by M. C. Jennings | Nov 18, 2016 | Academics, COBA Events, COBA Faculty, COBA Staff, College Decisions, Current Students, Distinguished Speakers Series, Faith Infusion, MAcc, MBA, School of Information Technology and Computing, Uncategorized
Dr. Brad Crisp officially began his tenure as the Dean of the College of Business Administration in June and has been building an agenda since for his new role. One of the items on that agenda has been to reach out to and connect with alumni from the College of Business and the School of Information Technology and Computing, giving alumni and friends an opportunity to meet or reacquaint themselves with Dr. Crisp as well as learning more about the state of our college and what our plans are for the future. Thus, the idea for the “Meet the Dean Tour” was born and implemented in partnership with the Alumni Relations Office.
Dr. Brad Crisp, Dean of the College of Business Administration
The tour began in Abilene with 56 alumni and friends and at each stop, Dr. Crisp illustrated ACU’s long standing success in business education and our recent path of progress with our School of IT and Computing. Along with our first event in Abilene, alumni and friends gathered in Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and Silicon Valley at networking breakfasts and lunches. Alumni who graduated within the past 10 years were invited to join Dr. Crisp for a “Beat the Dean” event at Top Golf in several of these cities, as they attempted to best the new Dean. It was a fun time of networking and Dr. Crisp was able to withstand the challenge brought by our young alums.
Young Alums in Dallas
Dr. Crisp aims to win
COBA Beat the Dean at Top Golf in Dallas
Not only were we able to reconnect with alumni, but we also met with parents of current students as well as prospective students and their families as they sought to learn more about the College and our programs and opportunities. Recent graduates were hard at work at these events, helping us connect students to internships and job opportunities in their organization. Alumni who have risen to leadership roles in their companies expressed their desire to create and sustain pipelines of ACU talent to their organizations. Many of our alums shared stories of the encouragement and strengthening they received both professionally and personally while attending ACU. They were encouraged by Dr. Crisp’s consistent reference to our heritage of business excellence, rooted in our personal commitment to living out the mission of Christ and bringing this mission to the workplace.
Meet the Dean lunch stop in Austin
Today, Dr. Crisp leads a College offering 5 business degrees and 4 technology degrees at our Abilene campus, the Griggs Center for Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy which is leading the nation in student engagement for entrepreneurship programs, and the new Lytle Center for Leadership and Faith Development which is continuing our Distinguished Speaker Series and Leadership Summit course. The reach of ACU’s mission to educate Christian servants and leaders has expanded with the on-line MBA program, offered through the ACU Dallas campus in addition to our residential Master of Accountancy program and additional on-line graduate programs are in the discussion phase. The College of Business enjoyed an enrollment of exactly 1,000 total students this fall and is positioned for additional growth. Our Master of Accountancy and Computer Science programs supply a steady stream of employers coming to campus to interview for talent as the changing landscape of business is driven by technology and entrepreneurship, demanding ethical leaders in this rapidly transforming environment.
Young alums at Beat the Dean in San Antonio
The opportunity to begin Dr. Crisp’s tenure by connecting with alumni was emphasized by an intentional effort to listen to and involve alumni and friends in our efforts to develop the next generation of business and technology servant leaders. All in attendance were encouraged to give us feedback via an on-line survey. If you were unable to attend one of the stops but would like to give feedback as we continue to shape the direction and future of ACU’s College of Business and School of Information Technology and Computing, please fill out the survey by clicking on this link.
Your support of our work to educate business and technology professionals for Christian service and leadership throughout the world is a great encouragement to us and we cannot achieve our goals without support from alumni and friends. Thank you!
by M. C. Jennings | Nov 17, 2016 | Academics, Accounting, Careers In..., COBA Events, COBA Faculty, COBA Staff, College Decisions, Current Students, Faith Infusion, Special Speakers, Uncategorized
The Lytle Center for Faith and Leadership Development hosted Brett Biggs, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on October 25th, as the speaker at COBA’s annual Distinguished Speaker Series luncheon.
Brett Biggs, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Biggs is responsible for accounting and control, corporate strategy and development, business planning and analysis, internal auditing, treasury, tax, global shared services and several other key areas of the company. Before being appointed to his current role, Biggs was executive vice president and chief financial officer for Walmart International, where he was responsible for all global finance activities, including accounting and controls, business planning and analysis, financial services, and support for real estate, M&A and Strategy. Prior to that, Brett served as executive vice president and chief financial officer for Walmart U.S., where he was responsible for U.S. finance functions including strategy, merchandising, logistics, financial services, real estate, operations, and financial planning and analysis.
