in the Friday Morning Quarterly Speaker Series was held on Sept. 18. Jim Cross, a 2006 MBA alumnus and contracts and negotiations manager for a high-tech firm, presented "Negotiations 101: How to Drive an Effective Win-Win Deal." The audience of 63 attendees unanimously indicated on the evaluation form that they will recommend future events to colleagues. Great job, Jim!

2010 Speaker Series dates announced
Jan 22 – Topic TBD
March 12 – Featured Speaker Tom Potiowsky, Oregon’s state economist
June 11 – Topic TBD

Professional Preview Day
Career Services is seeking alumni to participate in its annual Professional Preview Day, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Nov. 18. This event connects alumni with one or two George Fox students who are interested in the profession or occupational field of the alumni. The day begins with a "get acquainted" coffee hour at the George Fox Portland Center. Students then spend the rest of the afternoon accompanying the alumni to their workplace in order to get a glimpse of the daily aspects of that profession. Lunch will be provided, or alumni may choose to treat their assigned student(s) to lunch on the town. Please register by Oct. 26. For more information and to register, click here.

Homecoming
Wear your school colors proudly when you return to campus Feb. 5-6 for Homecoming 2010: Designed to Serve! This is a great opportunity for all alumni to visit George Fox and reconnect with old friends. To capture our theme, and demonstrate the university’s intentional commitment to serving others, special affinity reunions are being held for May Serve and engineering alumni. Class reunion events will also be held for alumni from the classes of 1950, 1970, 1980, 1985, 1990 and 2000.

Regardless of when and what you studied, we hope you will come home to your alma mater and join in this year’s exciting homecoming festivities! For more information, click here.

Alpine Europe Tour
There are still spots available for the George Fox tour of alpine Europe to see the Passion Play at Oberammergau, Germany, in early-summer 2010. Open to all alumni, parents and friends of George Fox, our 11-day tour, departing May 31, will include visits to the beautiful alpine European cities of Frankfurt and Munich, Germany; Salzburg, Austria; and Lucerne and Interlaken, Switzerland. Among many other highlights, the tour will include travel through the Rhine Valley, Black Forest, as well as the Swiss, Austrian and Bavarian Alps. Additionally, visits are planned to Neuschwanstein and Heidelberg castles, and Rothenburg, Germany’s best-preserved medieval town. The highlight of the trip will be the Passion Play, an inspiring one-day play, dating back nearly 375 years, which is performed for sold-out audiences every 10 years in a magnificent outdoor covered amphitheater with the Bavarian Alps as a backdrop. To read the full itinerary, request more information, and register for the trip, click here.

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News

Full-time MBA Program Launched August 2009
After much planning, the School of Business launched a new Full-Time MBA program in August. The program targets a growing demographic in the MBA world that is focused on students with up to three to four years of professional work experience. This intensive, 11-month program strives to develop promising leaders by offering an ethics-based, holistic curriculum with a global perspective. One component of the program is a business seminar course which provides students the opportunity to visit corporations and engage in learning with corporate business professionals in the greater Portland area. We’re excited to have 14 students join us in the first year of this cohort-based program.

MBA Concentrations Approved by Faculty
In April 2009, MBA alumni and current students gave feedback on possible concentrations via focus groups. Faculty teams took that input into account to develop three, nine-credit concentrations (or certificates if you’ve already earned your MBA). The university’s Curriculum Committee is in the process of evaluating these proposed courses. Our plan is to offer them beginning in fall 2010.

• Finance (Courses: Financial Analysis and Forecasting / Financial Institutions, Investments, and Capital Markets / Special Topics in Financial Management)
• Organizational Strategy (Courses: Leading Strategic Change / Global Strategy / Special Topics in Strategy)
• Strategic Human Resource Management (Courses: Human Resource Management and Organizational Effectiveness / Human Resource Management Strategies and Practices / Human Resource Development and High Performance Organizations)

Prerequisites for taking the concentration: An MBA or other approved, business-related master’s degree from a regionally accredited institution, or completion of the first 14 courses in the George Fox MBA program.

MBA and Doctoral Students Travel to Shanghai
A group of MBA and doctoral students traveled with their professors, Marley Brown and Tim Rahschulte, for an intensive week of international management study in Shanghai, China in May 2009.
MBA and doctoral students visit the new Coca-Cola plant in Shanghai

Three New Full-Time Professors
Justine Haigh joins the School of Business as an associate professor of marketing. For the past eight years, she has taught business, marketing and advertising courses at Leeds Metropolitan University in Leeds, England (2008-09) and at the University of Huddersfield in Huddersfield, England (2001-08). She also worked as a senior research assistant through the University of Huddersfield for the Cheshire County Council’s road safety department in the mid-2000s. In the mid-1990s, she worked as a staffing consultant for National Semiconductor and as a sales manager for retail outlet Motherhood, both of Santa Clara, Calif. Justine earned a doctorate in consumer behavior (2008), a master’s degree in innovation and entrepreneurship (1999) and a bachelor’s degree in behavioral sciences (1994), all from the University of Huddersfield. She lives in Sherwood with husband Julian and son Daniel (11).

