Message From the Dean

It has been a productive and successful spring semester here at the Naveen Jindal School of Management. Whenever I walk the hallways, I see a vibrant community of students, faculty and staff members, and visitors. The lounges and conference rooms are constantly full. The student organizations are active and thriving. The campus once again looks as active as it did before the pandemic hit us a few years ago.

The semester will finish with a packed auditorium at commencement. We will have a record five ceremonies this time. The number of students who are graduating this spring is also a record 2,654. Compare that with the spring 2023 number (2,175) — a 22 percent increase.

Given the growth in student numbers, it is essential that we add highly qualified new faculty members to our School. I am happy to report that it has been a successful recruiting season. We will add 15 new members to our faculty roster this coming year across all our academic areas. In addition to teaching and developing new curriculum, our faculty also excels in research. We are once again ranked No. 2 in The UTD Top 100 Business School Research Rankings™. These results are backed by our No. 5 ranking in Financial Times’ look at three years of productivity among business schools in 50 top business journals.

I am happy to note that our faculty members are taking full advantage of the favorable environment in our School to create noteworthy research. In this issue, we highlight two interesting studies — one about the impact of CEO overconfidence on company operations, another about the effect that hospital advertisements have on the frequency of robotic surgical procedures.

I would like to congratulate Dr. Alain Bensoussan, Lars Magnus Ericsson Chair and a professor in the Jindal School’s Operations Management Area. He will receive the prestigious IEEE-Control Systems Society Award on Dec.15, 2024 in Milano, Italy. He was selected for his fundamental contributions to stochastic control, developing risk and decision analysis, control-theoretic methods in management and finance, and his leadership of scientific and engineering organizations.

Academic conferences were another highlight of the semester. There was an abundance of them — too many to list here, but I will try to point out the highlights. The Jindal School presented its 19th Annual Fraud Summit this semester, which had 500 attendees; the 18th Annual Frank M. Bass Frontiers of Research in Marketing Science (FORMS) Conference which had academics from 59 universities in nine countries; the Fourth Annual Undergraduate Deans Conference, which had representatives from 45 universities; and the Inaugural Academic Summit for Business Analytics. Nearly 100 people from 45 universities and nine companies attended it. Another important conference that we held in our school is Biz AI Conference: AI Applications in Business Research. A capacity audience of 130 scholars from 60 universities were in attendance at that event.

These gatherings are crucial since they allow our faculty members opportunities for collaboration with other scholars to share thought leadership. They also help spread awareness of our School and expand and improve our brand. Artificial intelligence was a prominent discussion topic in many of them.

I am constantly bragging about our outstanding students. They continue to excel in competition, as indicated by high finishes in various national competitions. One student team from JSOM took first place recently at the Pitts Business Analytics Case Competition, beating 38 teams from across the U.S. JSOM sales students competed in the National Sales Collegiate Competition this spring. Noah Holt, a marketing senior, finished in a second-place tie in a prestigious competition among 72 schools and more than 140 competitors. The UT Dallas Chess Team finished in the top four in the nation. Two students on this year’s team are in the Jindal School.

Our students have truly embraced the 100- hour community-service requirement and are making a real-world impact. Since the initiative began, they have put in more than 345,000 hours of service totaling more than $10 million in community impact.

Another initiative, the UTDsolv Senior Capstone Project, requires students to put the knowledge and skills they have gained while studying at the Jindal School to the test. One student team was honored by a local municipality — the Town of Prosper, Texas — for the work they did to build a tool that analyzes and improves the police and fire departments’ emergency response times.

The Jindal School has outstanding alumni. I am proud to know that they continue to make such amazing contributions to society. We named Dr. Dipak Jain, PhD’86, MS’86, as the Jindal School’s Inaugural Eminent PhD Alumnus.

Dr. Subodha Kumar, PhD’01, MBA’00, was named as one of six recipients of the INFORMS Information Systems Society Distinguished Fellow Award.

Another alumna, Sejal Desai, who earned an MBA from the Jindal School in 1999, runs Akanksha, a U.S. based 501(c)(3) non profit organization that runs 26 public-private partnership schools in India for children from low-income communities. She also co-founded the Orchid Giving Circle, a nonprofit that supports the Asian-American community in North Texas through grants and community events.

Finally, let me thank our dedicated community members. Thanks to our generous donors, our school’s endowment now officially stands at more than $100 million, a landmark number ensuring that the Jindal School will continue to shine for a long time to come. For that and your continued support of our School, I will remain forever grateful. I am truly proud and humbled to serve such a remarkable community.

With best regards,

Hasan Pirkul
Dean and Caruth Chair