Sandeep Mazumder
Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business is celebrating 100 years of business education. Founded in 1923, it has since grown into one of the nation’s premier business schools—recognized in the top 12 percent nationally by U.S. News. In this Baylor Connections, Dean Sandeep Mazumder shares reflections from a milestone birthday: people and values over the last century that set the stage for present success, growth within the business school, and priorities that will guide Hankamer School of Business into its second centennial of service.
Transcript
DEREK SMITH:
Hello and welcome to Baylor Connections Conversation Series with the people shaping our future. Each week we go in depth with Baylor leaders, professors and more discussing important topics in higher education, research and student life. I'm Derek Smith, and today we are talking the Hankamer centennial. Baylor's Hankamer School of Business is celebrating 100 years of service to generations of business leaders. Founded in 1923 it's the School of Commerce and Business Administration. Hankamer School of Business has built a national reputation for excellence recognized by US News in the top 12% of business schools nationally. Dr. Sandeep Mazumder was appointed as the William E. Crenshaw Endowed Dean of the Hankamer School of Business in 2021 and is leading Hankamer through a time of centennial celebration, as well as continued growth throughout the school with a focus on purposeful research, experiential and innovative learning and Christ-centered diversity. He's with us today on the program. Dr. Mazumder, Happy New Year to you, congratulations on the centennial and thanks so much for joining us here on Baylor Connections.
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
Happy New Year, Derek. Thanks for having me back again.
DEREK SMITH:
It's great to have you back here and visit certainly an appropriate time as Hankamer is in the midst of celebrating 100 years from your beautiful home on the Foster Campus for Business and Innovation, that Foster name, we're celebrating a lot now at Baylor with the opening of the Foster Pavilion and all he's done.
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
That's right, it's nice to see some of our illustrious alumni and what they've done for the university and continue to do.
DEREK SMITH:
Absolutely. Well, as we think about the present let's go way back if we can here just a little bit. If we could go back to the formation of the Hankamer School of Business in 1923, if you could travel in time and talk to then President Samuel Palmer Brooks and benefactor Earl Hankamer, what would you be most eager to share with them? What details would you be eager to tell them?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
Yeah, thanks for the question. A 100 years of course is a very long time, and I would say that we've come an extraordinarily long way in the 100 years as a school of business. I mean, even if you think back to the time and the uncertainty in the world, we're in this period of wars going on across the world and President Palmer Brooks made this decision to launch this business school and fast-forward 100 years, just a ton has been accomplished in that time. And the students that we've had come through our classrooms and make a difference in the world of business has really been extraordinary. And I would say more than anything, it was just a really, really wise investment, it was an investment in the future of Baylor University. How do we grow the business education that we're doing on campus and what is that going to do in terms of our impact as a university? And now if you look 100 years later, the business school, I would say is one of the biggest parts of the university now. So, it's been an extraordinary thing and really an insightful thing that happened 100 years ago.
DEREK SMITH:
I think back to the founding when they said a university susceptible to meet the needs of all the ages to come, that really seems like in 1923 with the planting of a business school, what they were doing, building that or living out that motto even further.
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
That's right. There's not that many business schools out there that are our age. Excuse me. So, the fact that we've made it to 100 years, we're up there among some of the prestigious business schools in the country and we've done some amazing things in that time.
DEREK SMITH:
Visiting with Dean Sandeep Mazumder and if you ran into someone at church or in line at a ball game or wherever and they said, "So, I hear Hankamer is 100 now," and you're making conversation, what are some of the first things you'd tell them about this exciting time in the school's history?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
Given my role, I could probably talk for quite a long time about the things going on at the business school. But some of the highlights I would mention to someone thinking about our history from 100 years ago, from its inception to now, we're a large business school, we're over a quarter of Baylor University undergrads. So, if you're thinking about the size of our business school compared to comparable and peer institutions, we're actually quite a bit larger. So, we're proud to be servicing these students here at Baylor University and provide them the business education that they need. I think you can't talk about a business school today without discussing our phenomenal Paul Foster Campus for Business and Innovation. It's just a tremendous building. The business school deans around the country that I've gotten to know since I've been the dean here they're very envious of our building is one way to put it. They come through and tell us just how they would love to be in a facility like ours. So, that's really neat to see as well. And then, the other thing I'll mention is we are doing Christian business research, maintaining our university's faith mission but doing it from the business perspective, top level scholarship that's making a difference in society, so we're doing all of these things.
