Dean's Word

January 07, 2014

Dean's Word

Given the financial meltdown that began in 2008 and the Euro debt crisis that continues to spiral as we stumble into 2012, the past few years have been challenging for me as a professor of finance who is also a native of Greece. There are at least a few people on Wall Street and in Athens who should be making apologies.

There is, however, one development over the past several years for which no apologies are necessary and every explanation is positive: the emergence of the LeBow College of Business as a national leader.

Next spring will mark my 10th anniversary as the R. John Chapel Jr. Dean of Drexel LeBow, a college that is not “too big to fail,” but one that is increasingly “too good to overlook.” Our students are smarter, our professors are tougher and our prospects are brighter than was the case only a decade ago.

A lot of the credit belongs to one man — Bennett S. LeBow ’60, Hon. ’98 — who invested $10 million with us at the dawn of the 21st century and asked us to do more than put his name on the door. He challenged us to compete with the best.

The rest of the credit belongs to our faculty, who create knowledge through their research and challenge us with provocative business and public policy suggestions; our students, who hold internships around the world and turn freshman ambitions into high-tech companies; and our alumni, who work to stop the spread of HIV and start small businesses while succeeding at their “day jobs.”

Our successes were enough for Ben to come back one year ago and tell us to get a bigger door. A much, much bigger door. The result is our planned 12-story, 177,500-square-foot “door” to the Drexel campus that. in the words of President John A. Fry, is “a phenomenal opportunity. The construction of this academic building makes a visible and very confident statement about the University’s future.”

As I write this, Matheson Hall is being knocked apart by heavy machinery; by the time you read this, that building will be gone and preparations will begin to create the limestone and concrete tower that will keep us on a trajectory toward becoming one of America’s top business schools. We will finally have a facility worthy of the energy, academic stature and far-reaching influence of LeBow College.

Now, if only I could figure out how to extend that influence into the banking boardrooms and government offices in my native Greece and the 16 other nations in the eurozone. You can read my thoughts on the debt crisis and some possible resolutions elsewhere in this issue of Market Street. As for right now, let me just lament that my real estate taxes in Naxos are 300 percent higher today than they were less than one year ago.

In the words of Greek poet Simonides of Ceos, “Not even the gods fight necessity.”

George P. Tsetsekos, Ph.D. R. John Chapel Jr. Dean