Spotlight: Arjang Assad, Senior Associate Dean

Having been at the business school since 1978, long before it was the Smith School of Business, Arjang Assad has seen a lot of change. But that’s okay, because he likes change. Without a doubt, the most significant transformation Assad has seen during his 25 years at the business school has been the tremendous growth during the last seven years. “It’s not just in the numbers,” he says, “but also in the quality and professionalism of the faculty, the staff and the students.” Early changes during his time here included the evolution of the Decision and Information Technologies Department, which was a merger between the two areas of management science/statistics and information systems.

After completing most of his undergraduate and graduate studies at MIT in the field of chemical engineering, he received his PhD from the Sloan School in management operations research. Joining the business school as a new faculty member in 1978, Assad spent 20 years rising through the ranks of professorship, assuming the position of chair of D&IT in 1998. Towards the end of his tenure as department chair, he felt his amount of “on-the-job-learning” was leveling out. “I had been exposed to almost every issue involved in being a department chair,” he says. Now as senior associate dean, he is exposed to new issues and new challenges. An analogy he suggested is that of using a different set of muscles. “When you use your muscles in a particular sport they become very flexible and well-used. When you switch sports, however, you often use a different set of muscles, and that is what I am doing in my new position,” says Assad. In addition to getting to know more of the administrative staff throughout the Smith School, Assad has enjoyed learning about matters that affect the administrative staff that are different from issues involving faculty.

What does “Leaders for the Digital Economy” mean to a pioneer of information technology? “The school is the leader,” Assad says, “and we are supporting the school in its goal to become leaders for the digital economy. We lead on the innovation path in doing things others can learn from . . . we are not a follower, doing things after others have proven them to be useful.”

What is Assad’s role of integrating the convergence of information technology with the academic programs at Smith? “This topic is very dear to me, and has been stated by Howard Frank to be a top priority,” Assad says. He enjoys intellectually engaging faculty on the topic. He encourages his colleagues to incorporate technology into their teaching and course requirements, in order to make the students’ experience different from that at other business schools. “We must continue to do more,” he says, “such as introducing the use of BlackBerry devices into the academic program.”

When asked about some of the new ideas he has in mind for the Smith School, or areas on which he especially hopes to focus, Assad says he intends to remain close to the faculty, many of whom have been his colleagues for a long time. He also plans to work on information technology instruction, teaching enhancement, and building a relationship with our adjunct faculty.

When spending time outside of Smith, it’s not unusual to find Arjang Assad browsing in a bookstore, as he is an avid reader of all subjects. He also greatly enjoys movies and foreign films or films produced in other countries. Most of his family resides in the U.K. and Iran.

Assad says that when he was a faculty member and deans were elected, he always felt that they should be accessible and interested in the entire school. As senior associate dean, he wants to meet his own requirement that he has placed on others before him. He states, “my office is always open, and I am always approachable.”

▓ Carol Cron, Smith Newslink Inside

Smith Students Compete in UNC Case Competition!

Every February, the Marketing Club at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School organizes one of the highest profile Marketing Case Challenges in the United States. Marketing Clubs from the Top 25 Business Schools send their best students, who compete in randomly assigned teams of people from other schools. The challenge mimics the "real world" where people from diverse work and educational backgrounds must quickly assimilate themselves into team environments to solve "live" marketing cases.

On the weekend of February 11, 2005, five Smith students traveled to the University of North Carolina to participate in the UNC case competition. This year’s Smith team consisted of Jason Madhosingh, Kerrie Beer, Kartikey Misra, Sadia Asghar, and Lindy Duvall (pictured from left to right). The night before the competition, UNC hosted a cocktail hour where teammates were able to meet and get to know each other. The case, presented to the teams six hours before the competition, asked for students come up with a marketing solution to address the declining sales in John Deere's X Series of lawnmowers. Teams were given six hours to read the case, present questions to a panel of John Deere executives, and then come up with a marketing strategy. At the end of the six hours, teams presented their recommendations to a panel of judges which consisted of marketing faculty from UNC and executives from John Deere.