DEREK SMITH:
So, celebrations are ongoing, they began. When did they begin and what's ongoing now? What are some of the ways you celebrating?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
Since 1923 was when the original business school was chartered. We've used 2023 as the beginning of the centennial celebration, that's when the first set of students came through. Now at the time it was a two-year degree so they graduated in 1925 those first students. So, we'll use this two-year period as a celebration. 2023 to 2025 will be the centennial celebration.
DEREK SMITH:
Wow. What are some things that have been meaningful? What's been exciting for you to participate in so far and what are you looking forward to amongst those celebrations?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
I mean, this homecoming that just happened this fall we used that as the big kickoff and celebration of this milestone and we always have a really fun Friday night of homecoming business school reception, a few hundred people typically show up and celebrate and come and join us that day. We had probably five or 600 people this year so it was extra big, extra special. The Hankamer family themselves, they sponsored the event, they were there. We had a proclamation from the city of Waco, from the state of Texas as well, and just some really fun old alumni and friends and family coming back. And President Livingstone was there too. She's of course one of our faculty members herself. If you remember that homecoming week as well, it was a rainy day during homecoming. So, I think that helped keep people inside the business school and enjoy visiting with each other that day. We also did some unusual things like we had a projection mapping light show that happened outside the Foster Campus. So, things like that just to celebrate the 100 years.
DEREK SMITH:
Yeah, that light show looked pretty cool. People react well to that.
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
It did. There's a video out there somewhere. You can find it online. If you weren't able to see it in person, you can still catch what it looked like after the fact.
DEREK SMITH:
This is Baylor Connections, we are visiting with Sandeep Mazumder, Dean of Baylor's Hankamer School of Business. And you've talked about the growth over 100 years now. We're going to talk about that growth but I'm curious how has it stayed the same? Or maybe a better way to ask, when you go back to 1923, what are the aspects of Hankamer's character that have stayed true from the beginning?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
From the conversations I've had with our faculty and staff and former students and current students, I think there are a lot of things that we've been able to maintain as a business school while adding on new things that we're trying to achieve. I go back to the Christian identity that's who we've been for our history and that's who we still are today. That's not just something we say as a gimmick or a marketing ploy, we truly mean it. We believe in our Christian heritage and trying to teach students what does business mean from that Christian perspective. And that remains the same today as it has been throughout our history. One thing that you'll hear from our alumni and former students if you speak to them is just that compassion and relationship they had with their professors in the classroom, the high quality teaching they received at the business school. As we become an R1 university in the recent years and added research, I think we've been successfully able to keep that high quality teaching. That's still who we are and we still want to have that connection between students and faculty. So, we've preserved that yet at the same time, added professors who are top scholars and also care about teaching and want to do both things at the same time. So, I would say that the faculty compassion and care for the students, that's always been a hallmark of who we are, still is true today.
DEREK SMITH:
You mentioned teaching and research, you're a teacher, you're a researcher as well as a dean. For you and for your colleagues, can you paint a little bit of a picture of how those things do go hand in hand?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
Yeah, absolutely. For myself, I'm a macroeconomist, I've actually done inflation research for most of my career, thinking about why inflation has behaved the way it has and actually how do you measure inflation? That's something that we don't talk about very often in the public setting but it's actually a complicated question. But as a professor in my career, being in the classroom teaching these concepts to students and hearing how they react to it and the questions that they bring up, these are very, very smart and capable students and they challenge us as professors in many ways and often give us ideas. I'll give you a specific example. Earlier in my career, I was teaching a class on international finance. In that class, you look at exchange rates and what determines what the exchange rate is between one currency and the other. There's different indices you can use to measure this. And at one point I was talking about The Economist magazine, they have something called the Big Mac index. They literally look at the price of Big Macs in local currencies across the world, excuse me, to come up with a version of what exchange rates should be. And as I was teaching this to the students the students said to me, "Well, here are the reasons why this is actually not a good idea and this is why this Big Mac Index doesn't work. It's failing the theory in these five or six ways," which I knew to be true and I wanted them to get to that. But then they said, "Well, why don't you try these different products instead?" And we talked being in a high-tech society today, we ended up talking about Apple technology products and that actually inspired me. I went back and gathered data on iPhones and iPads and I wrote and published a paper about what exchange rates would be if you were using iPad prices instead of Big Macs. So, that's an example of how teaching and research goes hand in hand.
