��ֱ����

In this episode of “The Yellow & Blue Podcast,” Joe Santos, director of the Ness School of Management and Economics at South ��ֱ���� State University, dives into the incredible growth and momentum behind this dynamic academic powerhouse. With standout programs in ag business, operations management and more — plus elite AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) accreditation — the Ness School is fueling student success and driving impact across South ��ֱ���� and beyond. Tune in to hear how it’s shaping future leaders and transforming the state’s economy, one graduate at a time.
 
Transcript: 

[Joe] 

And so students are being trained on the Bloomberg data technology. That is so important, in particular, in financial decision-making. So, I talked about using data appropriately and sensibly and rationally to make decisions informed by business and economic analysis. Well, this is a perfect example of how we execute that in a hands-on way. 

[Heidi] 

Hello, Jackrabbits Nation! My name is Heidi Bushong, and this is “The Yellow & Blue Podcast.” At South ��ֱ���� State University, the Ness School of Management and Economics is growing at a rapid pace. Our university is preparing students for high-demand careers that meet critical statewide needs. With standout programs in business economics, operations management, accounting and ag business, all backed by AACSB accreditation, the Ness School provides top-tier education that prepares graduates to excel in the industry. Joining me today is Joe Santos, the director of the Ness School of Management and Economics, to talk about how this dynamic academic unit is making a real impact on campus and beyond. Thank you so much for being here today, Joe. 

[Joe] 

Thank you for having me. 

[Heidi] 

So, Joe, you have been at SDSU for a while, but I'd love for you to share a little bit more about yourself. Tell me about your background. 

[Joe] 

Sure. So, I started SDSU a while ago as a professor, in the then Department of Economics. My background is in economics and in particular macroeconomics. So, if folks are hearing about the federal debt and monetary policy and the Federal Reserve and interest rates, that’s sort of my corner of the world. 

[Joe] 

So, I started as a faculty member. And then a few years ago, an opportunity opened up, and I threw my name in the hat to actually direct what is now the Ness School of Management and Economics. And things went well. And so here I am. But that's my very short story. 

[Heidi] 

All great things. You've seen so much growth into becoming a school and the numbers and the programs, such exciting momentum, as a school. With that being said, if you had to describe the Ness School to someone who didn't know anything about it, what would you tell them? 

[Joe] 

Yeah, that's a good question. I would describe us. Obviously, we are the business unit on campus. We have a vision for the school. It's very straightforward. It's to advance decision making informed by business and economic analysis. So that is to say, we're a bit quanti. We really focus on the decision-making aspect of succeeding in the space of free enterprise, in business. So, as I like to say, no one gets out of here without some accounting and some economics, some quantitative methods of business law. 

[Joe] 

All of this is in the curriculum. And the curriculum is actually fairly rigorous, and we are unapologetic about that. We don't know what our students are going to go do when they leave here, but we know it's going to have something to do with making really difficult decisions, and they're going to be difficult decisions, because all of the easy decisions are made before they get to the level of where we are going to place our students. 

[Joe] 

So, they're going to have to really understand how to use information and to use it sensibly. And that's what we teach. 

[Heidi] 

A very great way to prepare students for the real world. 

[Joe] 

We think so. And again, it's very broad, and it's deep at the same time. So, as you mentioned, there are seven major programs, everything from accounting and agribusiness. 

[Joe] 

And I won't list them because I'll forget something and offend someone. But it goes all the way to consumer behavior and operations management. So, it's very, very broad. But as I say, the curriculum is also very deep at the same time. So, every one of those programs have something to do with decision making, decision science using a sort of a rigorous analytical approach to approach these sorts of challenges and opportunities that students are going to confront in the business world. 

[Joe] 

So yeah, we reason very well prepared, lots of opportunities in the curriculum. And, you know, students can major in accounting, but it doesn't mean that's all they do. At the same time, they could benefit from everything else that's going on in the school. 

[Heidi] 

That's great. With that being said, we keep referencing growth and changes. And you said seven programs. 

[Heidi] 

One of those was recently added last year. People who know the university know that we change a lot. So, in the last, you know, six or seven years since the school has been established, what has that growth really kind of looked like? 

[Joe] 

Yeah, that's again, a very good question. There are different ways to approach answering this if we think about it in terms of student enrollment. 

