Season 2 Episode 32
Built @ Darla Moore Vision with Dean Verma
Rohit Verma is the Dean and USC Educational Foundation Distinguished Professor at the Darla Moore School of Business since August 1st 2023. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration and an M.S. in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Utah, and a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Previously, he served as Founding Provost of VinUniversity in Vietnam, and held leadership roles at Cornell University, including Dean of External Relations and Executive Director of multiple research centers. Recognized as a Fellow of both the Production and Operations Management Society and the Decision Sciences Institute, Verma has received numerous awards for leadership, research, and teaching excellence. His work has been honored with top research paper awards, industry recognition, and lifetime achievement distinctions in service operations.
Dean Verma previously appeared on Moore Impact in October 2024. After completing his first year as Dean of the Darla Moore School of Business, he shared reflections on his experience, his vision for the school’s future, and how to build on its history of success.
Some topics include:
Learn more about Dean Rohit Verma here
Learn more about the Darla Moore School here
Photo Courtesy: LinkedIn
Kasie Whitener (00:05):
Good morning, welcome into Moore Impact. My name is Kasie Whitener, and I'm your host for our weekly show here on 100.7, the Point that brings our scholars and practitioners from the Darla Moore School of Business into the studio to talk live and directly to our MakethePointradio.com audience, and also our local audience here in Columbia, South Carolina. We also have the podcast recordings of these. So if you miss the show live, you can grab the podcast wherever you get your podcast. More Impact, as I said, is the name of the show, and today's a very special episode. We've got a very special guest. We have Dr. Rohit Verma, who is our Dean of the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. My boss's boss, the big boss. It's good to see you, Dean Verma.
Dean Rohit Verma (00:43):
Uh, good morning. Good to be here.
Kasie Whitener (00:43):
I'm glad you're here. How was your summer?
Dean Rohit Verma (00:45):
Summer was great. It was, uh, nice. It was a time for us to plan the year.
Kasie Whitener (00:51):
Yeah.
Dean Rohit Verma (00:51):
Although it was a little hot outside, so we stayed indoors.
Kasie Whitener (00:54):
Yeah. A little bit hot outside.
Dean Rohit Verma (00:55):
And worked on the plan for the year.
Kasie Whitener (00:56):
Good. Well, can you bring us up to speed on what that plan is? You're gonna give us some, share, some insights with us today on what the plan is, but the first thing we wanna talk about is the new branding Built at Darla Moore. So give us just a little background on the branding as part of that, and then we'll kind of lead that into the big grand plan.
Dean Rohit Verma (01:11):
Sure. This is going to be an exciting year for us. You know, Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, like you said, has been creating leaders, change makers, difference makers, career professionals for a long time, uh, for over a hundred years now. And within our school, we have several high quality and high impact programs. Of course, everybody knows about our international business.
Kasie Whitener (01:42):
Number one in the nation.
Dean Rohit Verma (01:43):
Number one in the, in, in, in the world, right?
Kasie Whitener (01:45):
Yes.
Dean Rohit Verma (01:46):
And we also have world renowned supply chain program. We have a very highly regarded human resource program. As you may know, finance is the largest major, not just in the Darla Moore School, but the entire university. And we have scholar programs in all the different majors. So these are just some examples I'm giving. And over the course of last a hundred years or so, we have created leaders and we have created our brand in each of these areas. What we feel right now is that what if we could bring all of these expertise, all of these knowledge and, uh, the impact which each unit has made together and create a much stronger reputational brand for the whole school. And that's what Built @ Darla Moore is all about. In nutshell, what we are trying to do is come up with a way to tell our story better. Essentially with Built @ Darla Moore, the key idea is that we try to get the best possible students from South Carolina and around the country. Uh, we do our best, uh, in terms of trying to identify these students. Uh, you know, we, you may, as you may know, we also have a pipeline program for South Carolina students to come to our school. So we do that. So that's our input, if you will. And what we hope is that when the students graduate, they're on to doing something wonderful. You know, they're successful in their careers, in their life, uh, making connections, all of that. So the input best possible output, successful career and life, and something magical happens in between. That's what we are calling Built @ Darla. More. We build careers, we build life, we build connections, and we do it in a very flexible way. And so that's our key message.
Kasie Whitener (03:41):
I just love it. I love the idea that what we're doing actively every day in the classrooms, in our clubs, in our extracurriculars, even when our students are just interacting with one another in the hallway and when their professors are chatting with them. I mean, I, I get flagged down by students that I had a semester ago, two semesters ago, just to chat with them about what their careers are, are like, how they're moving forward in their programs and that sort of thing. And I love the idea that everything that's happening in that building is creating these incredible outcomes, which are these very successful people that go out into the world and really make real impact and real change.
Dean Rohit Verma (04:14):
Indeed. You know, our school, the way it's designed our building, it creates the impression of a small community within this large comprehensive university. So in that sense, it's the best of both worlds. You know, our students, if they want to experience the, everything our university has to offer, they can just walk around. They can go to engineering, they can go to library, they can go to sports management, they can do all of that. They can enjoy sports, all of those things.
Kasie Whitener (04:41):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (04:42):
And then they come to our building, and as I was saying earlier, the magic happens there. We have 35 or so student organizations, clubs, if you'll, and they range from clubs based on careers such as consulting, women in leadership, supply chain club to hobby clubs and honor society. We have in almost every program, we have some type of a capstone project, which allows us to work on real problems given to us by companies.
