THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502060224
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM SHEAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 198 lines
When the offer came in mid-January, Joseph L. Boyd had no second thoughts about accepting it.
James C. Wheat III, chairman of the Virginia Retirement System board, had called to ask Boyd to serve on the state pension fund's board of trustees.
``I told told him I'd be glad to join,'' says Boyd, dean of Norfolk State University's School of Business. ``You don't get opportunities like this very often.''
Mastering pension-fund issues would be a challenge. And having a seat on the powerful VRS board would provide one more way to promote Norfolk State's business school.
Boyd has spent the past 12 years shaping a credible business school. As its dean, he has developed a reputation for campaigning aggressively on behalf of the school, which is part of a historically black university.
At a time when most business schools are scaling back because of state budget-cutting and declining enrollment, Boyd is talking expansion. His goal is to make business school students think like entrepreneurs, not academics.
``In the 1970s and 1980s, you could put a sign out, and students would come storming in,'' says Charles W. Hickman, director of projects and services at the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business, the professional group and accrediting agency for business schools. ``It's not like that any more.''
Two years ago, Norfolk State began requiring its business students to develop plans for launching small businesses and to apply what they learn in courses to their plan.
With that training, students will be prepared better to start their own companies someday, Boyd says.
Students familiar with the intricacies of organizing and building a small business also will be attractive to corporate recruiters, he predicts.
``Corporations are now saying, `We want employees with entrepreneurial spirit,' '' he says. ``They don't need employees who only punch a clock. They need employees who ask themselves, `What can I do to make things better?' ''
To reflect this attention to business-formation skills, the school's name will be changed at the beginning of the next academic year to the School of Business and Entrepreneurship.
Meanwhile, the school has made its advisory services more available to businesses in the community. In recent months, a team of students and faculty members has been helping a group of merchants along east Little Creek Road in Norfolk develop a marketing plan for the retailing corridor.
Boyd's aggressive expansion plan also calls for creation of a Minority Business Development Center to assist minority-owned businesses throughout Virginia.
The center would maintain a data base with bidding opportunities for such businesses and a directory of minority-owned companies in the state and their capabilities.
``We don't need quotas or set-asides'' for minority-owned businesses, Boyd says. ``We need mentoring and networking,'' which the proposed business-development center could provide.
The facility, he says, would have a full-time staff of eight and require an annual operating budget of about $1 million. DRIVE FOR EDUCATION
Boyd, a man of medium build who punctuates his remarks with an easy laugh, has won support in the business community for his emphasis on fostering business formation.
``He's a strong advocate for entrepreneurship, and that makes sense when you look at where the new jobs come from,'' says John P. Matson, Signet Bank's Hampton Roads regional executive.
Matson, who has worked with Boyd on Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce issues, attributes part of the dean's success to a combination of communications skills and affability. ``It's easy for him to present his ideas because people like him,'' Matson says.
A 47-year-old native of Columbia, S.C., Boyd is no stranger to the world of small business. His father was an electrician who operated a electrical-repair shop. Boyd and his three brothers worked part time in the shop, picking up and delivering appliances and making minor repairs.
``Those were the vacuum-tube days for TV sets, so we checked tubes, did some soldering and made a lot of deliveries,'' Boyd says.
His father, now deceased, started his business after loading rail cars during the day and taking a vocational-school course in electrical repair at night.
``He worked six days a week and enjoyed his work,'' says Boyd, who credits his parents with instilling a drive for education in him and his brothers.
As a high school student, Boyd demonstrated a knack with numbers but had no aspirations to join the academic world.
When he took an aptitude test in high school, the results suggested he consider a job requiring quantitative skills, such as accounting. ``I read up on what a certified public accountant does,'' says Boyd, and decided to study accounting in college.
Four years later, he graduated from the University of South Carolina with an accounting degree and took a job in Charlotte with Arthur Andersen & Co., the nation's largest public accounting firm. He concentrated on tax matters, including tax planning for proprietors of privately held companies.
``When you go into public accounting, everybody's goal is to become a partner in the firm and earn $100,000 a year,'' he jokes.
