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MONEYMAKERS
FIVE QUESTIONS WITH JOHN MCNABB
UH a haven 'for great entrepreneurs'
By Sandra Bretting
(For the Houston Chronicle)
Houston, TX (January 10, 2008) – Late
last fall, the C.T. Bauer College of Business
at the University of Houston announced it had
formed a new 20-person executive board, made
up of business leaders from various industries.
The board's role is to advise faculty on new programs
and projects.
That's according to its chairman, John McNabb,
founder of local investment and banking firm Growth
Capital Partners.
Bauer College has earned several accolades recently.
In October, the Princeton Review ranked it the
second-best entrepreneurship program in the country,
just behind Babson College in Massachusetts. That
report appeared in the Oct. 23 edition of Entrepreneur
magazine. BusinessWeek ranked the school's evening
MBA program as the fourth-best in the Southwest
in its 2007 rankings, released in November.
The school earned national headlines in 2000 when
local businessman Charles T. Bauer endowed the
college with a $40 million gift, leading to its
renaming as the C.T. Bauer College of Business.
McNabb, the executive board's chairman, spoke with
Chronicle contributor Sandra Bretting. These are
excerpts from that conversation.
Q: The obvious question would be, why does the
college need a new executive board, and why now?
A: Our motto at the school is, "It's Bauer's
time." The school has made tremendous progress
in terms of hiring and building infrastructure.
I know personally that business schools don't
do well if they don't have good infrastructure;
that if there's a weak link, it's likely to be
with the support staff and administration.
The donation was a life-changing event for the
school. It's really what put U of H's business
school on the map. And, let's face it, everyone
likes a winner. We all felt that the timing was
right.
Q: You earned undergraduate and graduate degrees
at Duke University in North Carolina. So why the
allegiance to the University of Houston?
A: To be honest, I met the dean and really just
fell in love with the campus. I've been involved
with a private business school and now a public
school, and let me tell you, I see the same spirit
of entrepreneurship at Bauer that I did at a private
school.
Sometimes you look at a big public school and you
don't see the entrepreneurship, you just see layers
of bureaucracy. When I visited the Bauer campus,
I felt a sense of camaraderie, that feeling of
working toward a joint goal. It's just an exciting
time to be around Bauer College.
Q: Some of the board members, like PriceWaterhouseCoopers
CEO Samuel DiPiazza, actually live in New York.
How much input can board members have if they're
not local?
A: That was intentional, because our projects have
an international scope. I see the real heart of
the board's activities being in small group endeavors,
advising the dean in particular areas where they
have a strength.
Locally, I might meet a CEO, and they'll tell me
they have an interesting project but they need
to put together a team to do the analysis.
That's a case where it helps to have someone local
because we can put Bauer students in that role.
Other times, it might be a project that has an
international scope, and that might involve other
board members who have that background. We purposefully
set about getting different people from different
industries who also had different backgrounds.
Q: The
college has some pretty stiff competition with
Rice, the University of Texas and Texas A&M
University. Do you think the University of Houston
will ever get over its reputation of being a
commuter campus?
A: I think you're starting to see it become more
of a residential college. We're constructing an
apartment tower for graduate students, so you're
going to see more people living there than ever
before.
But let me tell you one big difference I've noticed
at U of H.
I taught one of the school's first leadership classes,
and most of my students were putting themselves
through school, or their company was paying for
their education, so they were very invested in
their studies.
This wasn't just mom and dad paying their way through
school. I found them to be very motivated, very
connected to the school. Being an urban school
like we are can actually be a plus because it attracts
students who want to succeed.
Q: Bauer was ranked No. 2 for entrepreneurship
programs in the U.S. by the Princeton Review. What
do you think it's going to take to become No. 1?
A: To be honest, I'm not sure there's that much
difference between being No. 1 and No. 2. To just
compete with Babson, that's something to be satisfied
with. That's not to say that we don't want to try
harder, but just being in that league is huge.
I truly believe the school is like Houston: a breeding
ground for great entrepreneurs. Here you have world-class
businesses, one of the nation's largest medical
centers, an oil and gas business that's thriving
- everything's in place.
About Growth Capital Partners, L.P.
Founded in 1992, GCP (www.growth-capital.com)
is an investment and merchant banking firm
that provides financial advisory services to
both private and public middle-market companies,
with a specialty practice devoted specifically
to the industrial services industry. GCP also
focuses extensively on the private equity marketplace.
Since its inception, GCP has completed in excess
of 250 transactions, raised more than $1 billion
of institutional capital (through private placements
of equity, subordinated, and senior debt),
and completed M&A transactions with an
aggregate value in excess of $3.0 billion.
For additional information, please contact:
Growth Capital Partners, L.P.
John T. McNabb, ll
281-445-6611
jmac@growth-capital.com
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