July 8, 2003

It’s not easy being a standout at the largest business school in the Bay Area, but four extraordinary faculty have achieved that distinction. Sally Baack, Paul Beckman, Brenda Mak and Bill Perttula have won the College of Business 2002-03 Professor of the Year awards, a new recognition program introduced by Dean Jerry Platt.

The awards -- one each in the categories of teaching, research and service accompanied by a $1,000 cash award, and an overall award for $2,000 that encompasses all three categories -- recognize faculty who embody the spirit and direction of the College, Platt says. The program is the first in what is intended to be an annual event.

Sally Baack, assistant professor of management, received the overall award for excellence in teaching, research and service. Platt praised her as a wonderful role model for both students and faculty, who "seems to bring out the best in those around her." Baack teaches the undergraduate and MBA capstone course in strategic management and MBA electives in corporate management and international business negotiations. She conducts research on corporate governance, strategic alliances and international competition with an emphasis on strategic management for U.S. wineries facing international competition. She also runs the College's popular research roundtable and coordinates the multi-section course, Seminar in Business Policy and Strategic Management.

Paul Beckman, associate professor of information systems and business analysis who received the teaching award, compares his classroom teaching philosophy to a fancy restaurant: his students are the customers, and he is the waiter, chef and busboy. He aims to provide top-shelf customer service to them by answering questions, listening to feedback and being accessible to students.

Brenda Mak, assistant professor of information systems and business analysis who received the research award, has published more than seven chapters or journal articles since joining the faculty in 2001 on such topics as data mining, neural networks, human-computer interaction and use of rough set theory to study imprecision and uncertainty in data analysis.

Bill Perttula, professor and chair of marketing who received the service award, didn’t think twice about volunteering to fill in last fall when Ronald Beall, the College’s associate dean was out for several weeks with an injury. For eight weeks, Perttula barely took off a weekend as the College's acting associate dean while continuing his duties as professor and department chair.

Accredited by the prestigious Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the College of Business enrolls nearly 5,000 undergraduate and 900 graduate students in traditional full-time programs and an accelerated MBA for working executives. Each year SFSU's College of Business awards more business degrees than Stanford, UC Berkeley, and the University of San Francisco combined, and is the largest grantor of MBAs to minority students in the U.S. All of the College's 110 full-time faculty hold doctoral degrees, and most have experience with commercial enterprises and are engaged in applied business research.

-- Matt Itelson and Ellen Griffin

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Last modified July 8, 2003, by the Office of Public Affairs