by Lauren Courcy

El Paso Inc. staff writer

After just three years as the dean of the UTEP’s College of Business, Charles Crespy is saying goodbye, to become dean of the University of New Mexico’s Anderson Schools of Management in Albuquerque.
During his tenure in El Paso, Crespy oversaw the development of two new MBAs, the introduction of a doctoral program and the construction of several new facilities at the college. He is leaving, he says, because it was long a dream of his to “go home.”
Crespy is an Albuquerque native and a UNM alma mater four times over: He earned a bachelor of university studies in 1974, master’s degrees in Latin American studies and business administration in 1977, and a doctorate in international management in 1984.
He will inherit several challenges, financial and otherwise at UNM. According to the Albuquerque Tribune, the outgoing dean accused the university administration there of not providing the Anderson Schools with adequate financial support. The outgoing dean also said the school risked losing its accreditation unless the percentage of tenure-track professors on its faculty was increased.
Before becoming dean at UTEP, Crespy had taught for 18 years at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he was chairman of the business school's marketing department.
From the lobby of the College of Business, Crespy took El Paso Inc. on a tour of the college’s major construction project, the Texas Gas Service Center. He then took time out to share his view on the college’s biggest challenges and give his take on El Paso’s business community.

 

(The space next door to the lobby of the College of Business is noisy with construction. Crespy, wearing a bright-orange hard hat stops to reflect before entering the worksite.)
Crespy: One of the biggest problems we face at UTEP is the commuter population. Too many of our students see their experience more like a Wendy’s drive-thru than a day at the office. Our goal here is to create an educational environment that excites them, inspires them and causes them to spend more time here on campus.
To achieve that end, we’ve engaged in several major initiatives. I’m going to show you a little bit about two of them. This is was the Weldon C. Neil auditorium. It was one of the largest auditoriums on campus. It was a grossly underutilized facility in the College of Business.
(Crespy knocks, and then opens a make-shift plywood door into a construction site. He speaks a few words of Spanish with the workers, then leads the reporter and a small group on a tour. The space is called the Texas Gas Service Center.)
Crespy: This is the main entrance. You’ll see a touch-screen kiosk where students will be able to find information about exams, guest speakers, student-organization activities and a variety of other things. Through the doors here, will be a repository for laptop computers. The whole area is Wi-Fi, so you can walk in, check out a laptop, take it to one of our outside lobbies or into one of these conference rooms.
(He ducks into a small, corner room.)
Crespy: Now this will be the most technologically advanced room on campus. It is funded by Curry, Adkins Cook. This is a projector much like you see on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. It will allow us to communicate anywhere in the world. We’ll put a conference table in here with all the latest technology. Students can check out this facility for class projects or whatever their interested in.
We’ve raised over three-quarters of a million dollars for this project, and we did it in the face of a recession without any state support.

 

Q. Is that how much money you need to complete it?
Yes. It will be dedicated in September. This is largely built on the good faith and support of the greater El Paso community.
Then Dunbar Broaddus – they are a major accounting firm here – they purchased this room and designated it for Beta Alpha Psi, which is the accounting honorary society. So all the accounting students will get to come in here and use this space as their own private office, and Dunbar Broaddus is going to have its name on this window right here. It helps them recruit the finest students. It was a very gracious gift.
With very few exceptions, all these rooms are named for benefactors or donors. There are still rooms left.

Q. How much does a room cost?
They cost $12,000.
Here we have a focus-group facility. If you have a new product concept and you want to see how people respond to it, trained market-research experts can stand here, behind this one-way mirror and they can observe what’s transpiring. This is a laboratory for our marketing-management students to develop skill in focus groups and survey research.
(Having come full circle in the tour, Crespy exited the construction site and headed back to his office.)
Our goal here with the investment center and the student center is to create an environment so that Wendy’s drive-thru mentality gets supplanted for a day-at-the-office mentality. Our goal is to get another two hours of the student’s day. If we do that, we can turn F’s into C’s, C’s into A’s – to make UTEP ever more proud of its student population. We’re pretty excited about these changes.
Like I said, the biggest challenge we have with our student population is getting a larger share of their day. If they get their college degree in six or seven years, and the way they do that is to take two classes in the morning and one at night and live a 30-hour work week in the middle of that, they’re not going to benefit from all this university has to offer.
(Crespy makes one more stop. He pauses in front of a series of photos of the new doctoral students, recently admitted to UTEP’s international business Ph.D, program.)

