David Urban 23 contatos

Dr. Urban is chief academic and administrative officer for the School of Business at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. The School of Business educates approximately 3,200 undergraduates and more than 575 graduate students, in two undergraduate and eight graduate programs, including the doctorate. Students are taught by 75 full-time faculty members and more than 60 who bring direct business experience into the classroom on a part-time basis. They are organized in six departments: accounting; economics; finance, insurance and real estate; information systems; marketing and management. The School has an annual budget of $26.4 million and a foundation with approximately $80 million in gross assets, both permanently restricted and quasi endowment. The more than 21,000 alumni include chairs, presidents or CEOs of the businesses they serve.

Dr. Urban provided academic and administrative leadership to the Department of Marketing in the VCU School of Business. The Department has nine full-time faculty and nine part-time faculty, as well as a full-time program coordinator and four student assistants. Dr. Urban was responsible for internal administration of the department, such as course scheduling, human resource management, and financial management.

Dr. Urban dramatically improved communications between the department and its students, on-campus partners, corporate supporters, and alumni. Among the key communication initiatives were: a first-ever quarterly newsletter, Market Place; a monthly electronic news brief, MKTGNews; new databases and distribution lists for students, faculty, administrators, staff, alumni, and corporate partners; two special events featuring nationally-renowned speakers, including one co-sponsored with Verizon; “Chat with the Chair” sessions for current and prospective students; exit interviews of graduating students; participation in open houses; and construction of a new department website. Dr. Urban spearheaded the most comprehensive overhaul of the Marketing undergraduate curriculum in over 20 years, as well as the full implementation of student learning assessments.

Dr. Urban also built bridges between the department and external entities in several ways. One way was through the use of Richmond-area businesses and nonprofit organizations as clients for student projects. Another way was the recruitment of highly-positioned marketing executives to team-teach with him in the Executive MBA Program and in the undergraduate Senior Seminar. Still another collaboration was the development of the Verizon—VCU Marketing Department speaker series.

In research, in addition to encouraging faculty to be productive in their scholarly pursuits, Dr. Urban arranged a collaboration between two of his junior faculty and a marketing research firm in the area. The faculty assist with questionnaire design and data analysis in exchange for access to large data sets they can mine for academic research purposes.

As SERL Director, Dr. Urban provided leadership to a group of faculty and classified staff examining public issues and social problems through applied research and evaluation techniques. SERL serves the research and evaluation needs of federal, state, and local government, universities, and organizations in the non-profit and private sectors by providing a diverse range of research activities to broaden and improve public discourse and decision making. These include polls, specialized survey research projects, evaluation studies, and community-based capacity development programs. SERL also provides data management services, including set up and design of long-term data collection systems, technical expertise in multi-site data collection, and training for data collection entities.