New UNR business dean sees three roles for school

The new dean of the College of Business Administration at the University of Nevada, Reno, says the region's business community can take a simple step to help strengthen the college:

"Our graduates are the best and the brightest," says Greg Mosier. "Hire them."

That's not a flip response. Year in and year out, he says, the biggest impact that the College of Business Administration makes on the region's economy will be the quality of its graduates.

"These students will be the ones that are going to start new businesses. They are going to hold prominent positions in the businesses that are already here," says Mosier, who previously held administrative and business faculty positions at Oklahoma State University.

He succeeds interim dean Dana Edberg, who had overseen the college of business after previous dean Mike Reed was named vice chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Like Mosier's previous school, UNR is a land-grant institution. And that, the new dean says, creates another role for the business college. Just as the extension programs of land-grant schools were charged with bringing knowledge to farmers, ranchers and miners, schools such as UNR have a role in bringing business expertise to the private sector in Nevada.

Research, he says, is the third role to be played by the College of Business Administration. While some of that research may be entirely theoretical, Mosier says it's important to build the stature of the school allowing it to continue to attract top students and top faculty.

All three legs of the business college mission teaching, outreach, research appear to be humming right now, Mosier says.

Among the strengths of the college identified by the new dean in his first few days on the job are the productivity of its faculty a tenure-track group of 50 who teach about 2,000 undergraduate and graduate-level students.

And he says he's been impressed by community support.

"The community really embraces the university," Mosier says. "They are excited about the university."

At the same time, however, he acknowledges that the accomplishments of the College of Business Administration often go unacknowledged outside of its offices in the Ansari Business Building on the UNR campus.

The new dean says he was drawn to the UNR position in part because of the growth both in numbers and diversity of the northern Nevada economy.

When that growth is combined with the increasing number of students in the business college, Mosier says possibilities for creative new programs are numerous.