Kasie Whitener (05:16):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (05:16):
Whether it's a marketing problem or supply chain problem, or finance. We have scholar programs. So scholar programs are smaller group of students who are high achievers in their particular professional area. And then we try to give them extra, uh, nudge so that they can go ahead and excel even more, if you will.
Kasie Whitener (05:36):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (05:37):
So all of that happens in there. And you may have noticed, I'm not talking about one particular discipline, because it's part of every single discipline.
Kasie Whitener (05:44):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (05:45):
And that's what we say, that, look, you can come here, you can study whatever you want. You can make your connections, but being together is what we help you build. We help you build your life, and you build your successes.
Kasie Whitener (06:00):
I love the idea that, uh, we, I love the phrase, first of all, the phrase Built @ Darla Moore, because the word built itself implies that there's an action happening here. That we are creating something, we're growing things, we're adding something to. So they come in with all this high potential, having proven that they're academically motivated, that they want to be part of something that's elite. And then they get here and we challenge them even further. Give them more opportunities in the classroom, give them opportunities outside the classroom. But certainly the working together, I always joke with my students, I'm like, there's not one of you who's gotten outta here without a group project. Everybody has a group project. And then you think about these cross-disciplinary projects as well, where they can go in and especially in our entrepreneurship class where I've got supply chain majors and marketing majors and finance majors and accounting majors, and they're all here in the entrepreneurship class trying to figure out what does the business look like from end to end. So I think there's just so much opportunity for collaboration there. And that's really what it means to build something, is to collaborate.
Dean Rohit Verma (06:55):
That's right. That's right. So, um, just to follow up on our, our conversation earlier, what we are going to do is we'll take this entire year and then slowly develop our, uh, storytelling campaign, if you will.
Dean Rohit Verma (07:10):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (07:10):
Um, the consulting firm DotGlue who helped us, uh, craft this message, they were able to talk to about a hundred or so individuals. These are students, alumni, corporate partners, faculty, staff, you name it, our advisory board trustees, all of them. And they have identified many nuggets of wisdom about what we do at our school and then distill them into Built @ Darla Moore. Now, what we have to do is take this distilled version and expand it again. So over the course of this whole year, we will, be, meaning a small core team, those of us who are involved in this project, we will be creating different workshops and sessions with different departments, programs, clubs, and say, what does Built @ Darla Moore mean to you?
Kasie Whitener (08:01):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (08:01):
What is your story, if you will? And I think by doing that, it organically becomes very clear how we are able to emphasize every single program in the school. So this is not going to be a flashy brand campaign where, you know, where we have, uh, TV ads or, you know, billboards not yet. But, but we, what we really want to do is, as a school, we should own it.
Kasie Whitener (08:25):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (08:26):
And own owning means everybody has to be able to understand what it is, think about it their own way, and I think collectively then we are able to build on it.
Dean Rohit Verma (08:36):
Sure. And find a real connection to that particular message. All right. We're gonna run to break on the other side more with Dean Verma. We're talking a little bit about built to Darla Moore and the vision for the Darla Moore School of Business. We'll be right back.
Kasie Whitener (09:03):
Welcome back to the program. It's Moore Impact, Kasie Whitener, your host here on our Moore Impact show where we'd like to bring our scholars and practitioners in from the Darla Moore School over to makethepointradio.com. and 100.7 the point here locally in Columbia and also on the podcast, Moore Impact to share their expertise and the impact that they're having on South Carolina and on the nation, and really on the world. When you've got the number one international business school in the world, you're having a global impact, which is amazing. Today, my guest in the studio is Dr. Verma. He is our dean of the School of Business. And, uh, we were talking about Built @ Darla Moore, which is our new brand, but it's more than a slogan. It's meant to embody or encompass this idea that our students come in with this potential and we build upon that potential, and we grow something that's really useful and impactful, and we send them into the world to go out there and continue to grow and impact the world around them as citizens, as business leaders, as individuals, as families. Um, it's just, it's an awesome way, I think, to conceptualize the transformational work that happens in the school at the Darla Moore School of Business. So when over the summer, I mentioned we had Pat Wright here. Uh, Dr. Wright was here to talk a little bit about the leadership initiative over the summer. And so I wanted to like kind of pivot now as we're talking about Built @ Darla Moore, about this leadership initiative and the identification of the very real leadership skills that students are learning inside the Darla Moore School, how they're applying them and what that looks like. So can you unpack that just a little bit for us?
Dean Rohit Verma (10:33):
Sure. Thank you for this question. As Emma was mentioning earlier, for a long period of time, our school has been building leaders. You know, um, you look at any functional area, we can find prominent alumni doing some amazing things. And I'm holding in my hand the most recent alumni magazine.
Kasie Whitener (10:53):
Yes.
Dean Rohit Verma (10:53):
So why don't I just give you some examples Sure. And then I will try to answer the question. Absolutely. So the cover article here is about, uh, Mr. Jordan Broggi. He's a 2004 graduate in economics and finance, and he runs Homedepot.com.
Kasie Whitener (11:08):
Nice.