DEREK SMITH:
Visiting with Dean Sandeep Mazumder. Think of all your great colleagues at Hankamer. You played that out 100 times over and you've really got some exciting things taking place. Well, you mentioned you've talked to alumni, you've heard stories about the founding and Hankamer's history. Are there any stories, anecdotes that have been particularly meaningful to you that you've heard for the first time during this process?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
This is now my third year here as the dean at the Hankamer School of Business and as I've been here these last few years, the Baylor Family is something that gets talked about quite a bit. In fact, I remember having this discussion even within the first few days of me being on the job being here in Waco and now that I've lived this life for the last few years, it's a true thing. It's not just a saying, the Baylor Family is real. And I would say from the business school perspective, it's been neat to see that and in particular to see how our family as it were have stepped up in meaningful moments to make a difference for us. And there's so many things you can name. Of course, the Hankamer gift back in the 1950s that established the Hankamer School of Business and the building, that was a key part of our school's history. The Paul Foster Campus that was built in 2015 is another example of that. When I was a brand new dean in 2021 and I had my first advisory board meeting, I was presenting all these big grandiose ideas to my board saying, "Here are the professors we want to go hire and here's the research we want to do and the new programs we want to establish." And they actually challenged me during that meeting and said, "Well, what type of resources are you talking about that you need?" And I talked a bit about that and they stepped up and provided those resources and we've done exactly what we said we would with those resources in that time. So, it's been fun to see the Baylor Family step up and respond to what we're doing and support us in our mission.
DEREK SMITH:
That idea of stewardship whether it's as a leader, whether it's financially, whether it's the students, how much has that been a thread that you've seen that really ties the generation together?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
I think it's critical and if you think about what we do, we're a business school. We're teaching students how do you run and operate and manage businesses and how do you manage people and employees, and that's all stewardship. How do we build something and create and provide products and services to people and customers who need them yet doing so in a sustainable way? So, stewardship is inherent in what we're teaching, I would say in the classroom and I hope it's coming out in the work that we're doing as a school of business as well.
DEREK SMITH:
This is Baylor Connections, we are visiting with Dr. Sandeep Mazumder, the William E. Crenshaw Endowed Dean of the Hankamer School of Business in 2021. He was named that in 2021 and now helping celebrate the centennial. Dr. Mazumder, get into a portion of the program we're going to ask you some questions about people, history and we'll just acknowledge right off the bat, it's impossible to name everyone.
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
That's right.
DEREK SMITH:
There's a lot of great details that we'd need hours and hours to talk about, but I want to ask you just a few. People talk about stewardship through the years. We know Dean Terry Manus we've had on the program who you got to assume his role. Names like Cashin, Scott and others. Who are some people who have played just a really key role, Paul Foster and others. Ann Keber, a key role in that stewardship over the years.
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
That's right. The previous deans have all been just instrumental in where we are as a school of business today. You mentioned Dean Terry Manus, the previous Dean, Scott Hanky, Carol and Lang before that, actually outside my office in the dean suite of the School of Business on the wall right outside are the five portraits of the previous deans. And I walk past it multiple times a day, and as I'm coming in the morning and leaving in the evening, I walk past those five faces and think about the work that they all did to establish who we are today. And it gives us a sense of purpose that there's real important work to continue on and build on today, and I think it's an inspiration for all of us who see those faces. I also think it's remarkable that we've only had six deans, including myself now in a hundred years. So that's unbelievable.
DEREK SMITH:
Stability, yeah.
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
Longevity from the leadership position. Several key benefactors as well that you mentioned some of them we've talked about today. But I would say that the business school, as a business school as an institution, we have four and a half thousand students undergraduate and graduate at the business school, about 300 faculty and staff. We're a big organization, but every single faculty and staff, I would say that they are the business school. The real magic of what happens is in the classroom when professor's teaching their students and guiding them through material that's maybe tricky or difficult or talking about what's going on in their lives. Maybe it's a staff member or an advisor discussing a hardship or a trial that a student is going through and coming alongside them to mentor them, to think about how do we tackle these problems together and how do we support one another? That's really where the magic happens for us as a school of business. So many illustrious famous names have come through Hankamer, and we are completely indebted to them. But I would say it's really on the ground. Every professor, every staff member, they are the business school. They are the people who make what happen happen. And I'm just so thankful for them. I would say one neat thing about our organization and the comradery that we have is we're all individuals. We're fallen individuals. We have our own egos and problems and issues we deal with, myself included, but we buy into the fact that we're part of something bigger than ourselves, and I think we can do that as a Christian business school, as a part of a Christian university. We realize it's not really about us, it's about something bigger than us. And because of that, we always come together. We always work hard together, and I think we've built something pretty neat in the process.
