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Our diverse and esteemed School of Business Board of Governors have decades of leadership experience in various industries, including real estate, automotive, finance, fabrics, food and beverage, defense and many other trades. This week, two Board Members added banking and cargo to the list.
Tommy Baker, owner and president of Baker Motor Company, has formed a new company to launch a local bank — the first to the Charleston area in over a decade. He has been working on the enterprise, named Beacon Community Bank, since 2016 and has partnered with some of the city’s biggest names in business to get it off of the ground.
The list includes banking executive Brooks Melton, who will serve as Beacon’s CEO; former Southcoast senior executives Clay Heslop and Craig Johnson, who will serve as CFO and COO, respectively. Baker even tapped his Board network for support, enlisting retired CEO of BE&K Building Group, Luther Cochrane; president and CEO of Litton Entertainment, David “Buddy” Morgan; and president of The Steadman Agency, Inc., Paul Steadman to serve as directors.
Gary DiCamillo was recently named CEO of Universal Trailer Corporation (UTC) — the nation’s largest specialty trailer company — where he has served on the board of directors for the past six years. Prior to joining the board, he was engaged to assist UTC with an operational and financial turnaround. Thanks to DiCamillo’s leadership and guidance, those efforts were a huge success.
His previous positions include president and CEO of Advantage Resourcing, chairman and CEO of Polaroid Corporation and president of Worldwide Power Tools and Accessories at Black & Decker Corporation.
The School of Business honored its newest Wall of Honor inductees, Rebecca Herring and J.C. and Alberta Long, as well as 2014 inductees Stan and Ellen Schottland, at its third Wall of Honor celebration on Friday, April 21, 2017.
Each honoree was nominated and selected by the School of Business’ Board of Governors for their “transformational and lasting impact on the School of Business.”
Rebecca Herring, associate professor emeritus of accounting, paved the way for today’s accounting program at the College of Charleston School of Business. Referred to as the “consummate advisor,” Herring dedicated her life to teaching accounting and ensuring the professional success of her graduates.
Read more about Rebecca Herring »
J.C. Long was an attorney, builder and entrepreneur who made a name for himself by developing the Isle of Palms with a vision to offer affordable homes for returning veterans and their families. Long eventually became the largest single property owner in all of Charleston County, including what is now known as the J.C. Long Building — the first home to the College of Charleston School of Business.
Stanley A. Schottland, former chair and CEO of American Packaging Corporation (APC), was an early member of the College of Charleston School of Business’ Board of Governors. Schottland stressed the importance of experiential learning, and established the APC Internship Program, which later evolved into the Schottland Leadership Award program.
Read more about Stanley A. Schottland »
Herring, the Longs and the Schottlands join past Wall of Honor inductees, Tommy and Victoria Baker, Guy and Betty Beatty, George and Dorie Spaulding, Bill Finn, Howard and Vicki Rudd, and Anita Zucker, who served as the event’s keynote speaker.
Distinguished Faculty Award recipients David Hansen, Yu Henry Xie, James Malm and J. Wesley Burnett. Also pictured: Jocelyn Evans, associate dean of the School of Business
Each year, School of Business professors are selected for their exemplary contributions in student learning, service leadership and intellectual advancements. This year, the honors go to four accomplished faculty members who represent the highest standards for teaching, service to students and the School, and research published in top-rated journals. This year’s winners are:
- Distinguished Teaching Award – James Malm, assistant professor of finance
- Distinguished Service Award – David Hansen, associate professor of entrepreneurship, and Yu Henry Xie, associate professor of marketing and international business
- Distinguished Research Award – J. Wesley Burnett, assistant professor of economics
Rudd Award winner Mark Pyles and Howard Rudd, dean emeritus of the School of Business
In addition, Mark Pyles, associate professor of finance and director of the School of Business Investment Program, is the recipient of the 2017 Howard F. Rudd Jr. Distinguished Faculty Award for Service Leadership.
The award was established in 2013 to recognize outstanding, high-performing business professors who lead by example and advance the mission and global vision of the School of Business.
The award is named for Rudd, dean emeritus of the business school, who taught at the College for nearly 30 years. It is the most prestigious faculty award given in the School of Business and the only one of its kind at the College of Charleston.
The selection criteria – measured over a three-year period – includes service leadership, teaching, research and business community engagement.
Marketing major and ICAT senior Eli Dent was named Student Entrepreneur of the Year last week at the Tommy Baker Entrepreneurship Hour — an annual College of Charleston School of Business event that celebrates both new and seasoned entrepreneurs.
Dent, an avid soccer player since the age of four, has spent nearly a year working on SideKik — a product that helps soccer players hone their ball-handling skills and gives soccer enthusiasts the opportunity to rep their favorite team.