[Joe] 

So just some quick facts and figures here. University enrollment, think 10,000 students. About 1,200 of them call the Ness School home. So relatively large school in terms of the number of students who major in the school. So, from that perspective, large number and lots of growth. If you look at 1,200 now, you look back four or five years, in reference to your question. 

[Joe] 

It would not be that it would be half that or something of that order. You can also think of it as just the number of students who are exposed to the Ness School. So, it's like to say the bottoms in seats, right? So, they may not major in the Ness School, but they take, I don't know, Principles of Accounting as part of their biological sciences plan of study. 

[Joe] 

If you do it that way again, thousands and thousands of credit hours, thousands of hours of students learning time spent in front of someone who calls the Ness School home. And again, that is an enormous number now. And it was maybe half that five, six years ago. So, in terms of student growth, lots of growth, but you can also think of this in terms of faculty and staff. 

[Joe] 

We are 40-plus individuals in this building we're in right now, in Harding Hall. That number has grown dramatically over the last couple of years, in part because of this objective of ours to both deepen the curriculum and broaden it. So that means you're going to have an accounting major, you're going to have folks who are specializing in that field. 

[Joe] 

And I can say the same thing about the other six programs. So, there's growth there. And then finally, the outreach piece. We are a land-grant university, after all. Outreach runs in our blood. And so we have it in terms of SDSU Extension, formerly through the school there, folks walking around here, not here because we've locked the doors and we won't let them in. 

[Joe] 

But they are walking by, and they have so-called extension appointments. But then even more informally, we try to be everywhere. We want to make it so that the state is better off with us than without us. Better off knowing what knowledge we're creating than not. So that's another way in which we've grown. We are very intentionally trying to be everywhere all at once. 

[Joe] 

Because maybe somewhat obnoxiously, we kind of think we have something to say and that folks would benefit from knowing what that is. So that's another way in which we've grown. So teaching, the research piece with the depth the faculty and then outreach as well. 

[Heidi] 

Speaking to that, the Ness School recently earned its AACSB accreditation. Big deal. Important accolade for this school. What does that recognition mean for this academic unit, for SDSU and for the students within it? 

[Joe] 

Recognition is a great way to phrase the question. I'm glad you said it that way. In other words, what the AACSB accreditation is doing is essentially recognizing something that, again, more obnoxiousness. Forgive me, but we've been doing it for a really, really long time. 

[Joe] 

We've been good for long, a long time. But the AACSB process has been incredibly productive, useful for us because it's really focused our thinking around what it is we're trying to do and how well we are doing it. And so it's a third party, you know, agency essentially, that's looking upon us from outside and saying, OK, you've got standards you're holding yourself to. How well are you achieving those standards? 

[Joe] 

And so it is a credential. It's a sort of I always say it's sort of like FAA flight certification. Right. Today you think about Delta or United. It's really which one serves those cool Biscoff cookies. Right. You're not thinking about hurdling through the air at 500 miles an hour because both have FAA flight certification. That's what accreditation is for us. 

[Joe] 

It's a recognition that we have with the best business programs in the world have. But again, I want to emphasize we were doing it for a really long time. The accreditation really just gives us that stamp of approval. And so, to your question, what does this mean for students? It means that now the students who graduate from our program know with certainty, because of that stamp of approval, that the programs that they are enrolled in are everything they always knew they really were, which are excellent. 

[Joe] 

So that's what it does for us. It put us through a really rigorous set of paces to demonstrate that we were doing what it was that we said we were going to do. And then sort of the icing on top was then to accredit us and say, OK, now you are a card-carrying member as well. 

[Joe] 

And I think that's really important for students. It's really important for stakeholders more generally. And of course there's not just initial accreditation. That's what just happened. There's continuing accreditation. So, you know, another six years, we come up again as every institution that's accredited does. And, you know, that's a very useful device, right? Humans respond to incentives. 

[Joe] 

First fundamental rule of economics. We will respond by continuing to hit those standards in ways that our stakeholders can rely on us to do. So that's important. 

[Heidi] 

What do you think that accreditation says about not only your programs, but the faculty that teach them? 