Biggs began his visit to ACU with a Q&A meeting with approximately 30 COBA students. The students had unfettered access to ask Biggs questions about his career path, how Walmart works and his best advice on how to jump start their own careers. After the private gathering with students, he then addressed the luncheon crowd of about 200 guests, talking to them about Walmart’s corporate philosophy as well as his own beliefs on what it means to be a Christian leader in the workplace.
Mr. Biggs meeting with COBA students
Biggs stated that the “Joy of working at Walmart is that it is a company that stands for things: take care of your people, do your best, and take care of the people that come through your door.” Biggs also said that he believes, “The world needs places that stand for something. I love ACU’s mission. If you can combine your passion and your vocation with your mission, that’s where it’s at. Sometimes being a person of faith is tough. You have to stand your ground when others around you aren’t. Rosa Parks said it well when she said, ‘Stand for something or you will fall for anything. Today’s mighty oak is yesterday’s nut that held its ground.’ Matt 5:14 says, ‘You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.’ I know that’s what this university is about and I appreciate that.”
Biggs also gave a personal anecdote when he told a story about meeting Sam Walton, who he described as a once in a lifetime kind of man and the greatest entrepreneur of all time. Biggs said that he met Walton on a field trip in college. Biggs happened to be carrying around a very big notebook while studying for the CPA exam. Sam Walton asked what the book was for and Biggs explained to him that he was intensely studying for the exam. Walton then told him that, “If you study hard and work hard you never know what you’ll be able to achieve.” Biggs said that today, his office is next door to Sam Walton’s former office.
Biggs encouraged students to find a company that fits your values, to be intentional about your faith and to stay grounded and focused on your faith. He also exhorted the audience to know who you are before you are faced with big decisions. He stated, “You have to know what you would do and make a choice ahead of time. You have to really know who you are. Students, take advantage of your time here and form that person now. Take advantage of all the spiritual opportunities you have here.”
Mr. Biggs meeting with COBA Faculty
Biggs wrapped his trip to ACU up with a private meeting with some of COBA’s faculty, where they discussed current markets and opportunities for students. COBA would like to thank Brett Biggs for so graciously giving of his time and energy to our students, faculty, staff and community.
For pictures from the event, please click on this link for COBA’s FaceBook page.
by M. C. Jennings | Nov 15, 2016 | Academics, COBA Faculty, Research, Uncategorized
by guest blogger, Dr. Don Pope
Well sports fans, it was one of those weeks. 3 of the top 4 CFP ranked teams went down in flames to defeat, as well as my dear old Texas Aggies. Since the top 4 CFP ranked teams end up in the most significant bowl games and play each other for the unofficial (not recognized by the NCAA) national championship, then we are going to see a scramble for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th ranked teams at the end of the regular season. That assumes, of course, that Alabama remains in their overwhelming number 1 ranked position, which is surely to occur unless their team bus blows an engine and they fail to show at their remaining games. Our rankings did not change a great deal from the previous week (week 10) to week 11 (shown below).
This is due to several factors: first, our algorithm is not bothered by a “defeat” as much as other rankings, as in the case of Michigan only losing by 1 point on the road against Iowa. Secondly, our rankings were never as excited about Clemson and Washington as other rankings had been. Our rankings, after the 800 pound monster Alabama, are very impressed with the body of work of several Big 10 conference teams. Among these is Northwestern, which is still flying below the radar on many rankings, but our rankings feel that they are a strong contender.
Stay tuned for this coming weekend’s games. The only certainty is more surprises.
by M. C. Jennings | Nov 8, 2016 | Academics, COBA Faculty, Current Students, Research
by guest blogger and marketing major from Japan, Noah Bastable
Hello wildcats and welcome back to our weekly blog post on the Jessup Pope College Football Rankings!
This week is the tenth week of college football and we’d like to talk you through some noticeable changes since last week.
Our top four teams – Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, and Wisconsin – remain the same but their order has switched.
LSU lost to Alabama but they went up in the rankings from 16th to 11th. The score was close until Alabama broke the scoreless game in the last quarter by scoring 10 points.
Ole Miss shot up through the rankings from 28th to 17th after a 37-27 win against the Georgia Southern Eagles.
Nebraska went down from 12th to 20th after their staggering 62-3 loss to Ohio State.
The most interesting turnout, however, was one between two of our home state teams, Baylor and TCU. TCU “clobbered”, as Ryan Jessup put it, the Bears 62-22 defeating them so badly that their running back was sidelined for attitude issues. Perhaps there is a silver lining in the Bears-Frogs game, the lesson learned that no matter how rough a game may get, one must always maintain a right attitude.
That is it for this week. Come back and check us out again next week for more of the new and improved Jessup Pope College Football rankings! Go Wildcats!!
by M. C. Jennings | Nov 1, 2016 | Academics, COBA Faculty, Current Students, Research, Uncategorized
by guest blogger, Dr. Ryan Jessup
I present to you the first edition of the second season of the new and improved Jessup Pope (JP) College Football Rankings in which we rank all 128 college football teams in the bowl subdivision based on their performances through the first 9 weeks of the current season.