DEREK SMITH:
You can't celebrate rankings, and not that it's all about the accolades and rankings, but you can't celebrate those without what you just described. We're going to talk about some of those in just a second, but I'm curious, as you look through the decades, it's about three decades that you've really seen Hankamer School of Business climbing up some of these illustrious lists, and how has the school really sought to manage leverage and build on that reputation for greater impact while still staying true to who you are?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
Yeah, I think in terms of impact, so AACSB is our accreditation, they accredit business schools around the world. We actually just went through our re-accreditation this past fall, so that was a big thing that we achieved on the eve of our a 100-year celebration. One of the things that we have to do as part of our report to them is demonstrate societal impact. So that's a big thing that we have to report about. Our students are our biggest societal impact, in my opinion. They're the students that we're forming and teaching and developing every day during their four-year career with us, and they go out and make a difference in the world of business from this Christian virtue based value-based perspective. And that's just been hugely impactful, and I've seen that in my time here through the alumni that we have and what they're doing. I would say our research also is making an impact. We have several examples of faculty research that sometimes when we talk about research, we think someone's doing work in an office or a lab, and it's not that important, but these folks are really answering questions that are important for public policy and for business practices. For example, we have people doing work on mental health, food insecurity, employee wellbeing, what does entrepreneurial psychology look like? What does healthcare administration look like and how should that be formed? These are deeply important issues and topics, and our faculty and students are working on these issues together. So that's another big way that we certainly make an impact in society.
DEREK SMITH:
Visiting with the Dean Mazumder, talking in Hankamer Centennial on Baylor Connections. So many accolades. I know I'm leaving some out here as we talk about them, but just a few. I mentioned at the top of the show that Hankamer School of business right now is in the top 12% of all business schools according to US News. There's three top 20 national programs right now. Entrepreneurship of US Army, Baylor Masters in Healthcare Management, MBA in healthcare management. That's a topic you just mentioned, and that's just a small sampling. When you think to you and your colleagues, what do those rankings mean? What do they not mean and how do they inspire if they do?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
Yeah, it's rewarding to see our business score doing well in these rankings in the US News and World Report, that's maybe the most popular university ranking that's out there. They have a business score specific ranking. Two years ago, we jumped up 10 spots in one year, which was a big leap and then this year we jumped another two spots. So that was nice to see. It wasn't just a blip, it wasn't just a one-time anomaly. We kept on rising. Now we're not going to rise every single year. There's going to be some years where we stay or scores are jostling around for positions, and that will happen. So I'll say that the rankings are really nice and meaningful in some ways, but in some ways they're not also. And by that I mean at the end of the day, the ranking is just a number, how we're doing relatively to other schools according to certain metrics or according to reputation. So more than the rankings. I think I and my team at the business school we're interested in thinking about where really are our strengths as a business school? What are we doing well and how do we double down on those things and keep growing in those areas. Yet at the same time, what are we doing that needs to be developed? What are the challenges we face and where are the students and where are they struggling perhaps. With 4,000 undergrad students, I'd love to say that everyone is doing perfectly and no one has any problems. But that would be naive to think that. We have students who are going through a variety of things and need help along many dimensions. So it's our job to think about whatever the ranking says, how are we helping every single student through the journey that they're on? And that's something that we work on quite a bit. I mentioned the AACSB accreditation visit that we had this fall. For me, one of the most rewarding things that have happened to me since I've been dean is that visit, because it's an intense visit. They can assess you and downgrade you in many different ways and pour over everything you're doing. But they left the visit and they said to us at the end, these are other business school deans, by the way, who review you. They said there's something special about the Hankamer School of Business, and they could feel the enthusiasm of the students, and I think they use the word infectious. There's something infectious about what's going on here at Hankamer, and I know that because I live it every day. But it was really neat to see this team of external reviewers who had nothing to do with Baylor come in and they saw that for themselves. So that's really what's the most... The thing that we're most proud about, I would say, at the business school beside just the rankings.
DEREK SMITH:
That's very cool. Another ranking, if you will, that I think was hopefully a nice centennial surprise right before Christmas. Baylor was named by Time Magazine as a top 100 Best College for future leaders coming in at number 40 and Hankamer was known as a key factor in that. You talk about impact earlier, how is Hankamer intentional about that idea of producing leaders, people capable of displaying leadership in their industry?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
As a school of business, we have a mission statement that we follow and every single business school does. We're not unique in that. And I would say probably almost every single business school in the country has a statement in their mission statement about producing leaders. We do too. Ours says, "We cultivate principal leaders." And like I said, every business school probably says something to that effect. So we're not that special when it comes to focusing on leadership. But where we are special is what we have recognized at Hankamer is that it doesn't happen overnight. Developing leaders requires practice and training and work. There's no magic switch that you just push when you graduate and now you're a leader. It doesn't work that way. We need to give our students opportunities to practice leadership as they're here as an undergraduate. And that's what we're doing at Hankamer. We're giving opportunities through our business student organizations. We have a Hankamer School of Business Ambassador program. We've launched a peer leader program this past year where we have juniors and seniors mentoring freshmen and sophomores through their classes and talking about a variety of things and challenges that they face and trying to grow them in the process. So we're giving actual leadership practice and opportunities to our students to live it out at the business school so that they'll grow in their skills and develop their training in the years ahead. So that's one way that we are different. Now, I will say that we have a very illustrious alumni base. We've known for a long time that our students graduate and go on to be just very successful in business. And we have a plethora of c-level executives in our alumni base. So it's nice now to see in the Time Magazine's data that what we knew to be true anecdotally is backed up by the numbers. It's actually true, and there's data to prove it's true now. So that's been fun to see.