Dean Rohit Verma (11:08):
Which is probably 25 or so billion dollars, uh, business.
Kasie Whitener (11:13):
That's a pretty big business. Yeah.
Dean Rohit Verma (11:15):
Yeah. Decent size. And then we have another article about not-for-profits. And we have a, a nice feature about Erin Rowe. She's a 2019 graduate of professional MBA program. And for those of us who live in South Carolina, they're very familiar with her organization. It's called Harvest Hope.
Kasie Whitener (11:33):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (11:34):
They feed thousands of people who are looking for food, uh, and have food insecurity. And let me just give one more example. This example is for our, our PhD, PhD graduate. Her name is Dr. Kate Lamberton. She's 2006 MBA and 2008 PhD. And now she's a Wise Dean at Wharton School.
Kasie Whitener (11:53):
Look at that.
Dean Rohit Verma (11:53):
At the University of Pennsylvania. So I just gave you three examples of three individuals who have gone into completely different walk of life. And I can go on and on. We have about 60,000 alumni, and many are taking leadership role in whatever career they have chosen.
Dean Rohit Verma (12:08):
Chosen. Sure. So our idea was that since we have been doing it, why not make it in a systematic way? Now, leadership, if you think about it, it's not, some people argue that you cannot teach leadership. Others argue that Yes, you can. And our view is that for leader, a most important, most important characteristic of leader, that you need to have at least one follower, if you will.
Kasie Whitener (12:34):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (12:35):
So how do you get one follower? You have to work with that individual. It's all the people skills, um, negotiation, persuasion, you know, making a case. Those are skills which you can teach.
Kasie Whitener (12:49):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (12:49):
And that's what we do. So what our faculty have done is gone to the basics, if you will, and said, to be a leader, you need to have all of those different types of skills at the individual level, at your organizational level, at the strategic level.
Dean Rohit Verma (13:04):
And thankfully, we have such a strong group of faculty in our school led by our management department that they have come up with a framework, it's called the Moore Leadership Framework, that's how we call it. And Professor Pat Wright may have talked about that earlier. And now what we are doing is working through our curriculum committees at the university to make leadership a concentration or a certificate. I don't remember the technical detail, but essentially the idea will be that students across the entire Darla Moore School of Business, if they want, they will be able to get this special credential for leadership.
Kasie Whitener (13:39):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (13:39):
There will be a series of classes. In addition, we are trying to have several prominent speakers come to class. Pat and I, we taught a class last year. It's called Lessons from Inspiring Leaders. And we bring one leader every week. So that's already ongoing. In addition, we will bring some very prominent, uh, speakers to our students. And we have first one schedule. I'm not going to say that right now, once it's done, then we will be able to give you some more information. But the idea is that we bring both leaders from all walks of life, bring them to students. So students can ask questions, they can interact with them. We are doing events around leadership. So we will have conferences, workshops. We are going to be recognizing leaders. So we have, uh, we already have distinguished Alumni Leadership Award. We have Leadership Legacy Award, which is given by our Center for Executive Succession.
Kasie Whitener (14:36):
We just did that. Yep. We just did that last week with Brian Moynihan from the CEO. And, uh, it's a CEO at COO isn't he combined, C-E-O-C-O-O of Bank of America. Yeah. So he was, he was fantastic. And our students were all there listening and hearing what he had to say and understanding the impact that he has, not just nationally, he's got 226,000 people working for him, but globally. Because Bank of America is a global player in global financial markets. So it was a really impactful conversation, uh, that, uh, Anthony Nyberg, who actually has been on the podcast as well, he's been here on the show. He talked, uh, he led that with the Center for Executive Succession. It was a great, great event.
Dean Rohit Verma (15:12):
Right. So we have all of these core programs already there. Now, what we are trying to do is put a nice framework around it. And our hope is that someday we can create a Darla Moore SchoolLeadership Institute.
Kasie Whitener (15:24):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (15:25):
Which can become home for doing all of these amazing things which happen all around the, the building. And students, you know, several of our students, they come to University of South Carolina with already more than six months, and in some cases one year of credit through their advanced placement scores.
Kasie Whitener (15:43):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (15:43):
So they have plenty of time. You know, many of them would want to do their functional major, let's say a finance marketing supply chain. And in addition, they will be able to take the leadership option with them.
Kasie Whitener (15:56):
I like the idea, and Pat and I talked about this when he was here, of formalizing that leadership training in the classroom, providing them with access to theory on leadership and an understanding of all these different styles of leadership and seminal work about leadership where they can really kind of dig a little deeper psychologically into it. But then also, a lot of our students, especially, I teach mostly seniors, by the time they reach their fourth year in school, they have been put into leadership positions. So they are the presidents of their fraternity, or they're on committees in their sorority, or they are club presidents, chapter presidents, these kinds of things where they've, they have assumed that leadership role as seniors in college simply by sort of longevity and seniority in the space. But to have the theoretical framework and to have the skills being taught to them as well. And the concentration helps them to really not just take advantage of, Hey, I got made, you know, president of my sorority, but now I also have all these skills that I've been acquiring, and I can actually put those into play. And it creates a really great experiential learning for them to be able to, like, I learned it in the classroom, but now I'm applying it in whatever civic group I'm a member of, which I think is fantastic.