For Boyd, that didn't happen. Instead, he developed an interest in teaching after he volunteered to teach accounting part time at a small, predominantly black school in Charlotte, Johnson C. Smith University. His work led to a full-time position, and Boyd eventually decided to make teaching a career.
To do that, he figured, would require having a doctorate, so he returned to the University of South Carolina, where he earned a master's degree in accounting and then a doctorate. Afterward, he taught accounting at the University of Illinois and then at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, where he headed the accounting department.
When the position of business-school dean became available at Norfolk State, Boyd sought the post and was hired in 1983. STAMP OF APPROVAL
His mandate from Norfolk State was simple: win accreditation from the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business.
The process, however, took seven years and proved to be ``the most difficult thing I've ever had to do,'' says Boyd, who had helped the business school at North Carolina A&T gain accreditation.
``While getting a college degree, I could depend on myself,'' says Boyd, who today works from a small, modestly furnished office near the business school's classrooms.
But preparing the business school for accreditation required a different set of skills - those of a coach. To meet the accrediting organization's standards, says Boyd, ``you had to get the faculty moving in the same direction.''
And when the inspection team finally arrived at Norfolk State to inspect the business school, ``they were very critical and impersonal,'' Boyd recalls. ``You really had to convince them that you were worthy of accreditation.''
The process, which has since been changed, required that a business school meet several specific measures, such as having a certain student-faculty ratio and having faculty members who hold doctorates in the subjects they teach.
``Joe's ability to help visualize the school's needs and to lead the faculty made a difference,'' says Hickman of the Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business. His success also won respect from peers at other universities, Hickman adds.
Today, Boyd is assisting the business schools at four other historically black universities in their efforts to gain accreditation.
But winning the accrediting organization's stamp of approval at Norfolk State was not enough to assure his own business school of long-term prosperity.
The school's enrollment has dropped to 1,200 from its peak of 2,000 in the late 1980s, when business courses had broader appeal among college students. In addition, some major corporations that routinely interviewed at Norfolk State in the 1980s have reduced work forces and scaled back recruiting efforts.
So far, the business school has not been hit by the budget cutbacks that have struck other parts of Norfolk State, Boyd says. Still, the school decided it had to distinguish itself from other business schools and strengthen its role in the community.
Granville M. Sawyer Jr., an associate professor of management and head of the school's management department, says Boyd has carried off this change while maintaining a measure of collegiality within the 45-person faculty.
``Joe is very good at giving people at the business school an opportunity to show what they can do and giving them the resources to develop professionally. From my experience, that's good leadership,'' says Sawyer, who came to Norfolk State three years ago from Seton Hall University in New Jersey.
As a teenager, he was too small to play sports, says Boyd. But he did develop an interest in professional baseball, football and basketball while in high school and still follows a handful of teams.
``I'm an old-time Braves, Colts and Boston Celtics fan,'' he says. ``I go back to the days when Johnny Unitas played with the Baltimore Colts, Hank Aaron was with the Braves, and Bob Cousy and Bill Russell were with the Celtics.''
But following the Braves, Colts and Celtics takes a back seat to writing grant proposals and courting decision-makers who can direct funds to Norfolk State's business school.
Later this month, Boyd will fly to Dallas for a meeting with other members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' national education committee.
``You've got to get comfortable with people before you can submit a proposal,'' he says. But at some point, Boyd will talk to committee members from accounting-firm foundations about contributing to Norfolk State's business school programs.
``One of our biggest challenges,'' he says, ``is to tell our story at the national level.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI/Staff
Joseph L. Boyd relaxes in his Virginia Beach home with his dog,
Dusty.
Graphic
JOSEPH L. BOYD
Position: dean of the School of Business, Norfolk State
University
Previous jobs: associate professor and head of accounting
department at North Carolina A&T University, Greensboro; assistant
professor of accounting, University of Illinois; accounting
instructor, Johnson C. Smith University, Charlotte; certified public
accountant at Arthur Andersen & Co., Charlotte
Education: Undergraduate, master's and doctorate degrees in
accounting from University of South Carolina
Age: 47
Birthplace: Columbia, S.C.
Family: wife Nellie, two sons and a daughter
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY NORFOLK STATE UNIVERSITY
BUSINESS SCHOOL by CNB