Recognizing the Value of a Strong Alumni Network
Marissa Jarratt
MBA '04
BBA '99
BA '99
Marissa Jarratt understands the strong impact alumni have on McCombs. She got her first taste as a student serving on the Graduate Business Council as the alumni affairs chair.
“I initially became involved with alumni as a student because I felt it was important to broaden my own network and learn how I could be a better alum,” says Jarratt.
Upon graduating, alumni participation has been a priority for Jarratt. She currently serves as President for the Dallas-Fort Worth MBA Alumni Chapter, where she finds ways to increase the chapter’s number of active members and create a stronger network. Her desire to remain an active alum stems from the great experiences she had as a student.
“McCombs has personality. The traditions, the faculty and my experiences with my peers were fantastic and when I moved to Dallas, I wanted to stay connected to all of that,” says Jarratt.
With help from alumni, Jarratt formed the foundation for her current career. As a first-year MBA, Jarratt was interested in taking the Customer Strategy course, which required an internship or practicum with sponsoring companies as a class prerequisite. One of those companies was Frito-Lay. After visiting with a McCombs alumna from Frito-Lay, Marissa became interested in the company, interviewed with them, and landed a summer internship. Upon graduating she accepted a position with Frito-Lay. There, she feels a similar association to that of the camaraderie she felt at McCombs.
As a Marketing Manager for Cheetos, Jarratt is responsible for developing consumer promotions, in-store programs and new product innovation for the $1.1 billion brand. From working with the entertainment industry—Cheetos just finished a partnership with Dreamworks in which the brand celebrated the release of Shrek The Third by launching Baked! Cheetos Color-Changers, which turn one’s mouth Shrek green—to working with the PepsiCo International marketing team to develop a new spicy flavor inspired by a popular product in Mexico—the creative aspect of marketing is what attracted Jarratt to the field.
She uses that same creativity to attract more alumni participation within the Dallas Fort Worth MBA Alumni Chapter, which received an Outstanding Chapter Award in 2005 for its Executive Speaker Series.
“I was the beneficiary of other alumni helping me,” says Jarratt, “And for me, there’s nothing more fulfilling than helping someone else succeed. I’m able to do that as an alum by recruiting from McCombs on behalf of my company and by strengthening the Alumni Network—whether by helping to raise money for the MBA Endowed Excellence Fund or getting other alumni involved in the DFW chapter.”
Investment Opportunity
| 
This year, hundreds of students from the Class of 2007 graduated from McCombs with BBA, MPA, MBA or Ph.D. degrees. Here are stories of some of those graduates, including Jasmine Liang (right), as they begin the journey toward becoming leaders in the business world. 
As of Sept. 1, 2007, Rick Byars of the Department of IROM and Bob Duvic (left) and Jim Nolen of the Department of Finance will be promoted to the rank of distinguished senior lecturer, which is a new level of recognition for faculty at the university. Congratulations to all on this well-deserved promotion.
The following McCombs faculty were honored at a luncheon May 10 for their teaching and research excellence: Raj Raghunathan, marketing, CBA Foundation Research Excellence Award for Assistant Professors; Kyle Lewis (top right), management, and Bob Parrino, finance, Award for Research Excellence; George Huber (bottom right), management, Career Award for Outstanding Research Contributions; Jim Fredrickson, management, Joe D. Beasley MBA Teaching Award; Frenkel Ter Hofstede, marketing, Hank & Mary Harkins Foundation Award for Effective Teaching in Undergraduate Classes; Lorenzo Garlappi, finance, Trammell/CBA Foundation Teaching Award for Assistant Professors; Gaylen Paulson, management, Fawn & Vijay Mahajan Teaching Excellence Award for Executive Education; and Keith Brown, finance, Excellence in Education Award. The following Ph.D. students also won teaching awards and were honored at the same luncheon: Joseph Goodman, marketing, and Michael Crawley, accounting, Fred Moore Assistant Instructor Awards for Teaching Excellence.
Many state business schools are having a tough time competing for top talent with their private rivals. At the McCombs School, Dean George Gau (right) has succeeded by putting an added focus on for-profit endeavors, most notably, non-degree executive education. When Gau became dean at McCombs in 2002, 15 percent of the school’s budget came from the Texas Executive Education’s open enrollment programs. Today, that figure has doubled to 30 percent. “A big chunk of my faculty’s salaries is being paid by the customers of executive education,” Gau said. 
Texas lawmakers are on the verge of rejecting a requirement that state and local governments disclose the cost of the healthcare they have promised to retired employees. Until now, most governments have been using pay-as-you-go accounting, which does not show the benefits’ total cost. This method shows only how much a government spends each year to buy health care for its retirees—not the value of the benefits coming due in the future. “Politicians don’t want to deal with the problem,” said Michael Granof, McCombs accounting professor. Granof said state lawmakers were betting that by the time rising health care costs became unmanageable, they would no longer be in office and could not be held accountable. 
We've got t-shirts and other McCombs wearables in the 
Last Updated
Wednesday, July 23, 2008