Dean Rohit Verma (17:03):
That's right. See, other part of leadership is that we all are leaders, but we are also all followers for certain things. We can all take leadership role, but for certain other things, we have to follow somebody else's.
Kasie Whitener (17:14):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (17:15):
Lead, we can't all do everything.
Kasie Whitener (17:18):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (17:18):
And so when we teach about, and we learn about leadership, we're also learning how to be a good follower when it, when the, when the opportunity comes to follow somebody else.
Kasie Whitener (17:27):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (17:28):
So it, it goes both ways. Right. And then of course, also team member how to be a peer when we are not a leader, not a follower, but we are a member of the group. And all of these type of things, in fact, are going to become more and more important the more technologically sophisticated our society becomes.
Kasie Whitener (17:46):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (17:46):
You know, ChatGPT cannot help us with that.
Kasie Whitener (17:49):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (17:49):
You know, we need to build that, uh, on our own.
Kasie Whitener (17:53):
Of course, those interpersonal communications.
Dean Rohit Verma (17:55):
That's right.
Kasie Whitener (17:55):
The skills to be able to negotiate. And you made mention of it before, the idea that, uh, you can work together in a team. And we, we kind of put everybody in group projects and just sort of assume they know how to work as a group on a project, but to really get granular about this is what positive group interactions look like.This is how we manage positive group interactions. Like, and being really clear about this is the skillset you need is really gonna set these folks up for, for success.
Dean Rohit Verma (18:21):
That's right. That's right. So that's the key idea behind, uh, leadership and Darla Moore. And I think it's a very exciting, uh, in fact, if you come to our building and on the first floor, there's a big nice quote from Ms. Darla Moore, uh, about why she helped endow the school. And the court talks about the charge to create world class leaders. And we already do that. But I think this will make it more formal and more structured. And, and I think our country can use more leaders. Our state can use more leaders. You know, definitely we want our graduates to take those roles.
Kasie Whitener (18:56):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (18:56):
And then be the difference makers.
Kasie Whitener (18:58):
I think the credentialing matters when we think about, too, what is the role that higher education plays in our students' journey to become, you know, more, to fulfill their potential, to become better citizens, better contributors to the organizations that they're eventually gonna go to work for. And when we think, okay, well, where do we formalize? Where do we get really granular and specific about these skills? In this case, that's what academia can do. Academia can say, these are the skills, and you're being taught them. You're being given a chance to practice them. You understand them, you know them. And then now we're going to expect you to behave in this way. When you go out into these practical experiences. We do a great job with internships and job placements and that sort of thing. This is a chance for us to really prepare them in a way that, that maybe we just haven't been so specific about before.
Dean Rohit Verma (19:47):
That's right. That's right. And, you know, in many of these skills, which students learn at our school, doesn't mean that they have to apply them right away after they graduate, but as they go through their own career, all of us had to learn this on our own. If you'll, right. I mean, we, we stumble on some ideas, then we try to figure things out. Oh, now I have to manage people. How do I do that?
Kasie Whitener (20:09):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (20:09):
Or read a book. Well, if we can prime them while they are students here, give them some sort of a basic knowledge, basic, uh, understanding about how to work with others and so on. When the time comes, they'll be more prepared than others. Not just give them their functional skills, if you will, but skills so that they can work with other people.
Kasie Whitener (20:31):
Well, and I think it's the thinking skills too, right? It's that critical thinking piece and being able to recognize the opportunity that's in front of you, and then to engage in that opportunity in a constructive and positive way. Because as we see more technology taking away the kind of rote skills, the, the technological skills, the how to use a slide deck, how to use a Excel spreadsheet, like some of those kind of technical skills that we've been, that have been sort of, I don't wanna call 'em the bedrock, but they've been part of the profession. So if you're going into, uh, accounting, here's all your software skills that you're gonna need to have. But we need more than just being able to use the tools. They've got to be able to think beyond the tools and be able to process the com, the information that's coming to them from a, a bunch of different directions. So I think this is a valuable way to let get academia, uh, maybe a little bit better positioned to create a holistic experience for them instead of simply a skills-based experience.
Dean Rohit Verma (21:25):
Indeed, indeed.
Kasie Whitener (21:26):
We're gonna run to break on the other side, we're gonna talk a little bit more about the second pillar that's a part of this Built @ Darla Moore vision for the future. It's the Darla Moore School of Businesses podcast. Moore Impact. We'll be right back.
Kasie Whitener (21:53):
Welcome back to Moore Impact, Kasie Whitener, your host here for the Darla Moore School of Business. And our idea here with Moore Impact is to bring our scholars and our practitioners in to share with you the work that they're doing. And as the dean of the School of Business at the University of South Carolina, the work that you're doing is primarily shaping the future for what the school is going to do. I was thinking about it this morning as I was kind of getting ready for the show. I was thinking, you're basically the CEO of the Darla Moore School of Business. So Dean Verma is here to talk a little bit about Built @ Darla Moore and how we're bridging the gap between some of the things that were, potential stuff that we were kind of doing, but we hadn't necessarily formalized those things. And one of those things is these Intercampus communications. So we have some students that are majoring in music, and they come over to the Darla Moore School and say, I think I wanna be a business major. Can I do both? And these before had been sort of one-offs. Uh, but you're starting to formalize some of these partnerships. So share with us some of these. Uh, I think a little criticism sometimes of academia is that we get into our own little silos, but you're doing really great work on trying to break through those silos and, and create some partnerships.