The School of Business hired Ryan Halley as an associate professor of finance. He arrives from Mount Vernon Nazarene University in Mount Vernon, Ohio, where he was an assistant professor of finance for the past four years. He also has worked as a financial consultant, as an adjunct professor at Lubbock Christian University (2003-04), and as a graduate research assistant at Texas Tech University (2002-04). Ryan earned a doctorate in consumer economics and personal financial planning from Texas Tech in 2005, an MBA from The Ohio State University in 2002, and a bachelor’s degree in accounting and business administration from Mount Vernon Nazarene University in 1999. He holds the Accredited Financial Counselor (AFC) designation from the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education. He lives in Newberg with wife Jess and children Megan (9) and Brennan (5).

Annette Nemetz joins the School of Business as an assistant professor of management. From 2003 to 2008, she was the executive vice president of Waggener Edstrom Worldwide’s global services network in Portland, serving in the areas of general management, strategy, vision and operating leadership. She also was the chief operating officer and senior vice president of Waggener Edstrom’s Microsoft account from 2000 to 2004. Before that, she founded and directed ORA Innovations, Inc., a Portland-based entrepreneurial venture that developed a patented medical device. Additionally, included in her 20-plus years of business and marketing experience, were management positions at Sun Microsystems and Sequent Computer Systems. Annette has been an adjunct professor at George Fox for the past year, teaching strategic thinking and marketing in the MBA program, and is currently earning a doctor of management degree from George Fox. She earned an MBA from Stanford University in 1989 and a bachelor’s degree in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1980. She lives in Sherwood with her husband, Alan Timmins, and their 14-year-old daughter Madeline. They are members of St. Francis Church in Sherwood.

Faculty Research and Scholarship
Tom Head led a workshop on "Social Change" at the Quaker Institute for the Future’s Symposium "Bringing the Human Economy in Line with Ecology," in Montreal, Canada, May 2009, and he presented a paper on "Envisioning A Moral Economy" at the QIF Summer Research Seminar held at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif., July 2009.

Tim Rahschulte has coauthored an article with Dr. Frank Christopian (Northrop Grumman aerospace engineer, retired) titled, "A qualitative inquiry into organizational culture’s moderating affect on the use and success of knowledge management projects in the aerospace and defense industry" (to be published in fall 2009 in the International Journal of Knowledge Management).

Rahschulte also has an article coming out in the fall issue of The Journal of Virtue & Leadership, titled "Virtues for Leading Change."

Rahschulte has coauthored an article with Mr. Russ Martinelli (Intel Corporation) and Mr. Jim Waddell (Tektronix, retired) titled, "Using program management to achieve global product and service development success." (This article is published in PM World Today, 11(1), 1-8.)

Rahschulte has also finished a book coauthored with Mr. Russ Martinelli (Intel Corporation) and Mr. Jim Waddell (Tektronix, retired) titled Leading Global Project Teams: The New Leadership Challenge. (In print 2010 by Multi-Media Publications, Inc.)

Rahschulte will be co-presenting with Mr. Wayne Herrli (Process Center of Excellence Manager, State of Oregon) and Mrs. Debra Herrli (Senior Program Manager, State of Oregon) at the October Project Management Institute’s Global Congress on the topic of "The most important aspect of project management today: Determining readiness for change."

Rahschulte will also be presenting at Technological Education Institute of Piraeus in Greece in late fall 2009 on the topics of project management and organizational change management.

Jim Steele led a concurrent session titled "Tipping the Career Ladder: Is Up the Only Way?" at the Northwest Human Resource Management Association conference at the Portland Convention Center on Sept. 30. The workshop was part of a special track for HR Professionals in Transition. The conference was attended by about 600 HR professionals from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska.

Enrollment Holds Steady
George Fox University didn’t break its enrollment record this fall, but came close. Overall enrollment is 3,368, down 0.4 percent from last year’s record 3,382. George Fox enrollment is more than six times larger than it was in 1986, when 549 students attended. The university’s 17 graduate and seminary programs grew 1 percent to 1,389 students. The George Fox School of Business, which offers a full-time MBA in Oregon, part-time MBA in Portland and Boise, and a Doctor of Business Administration, saw 16 percent growth in its graduate programs. Following the graduation of the largest class in school history, the traditional undergraduate population dipped by 1 percent with 1,685 enrolling on the Newberg campus. To read more, click here.

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Announcements

School of Business on LinkedIn
You’re invited to join the School of Business LinkedIn networking group. To join the group, click here.

George Fox Alumni Facebook Page
Do you use Facebook? Become a fan of the George Fox University Alumni Association! This page is a great way for you to find out what’s going on at the university, see photos and videos, and share your thoughts and memories of your time at George Fox. Become a fan today and join the conversation. We currently have over 1,200 fans since we launched in August! To become a fan, visit facebook.com/georgefoxalumni. This page replaces our Facebook group, which is no longer being used. The Alumni Association can also be found on other social networking sites using the following links: LinkedIn, Twitter, and MySpace.

Farewell Bruindata, Hello myGFU
With the implementation of a new university-wide computer software system, Bruindata, the university’s web-based portal system, has been decommissioned, with its replacement system myGFU still in development. The Online Alumni Directory, e-mail forwarding, unofficial transcripts, and other tools that had been available to alumni in Bruindata are currently being built in the new system, with their completion anticipated in December. We apologize for the inconvenience that this causes and are available to help you find what you need in the interim. Please contact alumni@georgefox.edu with questions.

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