When asked to reflect on their experience, Smith team members had this to say:

Overall I really enjoyed my experience. My team consisted of students from UNC, Notre Dame, University of Texas, and MIT. We got along right from the start, which helped when our PowerPoint presentation crashed two minutes before we had to present our recommendations to the judges. Luckily, we only lost two slides, and were given a few extra minutes to quickly fix it. You would never have known from our presentation. I learned a lot from my fellow teammates, and it was great practice for the Smith case competition.

- Kerrie Beer, MBA Candidate 2006

The top 25 schools were invited and for UNC to include us in that, it gives our school/program a stamp of approval- that our students are just as competitive. It allowed me to gauge how other marketing students approach case challenges given a limited set of information. I think what I brought to the team in terms of presentation skills and teamwork were excellent but felt like my understanding of the case and how to extract pertinent information were lacking. Some fundamental things I learned when looking at a case include doing a SWOT analysis before beginning anything else (even before answering the case question). Secondly, taking a look at past strengths and how to build on them is important, especially if you're looking at legacy companies (such as John Deere). I feel as though there is a way to systematize how you look at marketing cases even though there are some creative ways to approach solutions. And lastly, it was a great way to meet other first-year students from schools that we normally wouldn't meet- another way to network.

- Sadia Asghar, MBA Candidate 2006

My team members were from Duke, MIT, Cornell, and Washington University. The top 2 teams did well because they had organized and structured the presentation template in the beginning. For such competitions, it always helps if you assign a moderator within the group, who can guide the group with regard to time constraints. The most important thing is to enjoy the competition. I got to meet people from some of the top business schools, and it was fun working with them.

- Kartikey Misra, MBA Candidate 2006

Lindy Duvall, a first year full time Smith MBA student, and her team placed second in the competition. Here’s what Lindy had to say about her experience:

The marketing case competition at UNC was one of the best experiences that I've had since coming to Smith. It was a real simulation to use the skills that I have learned thus far and gave me the opportunity to see what other MBA students from top schools are doing. The fact that at this John Deere competition they mixed teams with students from all different schools made it unique, and made the experience more gratifying. I felt that there was a collaborative environment where all the MBA students mingled. I have already kept in touch and received consulting advice from students I met there.

I think that the main reason my team was in the finals was the fact that we worked so well together. We did not have one personality trying to dominate the group. Everyone was respectful, good at presenting, motivated, and flexible. I actually saw Dr. Russell's leadership class and team styles at play. My team consisted of a guy from Cornell, a guy from Carnegie Mellon, a guy from UCLA and a girl from UNC - surprisingly the other girl and I were the only ones with any real exposure to John Deere or the type of person they would market their product to. We had to develop a market plan for their x-series riding lawn mower. My team worked so well I think because we set time based goals for ourselves with our 6 hours, we never separated the tasks, and all worked together on everything and then we truly believed in our plan and supported each other. We were upfront saying that we wanted open communication, no idea was a "dumb" idea and we just talked and really communicated, made sure everyone was onboard, understood every aspect of our plan, etc. The guy from UCLA had actually just competed in two other competitions so we really let him set us up on a framework on how to look at the case. He did so without stepping on toes and always asking everyone else's opinion. It worked well that we had one "leader" to keep us on track.

I also really enjoyed the chance to take time out of our busy schedules to get to know the 4 other Smith students that came down. It's so nice to put school books aside and really get to know your classmates. I felt incredibly lucky having to get up in front of 100 MBA's from the 25 top schools, UNC professors and all of the John Deere execs knowing that Kerrie, Jason, Sadia & Kartikey were in the audience rooting 100% for me. Unfortunately only the first place team received a monetary award at this competition, but second place got John Deere hats! And we got to sit with some executives from the company. I don't think you can put a price tag on the learning experience and exposure gained from a case competition.

- Lindy Duvall, MBA Candidate 2006

For more information about the UNC Case Competition, visit  http://intranet.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/orgs/mba/2005case/index.htm.