Dean Rohit Verma (22:56):
Thank you, Kasie. Yes. I mentioned earlier that, you know, if, for a student at the Darla Moore School of Business, they have best of both worlds. This is a small school within this large comprehensive university. And for us to not take advantage of this, what this amazing university has to offer will be, you know, suboptimal if you will. So from a school's point of view. But if you look at more broadly from the student's point of view, there are some students who come to University of South Carolina and they wanna study business. And if they are able to admit to the school, they're able to become successful great. They, they get majored in finance and marketing and supply chain and so on. But then there are other students who come to this university because they want to be, be a nurse. They want to, uh, to know about pharmacy. You know, uh, they want to learn about sports management, if you will. That's what their passion is. So university allows them those opportunities, but then many of those students want to run those businesses. If you think about it, entertainment, music, all of these are big businesses. You look at hospitals around the whole country who runs these hospitals, they're nurses.
Kasie Whitener (24:13):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (24:13):
They run the hospitals. Right. So if we can create a pathway for the students around the university who are not connected with the Darla Moore School of Business, then it's a win-win. Furthermore, these students, when they come to our classroom, they'll also enrich the students who are just studying business.
Kasie Whitener (24:34):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (24:34):
Because it'll give them new perspective of, oh, this is what happens in the healthcare. This is what happens in the entertainment or music, and so on. So big effort during the last year was to first start with our own faculty and say, can we create these programs? And fortunately, our faculty are very willing, you know, we have our master's program committee, we have undergraduate programs committee, we meet with the department chairs. Everybody was for it. And so what we have done this last year is one by one, we are creating agreements with different colleges. So I'll just highlight a few.
Kasie Whitener (25:07):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (25:08):
We first started with the College of Engineering, and one obvious place for connection is to link engineering with marketing and sales. So that's already in place now. Now we are looking at a program on innovation, which actually College of Engineering used to offer. And we are talking with Dean, uh, Hussein Haj-Hariri, if we can co-own this so that we can have more active collaboration around innovation, if you will. So that'll be another area.
Kasie Whitener (25:38):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (25:39):
We are about to release a, a press note about our collaboration with sports management, with the hospitality at school. Uh, school.
Kasie Whitener (25:48):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (25:49):
And you may remember earlier this year, we actually had a panel of our student athletes.
Kasie Whitener (25:54):
Yep.
Dean Rohit Verma (25:54):
Who have become prominent alumni. We featured people like Tommy Suggs and Michael Roth, and Grayson Greener, Lisa Berges, Brie, all of these. So we see that many students who come to university, they want to play whatever sports they want to play, but later on they become, uh, good, uh, business people.
Kasie Whitener (26:13):
Sure. Lisa and Brie were here Okay. In the studio. And they did a show the day of that, uh, of that panel. Yes. They came and talked about how their careers had built out. Brie a very, a recent alum.
Dean Rohit Verma (26:23):
Right.
Kasie Whitener (26:24):
And she's in a, a sales career. And then Lisa in a finance career and talking about a little bit further along in her career, uh, she's more my age, which was, it was fun to kind of talk back when we were in school in the nineties was kind of fun,
Dean Rohit Verma (26:49):
That's right. That's right. So that's the idea that, you know, over a period of time, slowly we will have these pathways for students in different colleges, and the pathways will be, um, essentially we'll allow them to get admitted to our school in one of our many master's program in a fast track way, if they meet a certain GPA standards, if they have taken some prerequisites, they don't have to go and apply the regular way like any other student from any other university. So we'll make it easier. Secondly, we'll make it faster. So a student, maybe an undergraduate student, and over a period of time after the faculty have approved, it's very important that our faculty curriculum committees approve it. Once they have approved it, we will be allowing these students to take some of the classes even before admitting.
Kasie Whitener (27:37):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (27:37):
So what it does is allows them to take advantage of their undergraduate tuition rates, undergraduate scholarships, whatever, uh, options they have, and make it even faster. So it's, again, a win-win. It's, it's a win for students, first of all. And it's also win for us because we get higher quality more students, and they bring a lot more diversity of thought in the classroom. You know, can you imagine? We'll have students from nursing and music and sports studying finance along with the students who wanna study finance. Right. That's wonderful.
Kasie Whitener (28:11):
Yeah. And I, you know, what's interesting to me too is like I said as we sort of started this segment, that there's a lot of criticism of academia from outside academia that says, well, you're, you know, it's the whole joke about the ivory tower and all that, that people tend to be pretty well siloed. If I'm studying business at the Darla Moore School, I'm in the Darla Moore School all the time, I don't necessarily see what folks are doing in the political science realm or in the, um, language and arts realm, or in the biology realm. But now, as we're making these master's degree programs available, certificate programs available for those students to come to us, they're simply by, in their presence in the Moore School, enriching our business students experience, bringing their different perspectives and their different experiences with, I mean, their internships are different. Their leadership pathways are different. Everything they do in their disciplines just enriches our students. As our students learn more and more about them. Some of these collaborations, the informal ones I mentioned, the, uh, School of Music, I've got students who are in the School of Music that want to become, uh, business owners in that entertainment field. So they'll come and take entrepreneurship classes. And we think about the McNair Institute with their campus-wide entrepreneurship minor, where they offer these kind of business classes to all these different disciplines for anybody who wants to have an entrepreneurship outlook. And the School of Journalism is another one where we think about people who might eventually become journalists in the business press. They might go on to write for the Wall Street Journal, but they really need to understand what are the basics of business to be able to be an educated business journalist. So those kinds of things where we think interdisciplinary cross-discipline, uh, there's like a, a cool pollination that happens there where everybody benefits from it.