[Joe] 

These standards, there are nine of them that we're asked to focus on. And again, we would focus on them in some way, shape or form. In any case. But there are nine of them that AACSB really draws our attention to. And so very briefly, I promise I won't go through nine of them, but they have to do with strategic planning and teaching effectiveness and student success and assurance of learning, but also faculty qualifications, the impact of their research, and then the impact of their engagement with the community more generally, their outreach efforts. 

[Joe] 

So, all that comes back to your question of faculty. So, a very big part of the AACSB accreditation process is giving us that, as it were, a seal of approval, that flight certification in relation to the faculty. So again, it says, as you said before, I love that verb: recognize. They were here already or we hired a few more of them, but we would have anyway. 

[Joe] 

But the certification says, yeah, this third-party agency that didn't have to accredit you has chosen to because we recognize the value of those faculty. So, I don't know that it necessarily makes them better. They were pretty good when we hired them. But it certainly recognizes the value of those faculty, and that's a really important message. 

[Joe] 

Again, students, of course, because they're right there at the tip of the sword as it is. But also, stakeholders in general to know that if they have questions, issues, challenges, opportunities that confront the state, and it has to do with, again, I won’t list areas because I'll leave someone out by mistake. But all of the fields that we cover in the Ness School, you know, there are folks there with the depth of understanding, with the capacity to address those issues, and they can rely on us in that way. And I think that's a really important piece of why we're here. 

[Heidi] 

Yeah, it sounds like all the pieces are in place. You know, great university, great faculty, great programs. They're accredited. Let's talk about the difference that these graduates make. Like you said, very broad programs, very deep knowledge. What are some ways that these grads are making an impact in the workforce, like, whether it's in our state or globally beyond. 

[Joe] 

What they leave the Ness School with really is, I think of it as a habit of thought, when they confront a challenge or an opportunity in that C-suite or wherever they are, we want them to sort of go back to their training and think, OK, “What are the data? Where do I get the data? What are reliable data?” And then how to process that in terms of a thought process. And really, really trying to do is get them to think rationally and throw that term around. We mean something very specific by rational. We mean that you're using all the available data, and you know where those data are. 

[Joe] 

You know how to get them. You know data are plural. So, you use “are,” not “is,” when you talk about data. But you know, also, how to process those data. And you do it in a way that is consistent with the business environment you're operating in. So, we want them to make very sensible decisions. About what? 

[Joe] 

I don't have a clue. I don't know what those decisions are going to be, but that's precisely the point. That's why we want them to leave with a very rigorous, sort of habit of mind, a way to thinking, to resort to the training when the situation confronts them. And again, be rational, sensible, know where the data are, understand how to process the data in sensible ways. 

[Joe] 

Understand the business environment in which you are making those decisions. Again, that's what we mean by sensible, irrational. That's what we want them to leave with. So, whether it's through the lens of generally accepted accounting principles with the new accounting major, or it’s through the lens of agribusiness, through the agribusiness major, and again, I'll stop listing because I'll forget somebody. 

[Joe] 

But no matter what, those are just lenses. And they're really important lenses, because they have all of the context in which those decisions are going to be made. But fundamentally, it's a habit of thought and, you know, if I may again, more obnoxiousness. That's what you're going to need. I don't know what the implications of technology are in the workforce going forward. 

[Joe] 

We're all thinking about AI, whether we want to say it or not. I don't know how that plays out, but I know what the dominant strategy is. The dominant strategy is that it has a habit of thought that resorts to analytical, rational, sensible thinking. Alright. That's got to be the dominant strategy. Certainly, the way to deal with these challenges in the workforce could not be to enter that workforce more ignorant right. 

[Joe] 

Or less equipped. So that's our thinking. We don't know what they're going to confront, but we reason they'd be best equipped if they work through the rigorous curricula that we offer them. 

[Heidi] 

Joe, you talk about how the faculty and staff here really prepare students, through their education to get them to excel in their career. But let's talk about maybe the opportunities that students have here. A lot of people like to point out the First ��ֱ���� National Bank E-Trading Lab. They get the chance to manage real money. Let's talk about some of those opportunities. 

[Joe] 

We could start with the, the trading lab. So, this is, to the innocent looking through the windows, they think they see it just a computer lab. It's not that. It is a trading lab, an e-trading lab, as we call it. It is equipped with Bloomberg data terminal technology. And so, for viewers, listeners who like to watch CNBC in the morning, you see all these weird little ugly screens in the background. We have the same ugly screens in the basement of Harding Hall. 

