New MSU-Billings Business Dean Joe Michels optimistic

Recent budget cuts at Montana State University-Billings haven’t dampened the enthusiasm of the school’s new dean of the College of Business.

BY MARY PICKETT
Of The Gazette Staff

Arriving two weeks before his job officially began, Joe Michels got right down to business at the business school.

He retires as a colonel after 28 years of active duty with the U.S. Air Force today, the same day that he officially starts his new job at MSU-Billings.

Since arriving in town, Michels has bought a new home on the West End, started strategic planning with the university’s chancellor and provost and had brainstorming sessions with College of Business faculty.

During an interview, he outlined his ideas about the future of the school.

Increasing enrollment is a major priority.

The program has about 850 students, and Michels thinks it’s possible to eventually attract as many as 8,000 students.

On Tuesday, he told the faculty he’d like to see students waiting to come in the doors of the college at 7:30 each morning and continue to fill the building until 10:30 p.m.

"There’s no reason why the Montana State University-Billings College of Business cannot be the premier business school not only in Montana but also in this part of the country," he said.

Increasing the number of online classes and attracting more students from Eastern Montana, Northern Wyoming and the western part of the Dakotas will help boost enrollment.

The school already has many strengths, including motivated faculty members, many of whom have real-world experience in business, he said.

Three new people will join the faculty this fall to fill existing positions left vacant by people who have retired or taken other jobs.

They are: Cynthia Daily, assistant professor of accounting; Don Larsen, assistant professor of management; and Scott Nadler, assistant professor of marketing.

As for budget cuts that MSU-Billings and other public colleges and universities faced this summer, Michels said the administration at the Billings campus did as much as possible to prevent cutbacks from directly affecting students. To his knowledge, no classes at the College of Business have been eliminated because of budget reductions.

Most other states have the same tight budgets that Montana has, he said.

In Ohio, where he lived before coming to Montana, state schools increased tuition last fall by 18 percent and another 20 percent this spring.

Even with recent tuition increases, education in Montana remains cheaper than in many states, he said. And MSU-Billings is less expensive than universities in Bozeman and Missoula.

"This is the best buy in education in the country," he said. "We have small classes, caring teachers and a state-of-the-art facility."

He is impressed with MSU-Billings’ classrooms, the library, Student Union Building, physical-education building and computers and other technological equipment.

MSU-Billings’ "first-class" facility is better than the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology, where he was dean of the school of systems and logistics.

Saying he came to his job with a CEO perspective, Michels will be looking over the entire business program to see if any fine tuning needs to be done.

That includes the bottom line.

"I came from an environment where we wanted the biggest bang for the dollar," he said. "I look at return on investment and ‘Is this a wise decision.’ "

Another priority will be continuing work on the school’s accreditation through the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business. MSU-Billings is about halfway through the six-year process to becoming accredited, Michels said.

Students graduating with a business degree from MSU-Billings should be able to communicate well, think concretely and abstractly and accomplish tasks assigned to them in a professional, dynamic manner, he said.

Students today also need to know about other countries and cultures. He hopes to increase opportunities for students to travel abroad and for more foreign students to come to Billings.

A business degree not only can prepare a student to work in a business or corporation, but also to work in government, nonprofit organizations, industry, agriculture and the hospitality field.

Michels grew up on his family’s farm near Spokane, Wash.

He has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, and a master’s degree in systems management from the University of Southern California. His Ph.D. is in industrial engineering from Texas A&M University.

Mary Pickett can be reached at 657-1262 or at [email protected]

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