Dean Rohit Verma (29:48):
Indeed. Indeed. The other reason for doing this is also so that we can serve larger group of students.
Kasie Whitener (29:55):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (29:56):
You know, in our school, we are fortunate that we get so many applications. Uh, last year, I believe we had more than 15,000 applications for roughly 1500 or so students who we can admit, uh, given our facilities and infrastructure. But if we allow for these options, then we are able to serve many, many more students. Right. I mean, uh, somebody can be a direct major in business school. Somebody can have a minor, someone can have a plus one master's degree, if you will. And if they're able to finish it in six months, then why not?
Kasie Whitener (30:28):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (30:28):
Right. So this is just a way for us to show much bigger impact, uh, for many more students.
Kasie Whitener (30:34):
So, if there are students out there that are listening right now and they're planning to apply to the business school, but they don't get accepted to the business school, that doesn't mean they're not able to study business at the University of South Carolina. You can come here and study something else. And then access one of these programs, certificate program or a graduate program or some kind of minor program that would give you opportunity to study some of those courses, marketing, sales, that sort of thing.
Dean Rohit Verma (30:57):
Indeed, indeed. Yeah. That's the idea.
Kasie Whitener (30:59):
It's extraordinarily valuable, especially that the idea that we would, and, and it sounds silly to like we're we'll open the doors of the business school to anybody, but we are one big university and to take advantage of, you know, what engineering has to our business students, some of them need those engineering classes because some of them have great ideas for software apps, but they don't know how to build software apps. And so having a relationship with our folks over in computer science and in computer engineering, they get a chance to go over there and spend some time with them and maybe build on their app ideas. That's a lot of fun too. Those are some of the relationships we've been able to forge through the Faber Entrepreneurship Center is to go out there and say, Hey, we've got students with app ideas. Do you guys have any software developers who could help them?
Dean Rohit Verma (31:40):
Actually, you bring a very good point. I was just more earlier I was just talking about how students from other other schools at USC will be bringing their enriched, um, point of view to our classes.
Kasie Whitener (31:54):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (31:54):
But it can be the other way around too. And I will give you a specific example. You know, we have a group of students who are very fascinated by quantum computing. In fact, we are going to do our second quantum, uh, in a couple of months from now in partnership with SC Quantum, which is our local group, as you may know.
Kasie Whitener (32:12):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (32:13):
This particular program brings students from all around the country. I think this year, quantan will have more than 30 or 40 different universities will be sending students here. And the groups are multidisciplinary, they are business students, they're engineering students, they are students who are studying mathematics. And earlier we had no formal way of bringing these type of new ideas, school ideas to our students. Right? The more we forge bond across colleges, the more of these type of things we'll be able to do.
Kasie Whitener (32:44):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (32:44):
So great, great example.
Kasie Whitener (32:46):
Yeah. The Quantathon is great. Uh, Eric Powers was on the show. He talked about it. Brandon Mendez was here. He talked about it. Uh, the two of them sleeping overnight in the Sonoco Pavilion because it's a 24 hour event. Um, and entrepreneurship, we're hosting Gridlock in October. And this is a two day event where we're focusing on the energy sector. And so all of our entrepreneurship business students are getting a chance to look at what are renewable energy sources and what does it mean to build a battery. And so it's a good partnership with our engineering department and the Center for, I think it's the Center for Innovation and Battery Technology. Or something like that. But they're part of the SC Nexus program. So really giving exposure to our entrepreneurship students of like, here's opportunity in this particular space. And you don't have to know how to make a battery. You just have to know people who know how to make a battery
Dean Rohit Verma (33:46):
That's right. That's right. I think there are many, many more opportunities like that. Um, if, and to your point earlier, if we just stay in our building, we'll miss out on those opportunities.
Kasie Whitener (33:55):
Exactly. We got one segment to go. Dean Verma is here. We're gonna talk about the future of the Darla Moore School of Business and his vision for what we think we can see. We'll be right back.
Kasie Whitener (34:13):
All right. Welcome back to Moore Impact. It's our final segment of the show. We want to, uh, thank our caller who reached out to us off the air to ask about the gridlock event. So I just wanna give those details again really quickly. It's gonna be at the Boyd Innovation Center, October 23rd and 24th. And if you're interested in it, if you go to sc.edu and search Faber F-A-B-E-R, that's the entrepreneurship center that's gonna be hosting that event. You'll see gridlock October 23rd and 24th. So sc.edu search Faber, F-A-B-E-R, and you'll find the details on that. You'll also find my contact information, so you can give me a call or email me directly about it. We'd love to have y'all involved with that. The Boyd Innovation Center are, are grateful sponsors for that. And the South Carolina Research Authority, there's a lot of community organizations that are also reaching out to the university that want to engage with some of this cross-disciplinary stuff that we're doing, which is really exciting. In the studio with me, Dean Verma, the Dean of the Business school at the University of South Carolina, the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, the growth for the business school and this acknowledgement of the legacy of the business school is heavily supported by our current faculty and the new faculty that you all are bringing in. Can you talk a little bit about the recruitment efforts and how we are onboarding these new folks and getting them into the game here, because it's just feels like a bigger, brighter future for the Darla Moore School of Business.
