Institutional Profile
C. T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston
USA
www.bauer.uh.edu
The C. T. Bauer College of Business has been in operation for more than 60 years at the University of Houston main campus. Through its five academic departments, the college offers a full-range of undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees in business as well as executive education and community engagement initiatives. The Bauer College is fully accredited by the AACSB International Ð the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. In August 2000, Houston business leader and philanthropist Charles T. (Ted) Bauer endowed the College of Business with a $40 million gift. In recognition of his generosity, the college was renamed the C. T. Bauer College of Business.
Dean: Paul A. Pavlou, Ph.D.
Accreditations: AACSB
Network Engagement
Through our strength in entrepreneurship and energy, Bauer College will support the GBSN mission by sharing the programs we have developed in Houston and helping to educate and train students in other countries. We will work with other member institutions to develop collaborative content and programming focusing on these areas.
Specific current initiatives include:
- Our Graduate & Professional programs recruitment team travels to countries like Peru, Mexico and Colombia, to share information about our programs and help students with the application process.
- We are actively working on removing two of the main challenges faced by students from the developing world _ financing and English language skills. We are in contact with financing agencies who work with international students (and we can inform prospective students of these options), and we are building pathways to our programs in partnership with institutions who teach English as a Second Language in Houston.
- We offer executive education to members of the community who want to conduct business in the developing world and transfer knowledge via business partnerships.
- We take our students on study abroad programs to India, Brazil, Chile and China, where they learn but also share knowledge.
- We are expanding our curriculum to include more programs that match the interests and aspirations of students in the developing world (Latin America among others).
Institutional contributions to the network platform in the first year
We plan to produce collaborative content focusing on the intersection between experiential learning and service learning, social entrepreneurship, energy management, creativity and innovation, including development of a Cross border Coffee Talk video series and blogs on energy management (topics including the future of energy, clean energy and energy finance).
Institutional engagement with fellow GBSN member institutions
We envision a number of areas of potential joint interest with GBSN members, including:
- Development of collaborative projects focusing on topics such as Transition to a Low Carbon Energy World, The Future Energy Industry Workforce, Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainable Development in the Energy Industry, and Innovation and New Business Models in Energy.
- An Annual Energy Management Conference with one session dedicated to Sustainable Energy/Renewable Energy, with member institutions invited to participate.
- Development of courses on Social Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets with 1-2 select partner institutes, offered to an elite group of undergraduate business students as full credit elective courses.
- Promotion of joint research and cross collaboration with member institutions.
The biggest challenge facing management in your community and how the institution addresses this challenge
- The lack of access to business education for entrepreneurs in the lower economic class neighborhood where our campus is located, and other similar neighborhoods in our urban environment, addressed by the Bauer College SURE Program.
- A reduced global awareness for a segment of the student population we serve, addressed by the college’s Global Management Certificate Program.
“Membership in GBSN is a way for us to build relationships with like-minded colleagues around the globe, train and mentor international peers, and find new opportunities to grow and develop individually and the institution as a whole.”
-Paul A. Pavlou, Dean
Program Spotlight
SUREª Program:
The SUREª (Stimulating Urban Renewal Through Entrepreneurship) Program at Bauer College provides an educational platform that facilitates a value-added partnership between UH students, industry experts and entrepreneurs from under-resourced communities. The program’s goals are to produce socially engaged students who have developed the key skills they need to outperform robots: empathy, entrepreneurial mindset, critical thinking, communication, leadership and others, while stimulating urban renewal by empowering entrepreneurs in under-resourced communities. SUREª is the only program in the country that is doing what it is doing at scale, educating over 300 students, training over 1,200 local under-resourced entrepreneurs, and engaging over 200 community and executive volunteers from industry (among dozens of partners) since 2012.
By combining existing elements, dedicating itself to incremental improvement, and striving to use design thinking, SURE used an additive formula to achieve a multiplicative effect. Students develop empathy, gain key skills and become better citizens, entrepreneurs are empowered and become job creators, and experts from industry mold leaders of tomorrow and also lend their considerable talents to good end by mentoring the entrepreneurs. Beyond these transactional improvements, the relationships built during the process have accumulated into a force unto itself, leading to better job placement for students, better business for the entrepreneurs, and an all-around more integrated, resilient community. www.bauer.uh.edu/SURE
For all this work, the SUREª ProgramÑor more often its director Dr. Saleha Khumawala, has received a number of awards and accolades. In 2018, she received the Piper Professor award for teaching from the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation, and recognition from the Governor of Texas. In 2017 alone, Dr. Khumawala received a Teaching Excellence award from the University of Houston Provost, the Higher Education Community Impact award from Texas Governor Abbott, the Community Impact award from Emerge USA, the Women in Business Champion of the Year award from the US Small Business Administration, and an Outstanding Leadership award from the Delta Iota Chapter of Phi Beta Delta. Additionally, her work with the SUREª program has garnered attention from the Houston Chronicle, the Urban Edge, and the Houstonia magazine, to name of few.
Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship:
The Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship (WCE) focuses on providing tools and resources to help students become well-rounded leaders with the ability to build strong relationships and start businesses. We not only teach academics in the classroom, we encourage and facilitate human development through our 40+ enrichment and outreach initiatives including mentoring, simulations, retreats, and many others. WCE educates about 2,500 students per year in entrepreneurship and from this pool hundreds apply to become entrepreneurship majors. Ultimately, 35 to 40 are selected to be part of the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship cohort program. WCE’s curriculum includes experiential learning opportunities, like a project where student teams build an Amazon store from the ground-up, fully funded by the program. Students are responsible for choosing product categories, sourcing products, marketing products (including branding, packaging, pricing, search engine marketing, social media marketing, and website support), and returning the program’s investment. WCE students also experience entrepreneurship in action through Wolffest, a 3-day pop-up restaurant competition held on campus, where student teams compete to earn the largest bottom line, with proceeds benefitting scholarships and student activities. www.bauer.uh.edu/WCE
GBSN promotes the expertise and interests of our members by providing a platform to communicate news and open opportunities to global audiences and share how they are innovating in management education to the benefit of their colleagues around the world. The New Member Spotlight series serves as a way for new member schools to introduce themselves to the network.