[Joe] 

And so, students are being trained on the Bloomberg data technology. That is so important in particular in financial decision making. So, I talked about using data appropriately and sensibly and rationally to make decisions informed by business and economic analysis. Well, this is a perfect example of how we execute that in a hands-on way. So, this is probably more detail than anybody wants to know. 

[Joe] 

But the Bloomberg terminal comes with its own keyboard, which doesn't look like any other keyboard. So that's another bit that students literally hands-on, hands on that keyboard that they learn, they train on, they receive a certificate. And it's just one more way in which they engage with the labor market. When it's time to transition into a career to say, yeah, I've done that. 

[Joe] 

I know what that is, and so on. So, it gives them that capacity, to use that technology in order to fuel their decision making. And then there are the ways we allow students or, offer students opportunities to use it. And you mentioned one of them is the Student Managed Investment Fund. Yes. So, this is managing, as I like to say, about a half-million dollars of other people's money, which is the best kind of money to manage. 

[Joe] 

And so they are, with the support of faculty, one faculty adviser in this case, working to make decisions. There is a governance structure. There are junior analysts, there are senior analysts. They pitch to one another. They argue, they respectfully fight about what to put in the portfolio and what not, and what positions to take and so on. 

[Joe] 

But at the end of the day, they are managing an actual fund, a stock portfolio, in this case. Other students, because of their agribusiness component within the curricula. Risk management is a big piece of agribusiness. You know, we call it ag marketing. But of course, we don't mean marketing in the way that Nike markets. 

[Joe] 

On the contrary, these are homogeneous goods. Our soybean looks just like Brazil soybean. And so, the way you do this is you manage price fluctuations and so there is some really sophisticated, we call it derivative positions that are taken in futures and options and so on. When students do that with real money as well. So, they actually take positions on commodity exchanges and hopefully reverse those positions in ways that don't bankrupt the institution. 

[Joe] 

But it's very sophisticated financial trading. And they do that as well. And we could point to all other such examples. You brought up the trading lab. So, I sort of hovered around finance, very deep bench as all the others in our program. But there are other examples of this, and I should say there also, when you have 1,200 students majoring in the Ness School, there's a lot of critical mass. 

[Joe] 

And so, students do a lot to afford one another student experiences. So, they start clubs, they compete in various national and international competitions. We have a bunch leaving for Brazil in about a week from now in an ag marketing competition that they will participate in there. So, there's the hands-on stuff that we provide with faculty mentorship and so on, and very kind of intentional formal ways. 

[Joe] 

And then there's the stuff that a bunch of students decide to do on their own and we support, but we're just a tailwind at that point. And again, here I'm talking about the many, many clubs and competitions students engage in. And it really you can do that anywhere. And we do that all through campus. But when you have so many majors, it really does help because you say, you know, I'm interested in accounting. 

[Joe] 

And suddenly an accounting club was born about five weeks ago. Right. Well, when you have 75 other students majoring in accounting, it's pretty easy to do. And so that's another sort of, you know, very kinetic process that we don't really manage. The students manage, developing extracurricular activities, going on trips and so forth, and participating in competitions, in ways that we just sort of watch in amazement. 

[Heidi] 

Some of those opportunities are possible because we have the buy in of our stakeholders. You know, people like First ��ֱ���� National Bank, you know, they buy into this place because they're going to hire our grads, or they see the importance of knowing those trades and those futures and things like that. So, the school kind of has to respond to the needs of the workforce, right? 

[Joe] 

It does. And stakeholders, those external stakeholders you mentioned are really important here. What those folks recognize, what First ��ֱ���� National Bank recognizes, what Larry and Diane Ness have recognized. Like Dana Dykhouse has recognized. I mean, again, I shouldn't be naming people because, I mean, there's so many of them. There's so many. But what they recognize is the power of the public good. 

[Joe]
That is, they are going to invest in something that is going to yield returns, not just for them, but for everyone. It's why you established the city park, right? You have a public good provided. And these good folks recognize this. And it's a very powerful way of raising the quality of life for everyone in the region is to invest in higher education, as they have done. 

