Black Management Association

We are a community for Black students, alumni, faculty and staff at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business.

Dean's Corner

Featuring

Dean Ian Williamson

Your quarterly update on the latest Merage strategic initiatives, hot topics and more

What strategic initiatives are you excited about right now?

There’s five big areas of focus for us based on a strategic plan (started last year), rooted in two principles:

1. We will continue to build upon our leadership in technology that we have positioned ourselves around for many years. We’re also in Southern California which gives us a homecourt advantage, not many communities have the number of world-leading innovative companies we have in our backyard. This certainly helps us prepare people for business careers in technology sectors.
2. The technology sector is ground zero for the challenges and opportunities we face around inclusive excellence. The sector itself has shown historically not to be very representative, especially for Black and Hispanic communities. However, technology also has the potential to enhance the social and economic outcomes communities going forward.

Our slogan is “Leadership for the digitally driven world”. I think we can be those leaders, but are we going to be leaders of all or leaders of a few? So far, we’ve been leaders of a few. By that I mean, there have really only been a few communities that have really benefitted from the full scale and impact of the tech industry. We want to be the place that ensures that all communities are able to thrive in this digital economy. It’s more than having thought leadership and programs, the second step is to ensure that our activities are being shaped by the communities we serve.

Given our two guiding principles, today we have five areas of strategic focus:

1. Enhance the profile of the school – We want people to know more about the work that we’re doing and I think we underserve the community by not giving them enough of the insight that we’re developing through our research. I want business leaders in Southern California to say if they’re thinking about technology-related commercial challenges, “We should go to the Merage School because they could probably help us think about that”. That’s the standard we want and part of that is telling our story more effectively, and we’re doing a lot of work in that area.
2. Build upon thought leadership – We want to continue developing research that is relevant to industry and guides how the technology sector evolves. In particular, we want to drive new research in the areas of health, sustainability, fintech. To support this aim over the last two years, we have hired 7 new faculty members (out of 54) who have particular interest and expertise in these domains. The healthcare industry is the largest employer in Orange County, there are over 350 fintech firms between LA and San Diego and the area is also ripe with renewable energy and electric vehicle companies, so it makes sense that we’re focusing on these domains because it provides thought leadership that will prepare our students for job opportunities in the region.
3. Evolve our educational offering so it’s more relevant and accessible – This year, we launched The Flex MBA program, which enables students to take their entire MBA coursework either online, in person, or a combination. This is all about us using technology to meet people where they are for their learning experience. We don’t want being “in-person” to be a barrier. Related to that we have also added new content in our curriculum. For example, this year we have added an ESG track to our Masters of Professional Accountancy (MPAC) program. Why? Because sustainability is something that’s only going to be more important. Last year, the SEC proposed some new rules that will certainly have implications for how we think of climate change issues in accounting. We want to prepare the next generation of our students to lead thinking in this domain and that dovetails nicely with the climate technology developments that are happening.
4. We need to go through the digital transformation ourselves as an institution – I think we need to be moving towards a mindset of how can we leverage AI to make better decisions internally. We’ve been a leader in the UC system around using distanced education, but I want us to continue experimenting with Virtual Reality (VR). We want to pilot with VR this year in our curriculum.
5. How are we fundamentally changing the pipeline of talent for the tech ecosystem? – How are we making the pipeline of talent in Southern California more robust and diverse? We have initiatives like the Black Management Association (BMA), the Latinx Initiative, and the AAPI Initiative, among others. These initiatives are ways to ensure that while students are here, they have an experience that is culturally appropriate, comfortable and also highlights the successes that each of these communities are having in technology spaces. We have also created a Diversity Council within Merage, to really talk about this not just within each particular group but collectively, as we think about our inclusive representation. How do we position ourselves strategically around these spaces?

We also appreciate that a lot of what shapes diversity in our school happens before students even enter our university. I have spent a lot of time with members of the CEO Leadership Alliance of Orange County. These leaders stress the need for tech-savvy talent and have a concern that Orange County won’t have enough local talent to meet their staffing needs. One approach to addressing this issue is to focus on recruiting talent from out of state, I’m saying let’s look at communities like Santa Ana and Anaheim as opportunities to engage the talent that’s already here.

As I’m having those conversations, I’m also visiting local high schools to understand what’s happening there. The observation was that high schools have classes on cybersecurity and accounting, but if you look at who’s taking those classes, it’s not a lot of Black and Hispanic kids. The question becomes, “Why?” What I have learned is that there is often no context for students to understand why they should take these classes in the first place. If we increase this pool of students on the front-end, we’ll get our own fair share as a business school but more importantly, there will be a bigger talent pool for the local business community to draw upon and we get a broader range of communities participating within the technology sector.

These observations led us to launch the Future Leaders Initiative, a community outreach and certificate program designed to encourage local students to pursue business careers in technology sectors. The program provides participants with awareness of technology-related business careers, access to role models currently working in these jobs and fosters their ambition to thrive in these spaces. In 2022, our first year running the program, we worked Santa Ana High Schools and Santa Ana Community College. In 2023 we expanded to include Anaheim Union High School District. While we accept students from across all of Orange County, we focused on these districts  because they serve a large group of underrepresented students. In our first year we 40 students and this year we nearly tripled to 110 students. My goal is that we will touch 3,000 in the next 10 years!

Most recently, The Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, effectively ending race-conscious admissions. How can we reassure our community that Merage is still making diversity a priority when it comes to admissions?

I don’t agree with the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Affirmative Action, because there are structures in place across society that weren’t designed to ensure that all communities thrive. Affirmative Action was an intervention designed to alleviate the pain and disparities these communities have experienced for decades. In my opinion, this decision is not going to help turn that around.

California, for better or for worse, provides some insight into what the future might look like for other parts of the country. In 1996, Prop 209 was passed which was a very similar ruling, as it removed the ability for state institutions to use race and gender in selection decisions. That had a traumatic effect on the UC system, where enrollment for Black and Hispanic students dropped dramatically. It forced the UC system to respond by proactively evaluating the factors that contribute to systemic disadvantages, like removing standardized tests as a requirement since they’ve historically caused barriers for underrepresented students. By taking a holistic approach of prioritizing inclusive excellence, UC Irvine has soared in this area, long before the Supreme Court ruling took effect.

The other aspect around this is it is an unescapable truth that academic institutions will not thrive without fair and diverse representation. California generates more patents than any other state, and that is in large part connected to the diverse communities we have here. If you don’t prioritize diversity as an educational institution, you’re going to get left behind and you won’t be attractive to a large number of employers. The diversity we have at the Merage School is a distinguishing point of difference for us.

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