“Soccer culture in America mimics what they’re doing in Europe and South America,” says Dent. “We have the scarves, the horns, the whistles, but none of it is engaging. I wanted to create something that could involve fans in a more intimate way that also has a major impact on the soccer industry in the U.S.”
Made for children and pros alike, SideKik is similar to a Hacky Sack, but sports additional features that make it fun and easy to use.
The foot-long gadget has feathers to create resistance and a weight that enables it to flip w
hen kicked. The feathers come in an assortment of colors associated with American soccer teams such as Tormenta FC (navy and magenta), Charleston Battery USL (black and yellow), Seattle Sounders FC and Emerald City FC (green and blue) and Atlanta United FC (black and red).
Dent’s connection with Tormenta FC is personal. Last May, he geared up and joined the Statesboro, Georgia-based team for their summer season. In fact, it was through this relationship that SideKik was first born.
In September of 2016, Dent approached the team’s owners, Darin and Netra Van Tassell, about using the product in their training sessions and selling it as team-affiliated merchandise.
They decided to give it a shot, and with that, Dent ordered his first 300 SideKiks from a manufacturer. He believed if he could sell his product in Statesboro, a historically football-centric city with zero soccer culture, he could sell SideKik everywhere. It would become the ultimate case study.
After seeing initial success, Dent pitched SideKik to Lloyd’s Soccer shop in Charleston (with additional locations in Greenville and Atlanta), where he has fond memories of getting soccer equipment as a child.
Lloyd’s decided to purchase 30 SideKiks as a trial, and sold out within two weeks. The owners immediately placed another order, this time for 80, and have been ordering 80 SideKiks every two weeks for all three locations ever since.
No stranger to owning his own business, Dent started his first company, U-Hacky, in high school. “Let’s just say I ordered 1,000 Hacky Sacks to sell and have 990 still sitting at my mom’s house to this day,” says Dent.
Despite the failure, he says he has no regrets and that the experience taught him a lot about sales, marketing and understanding consumer behavior — all lessons he’s used to kick-start a bright future in business.
The College of Charleston School of Business Microfinance Club is excited to announce its first-annual silent auction! The event — which is open to the public — will be held on April 20 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the atrium of the Beatty Center.
Can’t make it? No problem! All bids can be placed online using this link: https://
Items for auction include gift cards to popular local restaurants, tutoring sessions in a variety of subjects, original paintings, spa gifts, and more! All proceeds from the auction will go toward on-campus student activities that have a positive economic impact on the Charleston community.
For more information about the event, contact Caroline Poetzsch at poetzschce@g.cofc.edu.
Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican nominee Donald Trump spoke adamantly about cutting taxes across the board, particularly for working and middle-class America. Now the GOP candidate is president — with Republican majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate — and Americans are waiting to see if he’ll hold true on his tax reform promises.
Amid the varied opinions over the new tax plan, there is one group of people who may be particularly nervous about the impending changes — and it’s not the Democrats.
According to William VanDenburgh, an assistant professor of accounting at the School of Business, President Trump’s tax policy could have significant ramifications for the accounting profession.
The policy, with support from a likely Congressional majority, would seek to overhaul and simplify the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) — and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that enforces it — by eliminating and revising many of the $1.4 trillion in tax expenditures the IRS collects yearly.
Through his article “Significant Tax Reform Is Expected in 2017 or 2018,” scheduled to be published in the May issue of TAXES — The Tax Magazine, VanDenburgh explores the U.S. tax business, which accounts for an estimated 6.1 billion hours of workers’ time at a cost of $168 billion each year.
VanDerburgh’s analysis of the industry is such: By eliminating a number of IRC expenditures, filing will becomes less cumbersome for individuals and small businesses, meaning less need for professional accounting services. And while there will likely be those who prefer to work with a Certified Professional Accountant (CPA) regardless of changes to the IRC, most of their taxes could be filed quickly, meaning less work, less hours and less money for the industry.
The ultimate question, VanDenburgh says, is whether CPAs will embrace the tax simplification, even if it means having a material impact on their livelihoods.
VanDenburgh completed his research on the subject alongside his colleagues James Braswell, an assistant professor of accounting, and Roger Daniels, a professor of accounting and chair of the Department of Accounting and Legal Studies at the College of Charleston School of Business.
TAXES – The Tax Magazine is one of the oldest and most well-known tax journals in the country and is a go-to publication for law firms and law libraries across the globe. The journal analyses federal, state and international tax issues.
P. George Benson
P. George Benson, former College of Charleston president and professor of decision sciences at the School of Business, was the master of ceremonies at the recent Baldrige National Quality Awards, the nation’s highest honors for innovation and performance excellence. Read full story here »
Over spring break, Kelly Shaver, professor of entrepreneurial studies at the College of Charleston School of Business, traveled to South Africa to serve as the academic lead for a project that would test and examine the “entrepreneurial mindset” of business leaders in developing countries.