[Joe] 

So, yeah. We can't do this without them. And the reason they do it is, again, very sensible, very rational. It's because they are going to be returns that are going to be generated. Students are going to learn to deal with one another in very civil ways. They're going to solve complex problems they confront in society. They gonna do all this stuff, and we're all going to benefit from it in ways that we really can't even quantify very simply. 

[Joe] 

So, the stakeholders are critical in that public good investment proposition. And the many that are too many to mention recognize the value of that proposition. And, you know, in many ways, all the great stuff we're talking about here really is just a way to describe that public good piece, which everybody has a stake in. Every faculty member, every student, every stakeholder. 

[Joe] 

We're all benefiting from it. We've all put some skin in that game to make it possible so that that is critical. 

[Heidi] 

With that being said, there's an expectation that, the education here will reflect the changes in the industry, in the workforce. And we all know business and economics. It changes rapidly. How do you keep up with that? 

[Joe] 

Well, you pay attention to it, continuously. So, it's a great question. The technology changes very quickly. It changes more quickly than probably any other aspect of our society, including the structures of higher education. These are large institutions with established cultures, and this is just the reality. They don't pivot immediately when circumstances warrant, perhaps, and in part in fairness to them, because it's not always obvious when circumstances warrant a pivot. 

[Joe] 

Right? Do we stop teaching this, or is this still valuable? That's a very difficult question to answer. So, we ask the question continuously. And we probe and we develop professionally back to our stakeholders. One of the ways in which their generosity is used is to afford opportunities for faculty and staff to develop professionally. I am evangelical about this. 

[Joe] 

As you, my colleagues will tell you. You know, there's a conference on. Yes, go right before they because that's the only way you're going to keep up with what's going on. Because you're right, it's moving very quickly. And one of the challenges is to recognize just what is moving quickly and to what extent. That should inform the curriculum, inform the research, inform the outreach efforts, right, that we engage in. 

[Joe] 

And then, of course, there's the hard mechanical work of making the changes to make it happen. So, you also have to have a sales pitch. You've got to be pretty persuasive with the folks on campus and off campus to say, hey, we've always done it this way. That's not a good reason to keep doing it. Let's pivot or we've always done it this way. 

[Joe] 

There was wisdom in that and this is just flash in the pan. Just disregard it. Don't do anything to respond to it. Right. That's a really difficult discussion. But it's much easier if you engage in the discussion regularly. So, the answer to the question is we are always or thinking about this, we are obsessive about developing professionally. 

[Joe] 

So, we understand what the next IT thing even is. And then we do what we preach to our students. A habit of thought that says taken the data, process it in an analytically rich way. Be rational, be sensible and see what comes out the other end and determine do we make a difference or not? You know, do we change what we're doing? 

[Joe] 

So, we continually incorporate new technologies in the classroom, things like the trading lab again, not recent, but an example, of a time when we recognized we had to do something like that. We've changed curriculum constantly. We have a governance structure in the school that includes a curriculum committee. And boy, do those folks work. And they respectfully argue with one another. 

[Joe] 

And through that sauce comes the determination of, OK, this curriculum is stale or nope, this one's just fine. Don't worry what they're saying on Instagram, it'll pass. Keep it like that. Right. So, we have a governance structure in place, a strategic planning committee and so on where we think about these issues and we try our best to respond to them. 

[Joe] 

And I think if I may get more obnoxious, I think we do a pretty good job of staying on that cutting edge. But it's a great question. You have to be mindful of the fact that they are cutting edges always moving out in front of you. 

[Heidi] 

That's a really great point. Because one of the recent additions to this school has been the accounting program, you know, in the mixture of your sauce that you're putting together here, so to speak, you've had the faculty in place. 

[Heidi] 

You know, we had the accounting minor for a very long time. It was time to make it a major. And we're kind of showing the results big, more than we had ever expected. Why do you think there has really been an interest, like in that program specifically? 

[Joe] 

Just, you know, your point earlier going sort of to the data to the labor market in this case and seeing what there is to see in terms of labor market outcomes and what there was to see was a gap that is, there was a demand for students majoring and graduating with degrees in accounting. 

[Joe] 

And there was a difference between that and the amount of students who were out there. And so, this was very much, responding to the labor market, again, I should say, responding in a way that, aligned with our vision for the school, that we learned that there was a deep, you know, gap for a major that we didn't think we could offer anything in. 