DEREK SMITH:
Very exciting. Dr. Mazumder, we've talked about where Hankamer's been and good opportunity, a vantage point at a hundred years to talk about what's ahead. We mentioned three priorities, purposeful research, experiential and innovative learning, and Christ-centered diversity. I think you've touched on all of those at times during the show, but specifically ask you how are those priorities charting the course for what's ahead?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
Absolutely. And there's a variety of things under each of those headings that we're working on and want to work on. In terms of the research, I'll hit on a couple of these things. Research, we have professors doing a very meaningful scholarship, and I mentioned some examples earlier today. One thing that we are trying to develop more and more is bringing our undergraduate students alongside their professors to work with them. We essentially had very little undergraduate faculty, joint research going on, or joint research assistantship, I would say, happening before I arrived. But that's been something we've deliberately been trying to pursue. So now we have in a given semester, 20 or 30 undergrads who are research assistants for their professors, helping them with different projects. I actually have a couple myself right now. Inflation has been very topical in the last few years, and that's my research area. So I have some students doing some data work for me and thinking about how do we pass out the data and see what's going on. So that's one thing that we're really trying to focus on, bringing students into the faculty scholarship as much as possible. In terms of the experiential learning aspect, we're a business school, so we want to bring business projects and cases to the classroom as much as possible. Again, our alumni and donor base has been very, very supportive in bringing these business examples to the classroom. We're in a world of big data now as well so we also data sets for lots of companies, and we launched a MSBA degree this past year, Masters of Science and Business Analytics, and have several companies that have signed NDAs with us to be data providers for that particular degree. So that's an example of being experiential in the classroom. And then on Christ-centered diversity and belonging. The scripture that we use to inspire that is Revelation 7:9, where there's people of every tribe, nation, and language standing before the throne. And we know we will never achieve that perfectly. We are in this side of heaven. It won't be perfect, but we want to do our best to make ourselves look like a business school that is following that idea as much as possible. I would say the one dimension that I'm most interested in developing in terms of that is the international one. How do we become much more of a global international business school? And we're trying to send more and more students overseas to do study abroad, do businesses, missions trip, or do internships. So this spring, we have our very first set of international internships that are being combined with our study abroad in London, England. So that's very exciting. So we really want to push the international focus as much as possible at Hankamer.
DEREK SMITH:
Well, lots of exciting things forthcoming, and Dr. Mazumder, we really appreciate you taking the time to share with us as we celebrate the Hankamer centennial. And as we wind down, I think my final question for you is, from this vantage point to close, what would you like to say to Hankamer graduates, stakeholders, family members, anyone who's played a role through the years?
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
Absolutely. I would say thank you to all of our supporters and our friends and our family, our alumni. Thank you for your prayers, your support and encouragement. I'm always amazed, actually, how many of our alumni have not been to the new building. It's not actually new anymore. It's almost a decade old. But come back and see us, come back and see us on campus and tour the amazing Paul Foster Campus for Business and Innovation. Maybe couple that with a Foster Pavilion visit while you're here to see the men's and women's basketball teams. And I would say that we hope that we've made you proud with the work that we're doing, and I'd like to think that the business degree that hangs on the walls of our students hangs heavier today than it ever has before.
DEREK SMITH:
Well, Dr. Mazumder, we appreciate this. We congratulate you and all your colleagues through the years who have helped bring us to this point. We're excited to see what's had really this two year period of centennial celebration.
SANDEEP MAZUMDER:
That's right. Thank you so much, Derek.
DEREK SMITH:
Thank you. Dr. Sandeep Mazumder, the William E. Crenshaw Endowed Dean of the Hankamer School of Business, our guest today on Baylor Connections. I'm Derek Smith. A reminder, you can hear this in other programs online at baylor.edu/connections, and you can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.