Press Release

UA names noted scholar to lead entrepreneurship research

Mark Schankerman joins the Eller College of Management's McGuire Center as the James and Pamela Muzzy Chair in Entrepreneurship

TUCSON, Ariz. – September 25, 2007 – Professor Mark Schankerman has joined the Eller College of Management as the first James and Pamela Muzzy Chair in Entrepreneurship. Schankerman, also a tenured faculty member in the Department of Economics, will serve as executive director of the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship. In this role, he will oversee a research agenda focused on advancing academic understanding of entrepreneurship, and building collaboration among faculty across departments and colleges at The University of Arizona.

“We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Schankerman to the Eller College and want to thank Jim and Pamela Muzzy for providing us the opportunity to attract another world-class scholar to our faculty,” said Paul Portney, dean of the Eller College of Management. “As holder of the Muzzy Chair, Dr. Schankerman will head up a new program in entrepreneurship research, which will further the mission of the McGuire Center and substantially contribute to the academic literature on the subject.”

Schankerman comes to the Eller College from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he was professor of economics and research director for the Programme on Productivity, Innovation, and Intellectual Property Rights.

“Entrepreneurship draws on elements from a broad array of disciplines and departments, and a good entrepreneurship research program needs to build links among diverse researchers to bring out the complementarities across fields,” Schankerman explained.

He plans to establish an entrepreneurship seminar series so that research faculty with overlapping areas of interest, both at The University of Arizona and at other universities, can share their work.  Some potential topics of research include the valuation and enforcement of intellectual property (especially patents), the sociology of networks, venture capital finance, contract design, governance and succession in entrepreneurial firms, and the impact of incentives on innovation.

Schankerman will also continue his pioneering research in other entrepreneurship-related topics. Among these are university technology transfer and the localization of knowledge spillovers, which furthers the mission of the university by creating relationships with private sector companies to enable the development and delivery of innovative new products arising from campus research.

The James and Pamela Muzzy Chair in Entrepreneurship is named for The University of Arizona business college alumni James (’62) and Pamela (’64) Muzzy. James is a founder and managing director of fixed income manager PIMCO.

The Eller College of Management at The University of Arizona is internationally recognized for pioneering research, innovative curriculum, distinguished faculty, excellence in entrepreneurship, and social responsibility. U.S.News & World Report ranks the Eller undergraduate program #12 among public business schools and five of its departments are among the top 25 — Entrepreneurship, MIS, Marketing, Management and Organizations, and Accounting. The MPA program in the School of Public Administration and Policy ranks in the top 50. Financial Times ranks the Eller MBA full-time program #27 in the U.S. and #57 in the world, and Forbes ranks the program among the top 50 nationwide. The College leads the nation’s business schools in generating grant funds for research. In addition to a full-time MBA program, the Eller College offers an evening MBA program, and the Eller Executive MBA. The Eller College of Management supports more than 5,100 undergraduate and 600 graduate students on the UA campus in beautiful Tucson, Arizona.

Press Contact:
Linda Herrick, Eller College Public Relations and Events Coordinator
520.626.2590, news@eller.arizona.edu