Dean Rohit Verma (35:28):
Indeed. Thank you for this, uh, very important question. I earlier talked about the number of applications from students.
Kasie Whitener (35:34):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (35:35):
And we are fortunate that we have so many students applying and so many smart students are applying. Now. We cannot take smart students and have mediocre faculty.
Kasie Whitener (35:44):
Dean Rohit Verma (35:46):
So, so we need to continuously keep looking for really inspiring group of faculty members. Of course. And on that aspect, we are very thankful to our president, uh, president Michael Amiridis. And, uh, he had a bold vision to hire 100 new tenure track faculty at the University of South Carolina.
Kasie Whitener (36:06):
That's a lot.
Dean Rohit Verma (36:06):
That's a lot. This, especially during the time period where most university in the country, either they are not hiring or they're reducing.
Kasie Whitener (36:13):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (36:14):
So President did not just give these positions away though.
Kasie Whitener (36:18):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (36:18):
He said each college has to make a case. And this was done in two batches. And the first, first time two years ago, the ask was that, how can you have these new faculty members teach, primarily teach undergraduates in addition to their intellectual outcome?
Kasie Whitener (36:35):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (36:36):
And then the most recent, uh, round, he asked us to also think about research themes such as AI, healthcare, sustainable development, and so on. So what we did from our school side, we created some compelling proposals for his consideration. And as a result, we have been able to get approximately 20 new faculty lines.
Kasie Whitener (36:57):
That's incredible. It's Incredible.
Dean Rohit Verma (36:59):
So, so thank you to the university and the trustees and everybody else who made it happen.
Kasie Whitener (37:03):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (37:03):
This has been a great, great, uh, benefit to our, uh, intellectual capital. And finally to our students.
Kasie Whitener (37:09):
When we think about you as our CEO of our business school, as if it's an organization, these are your frontline employees, the folks that are interacting directly with your customers, who are our students. So I just think it's great that we're putting 20 more people in classrooms to engage directly with those students and improve those outcomes.
Dean Rohit Verma (37:24):
That's right. Now in addition to that, we had lost a few faculty members over a period of time.
Kasie Whitener (37:30):
For retirement and things. Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (37:32):
During retirement, you know, people moved away during COVID time period, for example. Or other family reasons and so on. So we are also trying to bring those faculty lines back. And now these are both, uh, what we call tenure track, which is the research active faculty, and then professional track.
Kasie Whitener (37:47):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (37:48):
These are individuals who are, who teach more classes, but they also have more information and knowledge about the industry.
Kasie Whitener (37:54):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (37:54):
So we have a healthy mix between the two, and we want to bring them. So as a result in our building now, we have several new people. And as we bring these new people, this is, uh, um, this is very important that we not only integrate them into our current, uh, work environment culture, but this is also an opportunity to actually shape the culture if you'll.
Kasie Whitener (38:18):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (38:18):
And so that's, that's our big effort from our senior associate in, uh, professor Ari course guard office, to really work with faculty so we can create a more cohesive culture. We can facilitate cross department collaboration. We can facilitate things such as, you know, uh, research, which can be very impactful if done across different parts of the building, such as ai, economic policy, sustainable development, healthcare, all of that.
Kasie Whitener (38:47):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (38:47):
So that's the, that's our exciting work to how to make our research and intellectual work more impactful. And also how to bring our faculty together so we can make better use of their time to help student success.
Kasie Whitener (39:02):
When we think about our faculty that are on the inquiry side, the ones that are conducting research and these, and publishing papers and that sort of thing. And when Dr. Ozturk was here last week, she was talking about the process for that and organizing a study and getting collaborators together and writing the paper or, you know, building out the research and all this kind of thing. And what's interesting to me is when you have this dynamic group of faculty, like we do at the Darla Moore School of Business, and we get into these informal environments, like last week when Brian Moynihan was here for the Legacy Award, there were a lot of us that were there afterwards in the, uh, reception and just chatting about what are you working on? And, and you know, what's some of, what are some of the, the inquiries that you're engaged in right now? And then to see some folks kind of like the light bulbs go off, like, I'm interested in that too. I'm curious about that too. And that sort of bumping into each other is how we end up with really cool dynamic research between entrepreneurship and international business and between supply chain and economics and folks start to work together on projects that are generating new knowledge with, which I think is just fantastic.
Dean Rohit Verma (40:05):
Yes, yes, indeed. And I wanted to highlight one aspect of our faculty's work, which sometimes may not be as apparent res. Conducting research is a very, very long time consuming process. And we know that of course, faculty spend a lot of time doing that. And there are the articles they publish, some of it get translated very quickly, some of it doesn't, but it all takes its own time.
