It’s been a “ripper chipper” of a year so far for Simon Sheather, who took the helm of the University of Kentucky’s Gatton College of Business and Economics in July.
That means “great,” for those who haven’t yet been introduced to the new Gatton dean’s Aussie slang.
The Australia native, who most recently led the Institute of Data Science and the department of statistics at Texas A&M University, has spent the past four decades as an intercontinental scholar, professor and administrator. He revels in the colorful colloquialisms he’s picked up along the way as he shares stories of his academic experiences across the globe, along with his plans for Gatton, which include new initiatives to leverage online technology, increase access and encourage more international exposure for business students at Kentucky’s flagship university.
Simon Sheather, dean of the University of Kentucky’s Gatton College of Business and Economics, and Jennifer Siebenthaler, associate dean for undergraduate affairs, walk through the college’s updated facility. A $65 million expansion and renovation project was completed in 2017.
Sheather’s experience in online learning innovation is coming into play now at UK. At Texas A&M, he launched two separate online master’s offerings: an MS Statistics online program started in 2007 and a joint MS Analytics program between the university’s College of Science and its College of Business in 2013. Under Sheather’s guidance, Gatton recently announced the addition of its own real-time, online MBA option, slated to begin this fall.
The new Gatton program will use a platform by Zoom to enable real-time video conferencing across the globe, Sheather said, with integrated messaging and content-sharing capabilities. Students will see each other simultaneously on multiple split-screens.
They will also be able to ask questions, leave comments or register their interest in a fellow student’s line of inquiry. Lessons will be recorded and archived for later reference, and professors can use the students’ input to evaluate and improve their lesson plans as well, Sheather said.
The program leverages the technology upgrades added to the Gatton College facility during its $65 million expansion and renovation project, which was completed two years ago, Sheather said. The plan is to start with a limited cohort of about a dozen students and gradually build on the program’s capacity, he added.
“We already have a very successful on-campus program, and we plan to grow organically from that,” Sheather said.
Simon Sheather, a native of Australia who most recently led the Institute of Data Science and the department of statistics at Texas A&M University, joined UK’s Gatton College as dean in July 2018.
The flexibility of the online offering also supports another goal of both Sheather and UK: to bring an MBA education within reach for every qualified candidate in Kentucky. As part of its ambitious “Kentucky Can” comprehensive fundraising campaign—which seeks to raise $2.1 billion in total—UK would use $300 million for scholarships to fill the unmet financial need of its students across the state and help increase graduation rates.As a first-generation college student himself, Sheather said he appreciates the challenges that arise for those trying to make ends meet while forging their own path in higher education. His father worked as a banking clerk in Australia, and his mother was trained on the job as a nurse, he said.
Sheather, the oldest of four brothers, set his sights initially on becoming a high school math teacher. His high school guidance counselor suggested he study the relatively new field of statistics, which became a lifelong scholarly pursuit for him. She also shared a bleak probability with him: Sheather was one of two first-generation college prospects in his class that year, and she told him flatly that one of them was bound to fail.
“I thought that was pretty unhelpful,” Sheather said. “It’s still harder for first-generation kids to get through, but what we’d rather do is understand the issues there are that slow down the graduation rates or that lead to kids dropping out of college, and then apply some active ingredients to try and help.”
At the same time, Sheather has also been working to strengthen and extend Gatton’s international connections.
Prior to joining Texas A&M, Sheather worked at the Australian Graduate School of Management, part of the University of New South Wales, for almost two decades, where he served as the academic director of the fulltime MBA program and the associate dean for research. He also ran an executive program in Sydney and Hong Kong. In his first year with Gatton, the new dean has traversed the globe in his efforts to shore up and expand on Gatton’s affiliations with partnering universities.
Gatton currently maintains partnership agreements with more than 30 schools internationally, including 19 Chinese universities. Sheather’s travel plans this spring include meetings in France and the U.K. with current and prospective partnering institutions. He is also exploring potential new exchange agreements with universities in South America, he said.
In conjunction with the Lewis Honors College, Gatton offers a Global Scholars honors pathway program for undergraduate business majors that includes a semester abroad, and UK has also assembled a portfolio of international business internship opportunities for its students in London, Barcelona, Sydney and Dublin, Sheather said.
In addition to the travel experiences, the increased international interaction for students who stay on the UK campus is another valuable benefit of the exchange agreements, he added.
“To participate in the global economy, you need to understand the global economy."
“To participate in the global economy, you need to understand the global economy,” he said. “I want those students to come here. If you attend the University of Kentucky, even if you don’t go to visit somewhere, you get to interact with our international students.”
Gatton is also working to strengthen ties with Kentucky’s business community. Through the MBA program’s Project Connect initiative, students are paired with corporations such as RJ Corman, Valvoline, Lexmark and Alltech for 32-week project-based internship assignments. The college has good working relationships with the executive leadership at many local firms, Sheather said, and they are working to develop analytics projects that can benefit businesses while demonstrating the value and applicability of the research.
“It’s really important for our students to get that practical experience,” Sheather said.
In terms of rankings, Gatton has made some progress recently, with its full-time one-year MBA program climbing 22 spots to be ranked 67th in the nation on the 2020 U.S. News and World Report list of top business schools. The college’s part-time Professional MBA program rose 44 spots to the rank of 81st on the list. Sheather said his aim is to see the college rise into the top 50.
“I want us to be considered one of the best schools in the SEC. And that’s by students, by parents, by alums and by recruiters—and not just by the rankings.”
“I want us to be considered one of the best schools in the SEC,” Sheather said. “And that’s by students, by parents, by alums and by recruiters—and not just by the rankings.”
Sheather also wants to grow Gatton’s reputation as a great research school. “We have an excellent school, and I want us to get that credit,” he said, adding that the college plans to substantially grow its faculty in the next five years to help that effort. He noted that two of Gatton’s faculty members are listed among the University of Kentucky’s top ten most frequently cited research authors on Google Scholar, and six are ranked among the top 40. Sheather himself is one of them.
“I’m ranked 32nd,” he added with a smile. “That’s not bad, for a bloke who’s the dean.”