Shane Hunt, who was an associate professor of marketing at A-State, was named dean of the College of Business on April 3, 2014.
After completing his MBA at the University of Oklahoma, Hunt went to work for a Fortune 500 company in Tulsa and spent eight years as a pricing analyst, product manager and business development manager overseeing numerous mergers and acquisitions initiatives.
Hunt received his doctorate in marketing from Oklahoma State University, where he was an AMA Sheth Foundation and National Conference in Sales Management Doctoral Fellow. He’s the recipient of the 2010 National Inspire Integrity Award from the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and the 2010 Lt. Col. Barney Smith Award as Professor of the Year at Arkansas State University.
You’ve published a textbook on marketing, which with the rise of the Internet has seen profound change in the past decade. What are the biggest changes?
The rise in importance of big data/analytics and globalization. Improved use of data allows marketers to know their customers so much better and be smarter about the products they develop and how they promote those to consumers. Globalization has changed everything in business, but in marketing it has provided access to billions of consumers who were previously unreachable by domestic companies. It has also increased the level of competition and the need to be great.
What is the hot program for business students at Arkansas State these days?
The demand for business education is increasing across disciplines at Arkansas State as our enrollment in the College of Business increased again this year, but if I had to pick a couple I would say global supply chain management and accounting. We have seen a dramatic increase in students studying supply chain management and have had great success placing our students at leading logistics companies throughout the region. We are also seeing demand for accountants go up dramatically in both the public and private sectors, and we are enhancing our curriculum and faculty to help meet this demand.
Many employers say they see a skills gap in today’s workforce. How does the College of Business ensure that its students are gaining the skills needed by business?
We are constantly talking with business leaders across the region and using that feedback to update and match our curriculum to the needs of employers. At the end of the day, the most important part of our job as professors is making sure we are preparing students with the skills to have a successful career that helps them build the life they want for them and their families.
We are working on two initiatives:
1) Organizations across the state have consistently told me that they need more and better trained young salespeople to grow their companies. This summer, we are launching the ASTATE Center for Sales Leadership, which will focus on training students in the classroom, increasing the number of sales internship opportunities for our students to develop those classroom skills, and matching our sales graduates with organizations that need them.
2) Another example of what we are doing is our Center of Excellence focused on treasury management. We have heard from people who work in finance and treasury departments throughout the country that universities are not teaching the treasury and cash management skills needed by global organizations. We are very fortunate to have two professors here in the A-State College of Business who are leading experts in the field of treasury management, and we have designed a program and curriculum around them to fill this skills gap. The success of our students in this area has been tremendous with A-State College of Business graduates serving in leading treasury roles in prominent global organizations such as Wal-Mart and eBay.
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