Kasie Whitener (40:29):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (40:30):
Now, in addition, it's also a very social activity. We don't have to just do a research. We have to convince other that my idea was good, my results are good, and so on. So actually our faculty do a lot of that type of work. And I'll just give you one example. In our school, we had six academic conferences just last year, and again, the coming year we'll have about five to six more conferences.
Kasie Whitener (40:53):
That we host on site in our school.
Dean Rohit Verma (40:55):
Yes. And our faculty. So I gave you some example from last year. We have a professor from International Business Professor Omrane Guedhami. He held a conference on corporate finance. Then we had Professor Allen Berger and Hugh Kim, they hosted a conference on fixed income and financial institutions. They're going to do that again this year. Our previous chair of the management science department, Dr. Sean Hanley, he had a conference about operations management supported by one of the top journal in the field. And so on and on. We had professor Satish Jayachandran, he's our associate dean. He held a marketing conference hosted, supported by American Marketing Association.
Kasie Whitener (41:34):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (41:34):
Each of these events bring anywhere from a hundred to 300 scholars to our building from all around the world. This is an opportunity not just to share idea, but also to elevate and showcase the impact of the work our colleagues are doing.
Kasie Whitener (41:49):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (41:49):
Because knowledge creation is an essential part of any major research university. We are an R one classified university.
Kasie Whitener (41:56):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (41:57):
And many times when we do these things, they are just somewhere in the background. I just wanted to highlight how important it is and how much impactful work our faculty are doing.
Kasie Whitener (42:06):
We had, uh, Dr. Mark Ferguson on over the summer, and he had hosted a conference down in the low country.
Dean Rohit Verma (42:12):
That's right.
Kasie Whitener (42:12):
That was looking at short-term rentals and the impact of short-term rentals, and specifically the impact of, uh, ordinances and legislation around short-term rentals, which is very impactful for South Carolina as a tourism state. And he had done that in collaboration with the School of Hospitality. So, yeah, it's exciting to think of our scholars as well as working across those lines and across those disciplines and saying, Hey, let's put together something that we think is relevant to both of our disciplines. That was a great episode.
Dean Rohit Verma (42:39):
Right. And you mentioned earlier, uh, chair of our finance, uh, sorry, economics department, Orgul, she was here. Right. Yes. So Orgul has started a new center on economic policy. Yes. So that particular center, I just give one example is, is about scholarly work, but also making recommendations.
Kasie Whitener (42:56):
Yep.
Dean Rohit Verma (42:58):
To the real policy work, which is happening in the state and around the country.
Kasie Whitener (43:01):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (43:01):
You know, so there are many, many reasons why we need to do research, and I'm so thankful to our faculty for undertaking these projects. We have 14 different research center in our school right now, and a couple more are in development. And all of these are essential. If I can just say, I have my own research project, so I'm not just an administrator, like you mentioned earlier, you know, I'm a professor to start with.
Kasie Whitener (43:24):
Yes.
Dean Rohit Verma (43:24):
And I, I take that responsibility very seriously. I try to guest lecture whenever possible since I cannot do, uh, full classes right now.
Kasie Whitener (43:32):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (43:33):
But I do feel all of us need to continuously keep doing research. So my own research is about an index we are developing for aging society. So it's called Silver Prosperity Index. Okay. And what we are going to do is look at the entire country. We are looking at different states. We have about 60 or so indicators, which we are looking at. And this will create an index to show which state is doing a better job of worse job in terms of the aging population and the impact on industry, impact on, uh, practice. As people decide to move from one place to the other, they can be guidance for that and so on. So we have a big group of, uh, colleagues from all around the world who are participating in this project.
Kasie Whitener (44:19):
This is critical knowledge for our policy makers as we start thinking about meeting the needs of our aging population, but also replacing them in the workforce is critical for our industry to understand. So what incredible research and those outcomes will be really important for folks.
Dean Rohit Verma (44:33):
That's right. Now, the results will not be available tomorrow. These, these things take time.
Kasie Whitener (44:37):
Oh, come on like by the end of October,
Dean Rohit Verma (44:40):
We have, we have preliminary information, of course.
Kasie Whitener (44:42):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (44:43):
Uh, but this is an ongoing thing. And like you rightly said, you know, aging population is a reality. Um, in our country and all around the world. And I think the more we are able to proactively look at that group, the better.
Kasie Whitener (44:55):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (44:56):
And it's going to be one of the largest, uh, you know, demographic in the country. So if you think from the business point of view, this is a big business.
Kasie Whitener (45:04):
Yes.
Dean Rohit Verma (45:04):
Senior living. Senior travel. Senior healthcare.
Kasie Whitener (45:08):
Senior Healthcare. Yeah.
Dean Rohit Verma (45:09):
Senior entertainment. We look around us. The world is not designed for seniors. It was designed for sort of younger population.
Kasie Whitener (45:18):
Right.
Dean Rohit Verma (45:18):
But given the shift in the, uh, ready proportion of individuals in each age category, this is, this is a huge opportunity.
Kasie Whitener (45:25):
Sure.
Dean Rohit Verma (45:25):
So that's what we wanna do. We want to proactively look at this, and I gave my example because that's what I'm aware of, but there are many other examples like that.
Kasie Whitener (45:35):
Thank you so much for being here, Dean Verma. Our time together was way too short. This has been Moore Impact. When you learn more, you know more, when you know more, you do more. Thanks for listening.