A disagreement over money at the College of Business has resulted in the loss of a partnership with 29 of the Bay Area's top firms.
Since the College of Business asked the partnership to pay for the use of the facilities in January of this year, they have decided to become an independent unincorporated association with no formal ties to the university.
For SF State students, this could jeopardize a networking relationship that has produced internships and permanent jobs in the two years since the partnership was born.
Two years ago, John Sullivan and Arthur Yeung, professors in the management department of the College of Business and now executive directors of the California Strategic Human Resource Project, took a look at the curriculum and decided that it wasn't as good as it could be.
"Business was changing faster than we were keeping up," Sullivan said.
Sullivan said he and Yeung spent a year getting top Bay Area businesses, such as Apple Computer, Quantum and National Semiconductor, to work with them.
They patterned the partnership after similar ones at the University of Michigan and Boston University.
"It is a direct relationship of tying business to education," Sullivan said.
According to Jim Wiggett, senior vice president of human resources at DFS Group Ltd. (Duty Free Shops), each of the 29 companies paid an annual fee of $6,500 to be part of the partnership.
"The purpose of the group was to provide a mechanism where new issues coming up in the field could be addressed using academic support or mutual support," Wiggett said.
According to graduate student Mark Bajan, the university would do research on behalf of the members based on the issues they thought were hot.
"We got together a research team of two or three graduates," Bajan said. "I got to work on one of those. I based my thesis on part of the work."
After presenting his research to the consortium, Bajan got an internship with one of the companies present. In his internship with 3Com, a hi-tech network manufacturing company, he got to work on process improvement teams and make presentations to upper management.
"It was great a experience," Bajan said.
When Bajan went looking for a permanent job it only took him two or three weeks to get as many offers. "It made it really easy to network -- I got a job I really like," said Bajan, who now works for Quantum, one of the largest disk drive manufacturers in the world.
The partnership used the money generated by fees for speakers, workshops, research and publishing, Sullivan said. This arrangement was approved by the current dean of the College of Business, his predecessor and the dean who acted during the interim, according to Sullivan, but now the College of Business is asking for money for the use of its facilities.
"The companies said they would rather use the finances to gain access to academic research and key speakers," Wiggett said.
Arthur Wallace, dean of the College of Business, said Sullivan and Yeung contacted him with the proposal for the partnership shortly after he took the job at SF State in 1993. Over lunch discussing the proposal, the dean agreed to give them $2,000 as start up money.
"I made this investment with a clear understanding that they would repay the seed money and that they would negotiate some kind of arrangement so the college would get a return," Wallace said. "I promised I wouldn't do it until it was an ongoing operation. At the end of the second year I felt it was time for the college to begin reaping benefits for the seed money, for the support, for the goodwill and for using the College of Business name."
"I would use the money to fund things we don't have state money for, such as student organizations, faculty travel and the graduate placement center," Wallace said.
Wallace said he believed it was never their intention to honor the agreement.
According to Wiggett, the relationship of the new association to SF State is very positive. Sullivan and Yeung still act as executive directors.
But Sullivan said the relationship to SF State is unclear. "We are now an independent organization," Sullivan said. "We are not allowed to use the SF State or the College of Business name. The (loss of) publicity alone is sad."
"Very few people even know there's a College of Business at SF State," Bajan said. "When you say you got a business degree from Berkeley or SF State, there is no contest who they will ask for. The consortium really takes away from that mind set."
For Bajan, the new status brings up a lot of questions. He wonders whether students will still be able to work on the research projects.
"It was basically like shooting themselves in the foot," Bajan said. "It was like a dream come true, great for the school, great for the program, it was only going to create a cycle that would move things forward."