Shaver helped develop the test, which is the first of its kind, in partnership with the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation and Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN).
Although South Africa is the first country to take the test (slated for late spring), the ultimate goal is to produce an international database that uses the same measure of entrepreneurial mindset across countries.
The results of the test in South Africa will be revealed during GEN’s Startup Nations Summit in Estonia this September.
In addition to assisting with the creation of the test while in Africa, Shaver taught a class on the psychology of entrepreneurship and participated in a two-hour panel session on entrepreneurial mindset. Members of GEN’s Global Entrepreneurship Congress attended both events.
Shaver also took the time to meet with representatives from Austria, Korea and Malaysia — three countries that have expressed interest in using the entrepreneurial mindset scale in their own countries.
If the test is successful, it could result in a tremendous amount of international data. More importantly, the project could help set the agenda for funding and supporting entrepreneurial projects in developing countries around the world.
College of Charleston School of Business senior Joshua Weston created a product called Green Blox, which aims to address the global crisis of homelessness and waste management. His hard work may be about to pay off in a big way.
Weston is one of 25 finalists in the running to win $100,000 at the University of St. Thomas’ e-Fest, the largest undergraduate business plan competition in the country. The finalists — including students from Johns Hopkins University, NC State University and Drexel University — were among a group of 147 applicants, each vying for the title of best business.
A business administration major with a minor in entrepreneurship, Weston initially created Green Blox for an ecopreneurship assignment from associate professor David Hansen. Hansen challenged his students to research, plan and execute a business that could be both financially successful and socially responsible.
Enter Green Blox — a brick-sized, Lego-like block made from upcycled (or reused) plastic that provides consumers with the opportunity to build a beautiful patio in their back yard, while simultaneously working to eliminate plastic waste.
Modeled in the same vein as TOMS or Warby Parker, for every Green Blox sold to build a patio, the company will donate one brick to a nonprofit that works to build homes for the world’s homeless.
Weston was inspired to combat homelessness after traveling the globe as a member of the United States Air Force, where he saw thousands of people living in poverty. “It was through those experiences that I realized I wanted to make a difference and do whatever I needed to do to make that happen,” said Weston.
His decision to make the building block using upcycled plastic came to fruition after reading alarming data about plastic waste. According to an article by The Atlantic, Americans alone generate 10.5 million tons of plastic each year, but less than two percent of that plastic is recycled.
Recycling centers, which operate like any other business, make a profit when they are able to sell their plastics. If they are unable to sell the plastic they take the waste to a landfill, where Weston says they usually have to pay anywhere from $10 to $100 to drop it off.
“Instead of letting the leftover plastic rot in a landfill for the next 1,000 years, we take it off of the recycling companies’ hands for free and turn it into something everyone can use,” says Weston.
The bricks, which are made using 3-D printers, provide key advantages to consumers as well, he says. “They’re extremely lightweight and attractive, and our interlocking design provides a seamless transition for constructing a patio on solid, level ground.”
But Weston wasn’t always an expert on building patios. It took months of researching the brick, block and paver industry, customizing the look and feel of the product and working with local recycling companies before Green Blox was finalized.
Weston also worked closely with School of Business entrepreneurship professors David Hansen, Stuart Williams, David Wyman and Kelly Shaver to get the product in pitch-perfect condition. In fact, Shaver first encouraged Weston to apply to enter the e-Fest competition for the chance to win the money and grow his business.
A win for Weston is also a win for the School. In addition to the top prize of $100,000, the E-Fest gives the winner’s university $10,000 in grants to support entrepreneurship programs and initiatives — the likes of which inspire young entrepreneurs like Weston to make a profit while making a difference.
David J. Hansen, associate professor of entrepreneurship at the School of Business, has been selected to become a Sustainability Literacy Fellow for the College of Charleston’s emerging Sustainability Literacy Institute (SLI).
The institute, which will begin operating on July 1, is envisioned to be the physical, pedagogical, virtual and institutional hub for sustainability literacy efforts at the College. The purpose of SLI is to foster positive social, economic and environmental change by way of a sustainably literate campus community.
As a Sustainability Literacy Fellow, Hansen will encourage more efficient and synergistic activities on campus related to sustainability literacy. For example, he will train other faculty to develop courses that qualify as sustainability-focused or sustainability-related. He is one of four fellows, selected by Quality Enhancement Plan Director Todd LeVasseur.
Hansen primarily teaches innovation courses at the business school including New Venture Modeling, Ecopreneurship (a course he created) and Social Entrepreneurship. In addition, Hansen regularly works with undergrad and graduate students on thesis projects related to sustainable business and/or entrepreneurship.