[Joe] 

We would not have responded. But here we could. And so, this was really empirically driven. We always, as you said, we always taught accounting in principle. We always valued the analytical powers of an accounting mindset. The minor had been there forever, very popular. But this was an example of a pivot of looking out there and saying, we are not serving a demand in the labor markets, that we could very sensibly serve. 

[Joe] 

It's within our purview to do this. It makes sense. We have the intellectual firepower. We should be doing this. And so, one to your point was the recognition something's out there. We're not responding to it. We need to address it. That's a sort of a curriculum committee governance process that determines, yep, we need to focus on that. 

[Joe] 

And then there's the mechanical part of creating a major, which there's actually something that goes on behind the scenes to make that happen. And then we created it. But that, I'm glad you brought that up. That's a really good example of just keeping very open communication with the labor markets and saying, what do you need? And then again, yeah, not that that's not us. 

[Joe] 

That's on us. Wait, that's us, that we can do. And that was an example of the accounting, and we responded accordingly. And to your point, it's been very popular. And that's great because that means, you know, the tide is rising, and all boats are rising. Everyone will benefit from these graduates going out there and making these really difficult decisions and taking advantage of those challenging opportunities. 

[Joe] 

We'll all benefit from this. So that's great. 

[Heidi] 

Let's talk about that a little bit. I think one thing, no matter what program you're talking about here at SDSU takes pride in addressing workforce needs, especially in our state. How do the graduates from the Ness School kind of fit in the landscape of, like, South ��ֱ����'s economy and South ��ֱ����'s workforce? Where do you see them? 

[Joe] 

Those gaps that I was referring to were actually very specifically in the upper Midwest, in South ��ֱ���� and the immediate region surrounding it. So, we know that there are these unmet demands, that is, employers who would like students graduating in particular areas, and they don't see them in the labor market. So, we know there are these unmet demands. 

[Joe] 

And that's, you know, students filling an open position to get to, I think, the greater depth of your very good question, but what are they doing? As the South ��ֱ���� economy continues to develop, as it continues to do, and our industries become more varied, there is going to be a greater need for this kind of habit of thought around decision making, business decision making. 

[Joe] 

You take agriculture as an example. The challenge to food security in the future will likely not be production. Thank goodness. We will figure that out with science. It'll be distribution. It'll be how do we get the food to where we need it? How do we add value to that commodity in terms of a product that serves a greater good? 

[Joe] 

Those are business decisions. And so as this economy in the state, but also in the region more generally continues to become more complicated in a very good way, more layered, more nuanced, you're going to have greater and greater opportunities for individuals who, again, have a habit of mind that is sort of focused on problem solving, on taking advantage of opportunities. 

[Joe] 

And again, the mechanism to do that will be a nature, if you will, of knowing where the data are, knowing how to process the data in sensible, rational ways to come up with the best decisions they possibly can. So again, I am evangelical about this, but I know that that's what we're going to need as this economy becomes more and more sophisticated. 

[Joe] 

And I think that's exactly what you see in the example of the accounting major. And you'd see it with the others, too. But that's where the sort of the, the light of the lamp post is right now. Right. So, we're studying what's right there. But that demand that we see in the majors, that we see in those numbers growing, I think, just reflects the fact that there are labor markets out there in the state and the region more generally that really need this sort of analytical sophistication, that these students will graduate with. 

[Heidi] 

Those industry connections within the state and beyond, run so deep with your faculty. They really try really hard to maintain their industry connections, to address these workforce needs to know that they're making a difference in the workforce. How does that support from people outside this university really shape the student experience? 

[Joe] 

There are various ways we do this. You're right, though, of the sort of guiding principle. The guiding thought is that we will benefit if we engage those industries, and we benefit if we engage those industries, because we learn from them and they learn from us. 

[Joe] 

We call this knowledge transfer. We create a whole bunch of knowledge here because of our deep research bench, across all of our faculty. And then there's the matter of communicating that knowledge to industry, and they benefit from that all the obvious ways you could imagine. But there's also this feedback loop where we engage with industry and we recognize, you know, that's a problem. 

[Joe] 

It's very intellectually interesting. I would love to take a shot at that. Right. But I didn't even know that was something to take a shot at until so and so express that issue. At in a classroom during a lecture, during a visit of a speaker, at a seminar or whatever the case may be. So, we're very intentional about having individuals from industry visit classes, participate in seminars. We bring speakers to campus. 

