In November 2015, Bud Knapp Distinguished Professor of Marketing Dominique Hanssens will retire from teaching and become faculty director of the new Morrison Family Center for Marketing Studies and Data Analytics at UCLA Anderson. The new center was established in 2015 thanks to a $10 million gift from Emeritus Professor Donald Morrison and his wife, UCLA Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics Professor Sherie Morrison.
Q: What is the goal of the new Morrison Family Center?
The Morrisons’ donation will enhance UCLA Anderson’s marketing curriculum and academic research, and help us build relationships with the practicing marketing community. The center will serve as a global resource for academics and practitioners as they use data and analytics tools to advance understanding of consumer markets and behaviors.
Q: What do you hope to accomplish as faculty director of the new center?
In this role, I will oversee all Center activities and efforts. For example, create better awareness of the research our marketing faculty conduct and of the lectures and conferences we organize throughout the year.
The center will also host visiting faculty and research fellows. We now have funds to invite Morrison Scholars to UCLA Anderson, distinguished faculty at other schools who will visit for one to six months.
Another effort includes supporting the school’s planned data analytics master’s program, which will train students with strong analytical backgrounds to become marketing analytics experts. We’ll facilitate internships and help place the one-year program on the national and global map.
The center will also focus on reaching out to major high-tech firms in California, particularly companies like Google, Yahoo and Adobe, and inviting them to campus for seminars and data exchanges.
We really want to be the academic connection for all of that activity in Silicon Beach and beyond. We want to create extended-learning opportunities for our MBA students.
The UCLA Anderson marketing faculty have long had a Marketing Studies Center that provided limited support for the research activities of the group and for doctoral support. The Morrison endowment takes this studies center to the next level, vastly improving the resource base and also broadening the audience and visibility of the marketing group.
Q: Is it also reflective of how MBA students’ interests are changing?
Yes. In the past, marketing students were often viewed as extroverts with little appreciation for analytical thinking. While people and managerial skills still dominate, the requirements to be a successful marketing executive are now more analytical in nature. For example, marketing executives have to be conversant in financial planning and marketing resource allocation, so that they can demonstrate the returns to marketing to the financial officers in their firms. Our students realize these new demands and want to be prepared to meet them. The Morrison Center will help satisfy this growing demand.
Q: Anything else you’d like to add about the new center?
Along with other new center initiatives in the school, the Morrison Center is living testimony that UCLA Anderson puts its motto “Think in the Next” in practice!
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