Neeley and TCU host Marketing Doctoral Consortium

Fort Worth

6/15/2010

Accolades keep pouring in from top marketing faculty around the world about the AMA Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium held in June 2-5 on the TCU campus. It was the first time for the Neeley School of Business at TCU to host the annual event, and only the second time for a non-PhD-granting school to host.

Roger Kerin, the Harold C. Simmons Distinguished Professor at SMU Cox School of Business, sent this note:  “You are to be congratulated for brilliantly showcasing TCU and the Neeley School.”

Year-long planning by marketing professors Mark Houston, Bob Leone and Eric Yorkston, co-chairs of the event, paid off with one of the most successful consortiums in its 45-year history, attended by 120 of the world’s foremost marketing professors and 105 marketing doctoral students.

“Thank you for the best doctoral consortium in my history,” wrote Valarie A. Zeithaml, the David S. Van Pelt Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. “I've attended more than 20, including mine as a student,” she continued. “The TCU AMA Doctoral Consortium was the best: 10 on a 10-point scale.”

The annual AMA Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium, started in 1966 by the American Marketing Association, is a premier event for the marketing discipline. Each accredited PhD-granting school sends the top marketing doctoral candidate from that school, while the host university’s co-chairs, in this case Houston, Leone and Yorkston, select the top marketing professors from around the world to take part.

“It is an amazing opportunity for doctoral students who are on the verge of launching their careers to spend four days living and working elbow-to-elbow with well-known professors and researchers,” said Houston. Participants stayed in the new TCU residence halls.

“Although it is an honor to be selected for the consortium faculty, the professors volunteer their time, participating out of a desire to make a difference in connecting with and supporting the next generation of scholars,” said Leone. “It is exciting to watch the professors and the doctoral students interact in both formal sessions and informal activities. I have no doubt that lifelong relationships will be established.”

Sessions covered a range of topics, from research techniques and teaching approaches, to perspectives on balancing work and life.  One session focused on “surviving the first year” advice from young faculty who were off to great starts in their own research careers, including Lisa Cavanaugh from the University of Southern California, Jade DeKinder from the University of Texas-Austin, and TCU’s own Leo Nicolao.

“We chose panelists who had graduated within the last three years so that they could give fresh advice for the transition from student to faculty,” said Yorkston. “We asked that senior professors not attend so that the younger faculty could share candidly with the doctoral students.”

Leone said that he is still getting emails, phone calls and personal notes from people impressed with TCU’s facilities, beauty and friendliness.  “The visibility that we achieved with elite marketing professors is phenomenal, not to mention that 105 doctoral students will remember TCU and the Neeley School throughout their career,” he said.

Rohini Ahluwalia, the Curtis L. Carlson Trust Professor of Marketing at the University of Minnesota, said that she has attended several similar events in the past and that TCU’s was the best organized, planned and run.  “The attention to detail, the thoughtfulness in planning, the thoroughness in logistics, the creativity and innovativeness in organizing the sessions, all were clearly evident and truly enhanced the experience of the attendees,” she wrote in an email.