[Joe] 

We have conferences on and off campus. And again, all of this is because we are very intentional about the outreach piece of what we do because, forgive the obnoxiousness, we know that folks could benefit from what we know, but we also understand much more humbly that we would benefit from knowing what they know. And so, yeah, if you look around the school, you notice we are outside the boundaries of Harding Hall and even the SDSU campus quite a bit. 

[Joe] 

It's not an accident. It is very intentional. We want to be irreplaceable, that we think we have something to offer, both in our ability to help solve problems, but also something to offer, and that we could be a listener. We could talk to industry and say, “We don't know what you know. Tell us what you know.” 

[Joe] 

And from that, perhaps we can follow up and offer solutions or identify opportunities or what have you. So, particularly in business fields like those that inhabit the Ness School, that two-way street is critical. I can't speak for other disciplines across campus. Everybody sort of has a different mode of operating. But for a program of advanced study that focuses on the interactions of agents and free enterprise business, we need to keep very strong ties with that community. And so we do. 

[Heidi] 

I feel like we need to call out a very specific example of here, of how the Ness School is in the community, a very big presence in Sioux Falls. Let's talk about that a little bit. 

[Joe] 

Yeah. So, we try to we do things both in Brookings and in Sioux Falls. So, if we have speakers visiting campus, some of them literally visit campus, others we host at convention centers at the Premier Center or … I shouldn’t start listing centers because then I'm going to offend the venue owners. 

[Joe] 

But the Orpheum or, you know, whatever, the State Theatre, we've held events at all of these places, conferences and most recently we've been very intentional about having a sort of an outpost in Sioux Falls. And so down on Phillips, in some space that we lease at Startup Sioux Falls, we are now located. And again, they're that very intentional, instrument. 

[Joe] 

We think of it as almost like a tool of outreach, a way to communicate with the Sioux Falls community. And, you know, the reasons are obvious. I miss where the people are and part some of the people are, but it's also where the centers of a lot of industry, are. And so, to the extent that we want this two-way street with stakeholders, and many of them are operating facing challenges and opportunities in the metropolitan area of Sioux Falls. We should be there, too. 

[Joe] 

So that's one very concrete example of getting ourselves to Sioux Falls and actually having a kind of a base camp from which to sort of communicate with that part of the state. It's not to say other part or parts of the state are not relevant. Of course, but we had not had that very intentional connection to Sioux Falls until very recently. 

[Joe] 

And so again, another example of where that was an engagement and societal impact committee that was downstairs in our other conference room hashing out how do we essentially deliver on our societal impact objectives and the consensus that developed around the room is we need to be in Brookings, but we also probably need to be pretty intentional about being in Sioux Falls. 

[Joe] 

And so that's how that outpost came to be. 

[Heidi] 

Always evolving, always looking toward the next thing. You're pretty visionary person as director, analytical, so to speak. What's next? 

[Joe] 

I don't know exactly what form next we’ll take. But I firmly reason, and I think there's a lot of evidence to back this up, that a partnership between the Ness School and the state more generally, its industry, but also its institutions of government, of public policy would be a very powerful partnership. 

[Joe] 

Yeah. For the region, that public good we talked about in the context of stakeholders, we produce outcomes that are very quantifiable. Kids walking across the stage in May at commencement. But we also produce outcomes that are almost impossible to quantify, which is just an environment, a culture, a society, a civilization in this part of the country that is productive and yields greater goods for everybody. 

[Joe] 

I really think that the Ness School has a role to play in that process. So, what do I see? What's the vision, this vision of advancing decision making informed by business and economic analysis? I think that the future will be one. And this is in 20, 50 years from now. This is two, three, four or five. One where the Ness School is really advancing decision making throughout the region in a way that benefits the region. 

[Joe] 

And again, that's not to sound obnoxious or conceited on the part of the Ness School. We are a publicly subsidized institution. That's precisely what the outcomes should look like. And so that's the vision. 

[Heidi] 

More to come. Looking forward to seeing it. 

[Joe] 

Thank you. 

[Heidi] 

Thank you for being here today, Joe, to talk about the Ness School of Management and Economics. This has been “The Yellow & Blue Podcast.” Until next time, thanks for listening, Jackrabbits.