A very brief history
Last season, Don Pope and I introduced our ranking system which uses a modified version of the Google PageRank algorithm – the algorithm that jump-started the search engine giant and still underlies their current approach today – to allow it to rank teams instead of webpages. We also enabled it to account for home field advantage and temporal decay of performances (this is where games early in the season weigh less in the rankings than more recent games), among other things.
New and improved
You might recall that last season we ended with the same final 4 as the college football playoff (CFP) rankings and predicted that Alabama would defeat Clemson in the Championship by 5.7 points, a game Alabama won by 5 points. Our model (a) beat Las Vegas and (b) correctly predicted the winner of the bowl games 51.2% of the time. For us, that is not good enough. So, in the offseason we grabbed more seasons of college football data to help our system better learn and made a few additional modifications to supercharge the system. When we finally got around to running our new version on last season’s data, we found that it beat Vegas 61% of the time and correctly predicted the bowl game winner 56% of the time.
About our rankings
Before we get into the rankings here are a few quick reminders:
- We do not care about predicting the CFP rankings. We care about good predictions of game outcomes and correctly predicting the CFP rankings may lead us in the wrong direction.
- Our model does not care about win-loss records. A team with a losing record who lost multiple away games against tough teams by narrow margins will likely end up higher in our rankings than an undefeated team that has played a creampuff schedule.
- Our model is not biased by name recognition, what conference a team plays in, or start of the season rankings – three potential weaknesses of human ranking systems.
- Our model is forward-looking so as to predict future outcomes whereas traditional polls and ranking systems are backwards-looking and hence merely describe prior performance.
The rankings
As with last season, we are presenting the rankings using a dotplot which preserves the relative difference in JP values. For example, this image demonstrates that the difference in quality between teams 1 and 2 is larger than the difference between teams 15 and 50!
No one should be surprised that Alabama and Michigan are ranked at the top. Our high ranking of Wisconsin is consistent with their strong performances against quality teams, despite their two losses, both against teams that we rank higher (Michigan followed by Ohio State at #3).
My guess is that undefeated Clemson and Washington will round out the CFP’s top 4 in the first ranking of the season which will be released on Tuesday; though, our model suggests that they are currently on the outside looking in. Baylor and West Virginia’s losses this past weekend simplified the problem that would have otherwise arisen – people wondering why those two undefeated teams were ranked so low.
by M. C. Jennings | Oct 19, 2016 | Academics, Careers In..., COBA Faculty, College Decisions, Current Students, Faith Infusion, Human Resource Management, Uncategorized
Dr. Malcolm Coco
What is your educational background?
Bachelor of Business Administration, University of Southwestern La.
Personnel Management and Supervision, Central Michigan University
Doctorate of Public Administration, Nova Southeastern University
What is your work background?
I was a United States Air Force Pilot for 22 years.
What do you teach at ACU?
I teach Human Resource Management courses and am the Director of Internships for COBA.
What committees/other duties do you have at ACU aside from teaching?
Too many to list. I was Associate Dean from 1993-1997.
What drew you to teaching? Why did you want to work with students?
When stationed at Dyess AFB in the 70s, I met a number of ACU faculty/staff/and grads. I determined then based on those relationships that ACU was special and that after my Air Force career I would like to work for ACU.
What’s the best part of working with students?
Working with young people with fresh ideas, passion, and engagement.
Have you ever given up any big opportunities to keep working with students?
The offer to be the Director of Human Resources at ACU and several other HR director jobs.
Outside of teaching, what passions and hobbies do you have?
Anything outdoors: bow hunting, fly fishing, and duck hunting especially.
Enjoying the great outdoors.
What is a good, early story about your teaching?
I’ve always enjoyed inviting local, national and international HR professionals to speak in my class.
Tell me about a project or accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career.
Being the Deputy Director of U.S. air force pilots world wide assignments for 40,000 air force pilots as well as being the Associate Dean during some of the most challenging times for the College of Business.
Do you do any charity or non-profit work?
I volunteer with Rotary International, Big Country Society for Human Resource Management, Military Officers Association, and Herald of Truth.
Who is your role model, and why?
Anyone of a few faculty who can fully engage students.
Dr. Coco on a field trip with students.
Who was your most inspirational professor and why?
Former Department Chair, Lamar Riench.
If you could have a superpower, what would it be and why?
To have a better ability to connect people with Jesus.
What is something that students might be surprised to find out about you?
That I was a State Champion pole vaulter and sprinter.
What would you really want students and alums to know about you?
To know how much I really care about our students and how much I appreciate our student’s parents giving us their children for an education.
