UNLV’s dean of business planning to expand school

Thursday, Sept. 20, 2001 | 11:20 a.m.

UNLV's College of Business, off to a fresh start with its accreditation approved, is reaching out to the Las Vegas business community with a series of new programs, the dean of the college said.

Richard Flaherty, who took over as dean of the 3,000-student college two years ago after 21 years on the faculty at Arizona State University, Tempe, told members of the Nevada Development Authority Tuesday that the school is developing some new masters programs in business that will compete with some of the best offerings available in California and Arizona schools.

Flaherty said UNLV is developing a new executive masters of business administration degree program for next year that would hone the management skills of executives with a series of weekend courses. He said applicants would need seven years of experience, three at the management level, to be eligible for the program.

"This is an important offering to local businessmen," said Somer Hollingsworth, president of the NDA. "The fall of the dot-com companies has proved to many people that executives of those companies were lacking in some management, accounting and information technology know-how."

Hollingsworth said he has heard of some local business people driving on weekends to Malibu, Calif., to take masters courses at Pepperdine University. Additions of new programs like the EMBA, he said, would also serve as a recruitment tool in the NDA's bid to attract more business to Southern Nevada.

Flaherty arrived at UNLV when the College of Business was in turmoil. When Elvin Lashbrooke resigned as dean in late 1998, the school had gone through four deans in five years. The college, accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business in 1991, was in danger of losing its standing because of a lack of productivity by the faculty.

When Flaherty came aboard, he helped stabilize the staff, articulated research expectations and outlined strategic planning within the department. The school went through the accreditation process recently and the AACSB recently affirmed it.

Flaherty explained in making the first public announcement about the affirmation that UNLV never lost accreditation, although those stories were making the rounds in the business community.

"We've basically received the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval," Flaherty said.

Formerly known as the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business, the AACSB is the nation's top accreditation agency for schools of business with more than 650 U.S. undergraduate and graduate schools having passed its review. Among schools that have received AACSB accreditation are University of Nevada, Reno, Brigham Young University, University of Utah, Arizona State University, Stanford, University of Southern California and UCLA.

Flaherty said he spends most of his time working with the Las Vegas business community and has established two advisory boards, some comprised of UNLV alumni, to oversee the school's strategic planning.

UNLV already has several programs that serve the local community, including the Business Information Center, which offers business research computers; the Nevada Small Business Development Center, which assists in starting, operating and growing a business in Nevada; the Center for Business and Economic Research, which compiles information on the Las Vegas economy; the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies, which studies finances and management in real estate; and the Institute for Insurance and Risk Management, which teaches the role insurance plays in free enterprise.

Douglas Crook, a member of the board of directors of the new UNLV College of Business Alumni Association, which meets for the first time next week, said Flaherty helped put the UNLV school in a league with other top business schools.

"He took a program that had a lot of loose ends and had an accreditation issue and was able to secure some key faculty members to turn things around," said Crook, a 1997 UNLV graduate and now a commercial developer for Triad Development, Las Vegas.

"He's taken the business college to the next level."