Message from the Dean

We are proud to congratulate the approximately 300 COBI students who participated in the fall commencement ceremonies on December 17. All best wishes to all of you, and may your futures shine bright. Special applause for the 20 members of our Executive MBA program’s 21st cohort, who had their own graduation ceremony on December 14.   These brave souls earned their MBA in our 12-month, accelerated program, which is an amazing accomplishment and will prove extremely valuable throughout their careers.

Speaking of amazing, ever since I started teaching here in 2003, I have known that The University of Toledo College of Business and Innovation is a remarkable place. We teach. We learn. We inspire. We are inspired. We change lives. As we approach the end of 2017, join us in again celebrating some of the tremendous achievements of the College, our faculty and our students:

- Bloomberg has ranked UT COBI in the top 100 Best Undergraduate Business Schools in the nation.

- Eduniversal, headquartered in Paris, a global academic ranking and rating agency specializing in higher education, issued their latest rankings, with UT COBI’s programs ranked (in North America) as:
- #30 Human Resources Management
- #37 Marketing and Professional Sales
- # 35 Masters of Business Administration
- # 47 Executive MBA

- Additionally, COBI’s Master in Supply Chain Management ranked number 93 in Eduniversal’s worldwide Supply Chain and Logistics standings.

- For the third year in a row, COBI’s current job placement rate for undergraduates is 93%.

- We continue to emphasize leadership, both while in college and beyond, through our Center for Leadership and Organizational Excellence, the Klar Leadership Academy and the Advanced Leadership Academy. Furthermore, hundreds of business and community leaders attended the KeyBank Global Leaders Forum where they learned from CEO’s of major companies from across the country.

- We are still celebrating the fact that Alan and Karen Barry donated $1 million to establish an endowed professorship in accounting, and we again thank them for their tremendous generosity.

- We again applaud Gary Thieman, who received his bachelor's degree in Business Administration, finance  from COBI in 1971, who was the recipient of the College of Business and Innovation Outstanding Alumnus Award for 2017.

- We were excited and honored to again work with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Toledo Assembly Complex to provide training for many of their workers, in this case those who are building the new Jeep Wrangler.

- Professional sales students from 30 universities across the United States came to the University of Toledo College of Business and Innovation to compete in the second annual University of Toledo Invitational Sales Competition (UTISC), which was won by the team from the team from the COBI Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales (ESSPS).

- Dr. Clinton Longenecker, Distinguished University Professor and director of the Center for Leadership and Organizational Excellence in the UT College of Business and Innovation, is one of three finalists selected for Baylor University’s 2018 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching.

- Graduates of UT COBI’s Ph.D. in Manufacturing and Technology Management are obtaining key positions at major universities, including David Dobrykowski, who is now Director of the Supply Chain Management Institute at Bowling Green State University;  Nehemiah Scott, who is now on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Nitya Singh, now on the faculty of Salisbury University in  Maryland.

- COBI is one of the major sponsors of “Business 360,” which premiered in May on WGTE-TV30, helping to educate the community about the dynamic business activities taking place in this region.

- UT COBI was again a sponsor, with the Bowling Green State University College of Business, of the Women in Leadership Conference, which was attended by more than 600 people.

- The University of Toledo College of Business and Innovation Gamma Eta Chapter of Alpha Kappa Psi received the Chapter of the Year Award at the AKP national convention in Law Vegas this summer.
Of course, there is more…much more. (You can read about many of them at our website (link) or on our blog (link). The above list of achievements from this past year are just a sampling of the amazing things that happen in COBI every day, every week, every semester, every year.

I also want to extend my best wishes to you for a wonderful, happy holiday season and an incredible new year.

Go Rockets!!

Interim Dean Hassan HassabElnaby