by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
After just one month in the dean’s office at the Davis College of Business at Jacksonville University, Joseph McCann, who earned a doctorate in Business and Applied Economics from The Wharton School, has put in place many of the concepts that worked for him in Tampa.
From 2000-07 he was Dean of the Sykes College of Business at the University of Tampa. McCann followed that with a year as professor of Management and director of the college’s TECO Energy Center for Leadership.
While in Tampa, McCann was part of UT’s business program’s growth from 27 to 65 tenure-track faculty and when he accepted the job at JU, the Sykes College had enrolled 1,400 undergraduate students and 500 in graduate studies.
“I was having a great time running the the Leadership Center and teaching,” said McCann, who added he was being recruiting for more than one position when he made the decision to come to Jacksonville.
“I passed on a (university) president’s job as well as helping create a new business school in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins (University),” he said. “It’s one thing to be the leader of an established institution, but you will have marginal impact. I saw JU as a greater opportunity.”
When McCann arrived at UT the business college had just been accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the recognized standard for business schools. JU is in the process of earning the distinction and McCann said he’s confident JU will do the same.
“We will get AACSB through the sweat and tears of our faculty,” he said.
That won’t happen for another year, he added, and in the mean time, McCann has charted a conservative course for the Davis College.
“The theme here is ‘growth with quality.’ The next year will be our self-study year. We realize we can’t be everything for everybody so we have choices to make in terms of our core theme,” said McCann.
He has identified three areas of specialized study for the future of JU’s business college and all three have deep roots in Jacksonville already.
“One of our focus areas will be International Trade,” said McCann, who was in the maritime shipping business in the early 1970s before he began his career in academia.
“I was in the tug-and-barge business in Seattle and I knew Tom Crowley then,” he said, adding one of the first things McCann noticed when he visited JU before he was hired was the port’s Talleyrand Terminal that can be seen from the campus.
Another focus will be financial services.
“And I define that broadly to include not just banking and investment but insurance as well. I don’t see many programs supporting that sector,” he said.
The business of entrepreneurship is an area McCann said he feels can be particularly successful for JU and its students based on Jacksonville’s prevailing business climate and the track records of existing businesses that began not so long ago as startups.
“Jacksonville is very interesting because of its medium-size company base,” said McCann. “That means here it’s not just new venture creation, it’s venture growth. That’s different from any other aspect of business and has its own set of challenges like maintaining ownership and building a business team.”
McCann also plans to add 15 professors to the current 31-member faculty in the next year and predicted a 50 percent increase in the number of full-time faculty over the next five years. Based on what was accomplished in Tampa, that would likely result in doubling JU’s current business school enrollment of 600 undergraduates and 250 MBA candidates.
McCann has a philosophy about the transition the Davis College is experiencing. He’s also confident in his abilities, JU’s administration and the faculty.
“My challenge is to keep the team focused. I’m managing here and I’m managing there with one foot in the future while surrounded by all the details of now. It’s change management.
“JU needs stability in leadership and my record is I always leave a place much better off than when I got there. And I stay to get the job done,” said McCann.
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