Q. What do you do with a business Ph.D?
Most of these students will land in academic institutions. The state of Texas has encouraged us to start doctoral programs in no small measure to create a generation of role models for the increasingly Hispanic population. As you can see, we have enormous diversity in our population. With the exception of the two French students and one Chinese student, our student population very closely mirrors this particular region. Texas is excited about that because this creates a generation of professors that our student population can better identify with.

Q. You seem really excited about all this. So why are you leaving?
I think it’s everyone’s dream to go home. I’m an Albuquerque boy. I went to Sandia High School. I have four degrees from the University of New Mexico. I call Albuquerque home.
It was a difficult decision to leave here. I’ve been blessed with a glorious group of folks to work with. But the chance to go home and be with my brother and father and childhood friends and work at my alma mater is too good an opportunity to pass up.

Q. Tell me about your accomplishments here of which you are most proud.
I most proud of the hard work of the faculty. Collectively, they have done great things. The investment center was just a dream three years ago; now it’s a reality. The student center and the Ph.D. program were just dreams three years ago; now both are a reality. We have two executive-education programs that we’ve started.
We have started to educate at all levels now. In the past, we were largely an undergraduate institution with a reasonable MBA program. Now we have an undergraduate program. We have graduate programs that keep building in size. We teach two MBA programs Downtown, and we have the doctoral program. We’ve been busy.

Q. As you leave, what are some of the challenges your successor is going to face?
Worldwide there are about 400 schools that are AASCP accredited. Of those 400, only about 300 have all their programs accredited. We are one of those 300. We come up for reaffirmation of our AASCP accreditation in 2005. We’re well-positioned to maintain our accreditation, but it is a major task, and it’s going to be the focus of our efforts for the next 15 months.

Q. Is it the equivalent of an academic audit?
Yes. That’s a good way to put it.
We’ve been working diligently on that. Gary Mann is to become the new dean – actually his first day was July 1. Gary has quite a bit of experience working with the AASCP. He was a very wise choice.

Q. What’s your take on El Paso’s business community?
I think we have several challenges. One of the challenges we have is to stay focused on projects that can truly make a difference, and I think REDCO has it right in that the long-term future of El Paso area is in border trade and military development. If the BRAC realignment takes place the way we hope and expect it will, long-term there will be opportunities to grow. If we do that well, there will be new businesses coming to the area.

Q. Do you have any worries about REDCO’s progress thus far?
Any time there is a transition this major, there are going to be challenges. I haven’t seen anyone falter yet. There is the appropriate commitment from the business community and good leadership.

Q. You mentioned challenges in the business community. What else do you mean?
I think the biggest challenge we have, from an educator’s perspective, is trying to match our finest graduates from UTEP with the best job opportunities in El Paso. Far too many of our engineering and business graduates think, “If I graduate in the top 10 percent of my class, I need to go to Dallas or Houston to find a job.” And that’s just not the case.
We have worked to partner to get our graduates into internships and other programs to show them that we have meaningful opportunities in El Paso.
You know the University of Texas at San Antonio ran an ad campaign a few years ago that got them in a little bit of trouble. The whole campaign was “Come here. Go far.” The El Paso Chamber of Commerce didn’t like that because, I guess, they felt it would contribute to the export of talent.
Frankly, we don’t care if they go far. But we don’t want them to leave El Paso because they think there are not good job opportunities here. And we need to work more with the El Paso business community to let them know we have really bright students to match with their job opportunities. If we do that, we’ll build more loyalty to the community.
UTEP is a place where ... I don’t think I’ve ever seen any place do more with less.