Dr. George Gau, center director and finance department chairman at the business school, told GlobeSt.com that the center would strengthen the school's existing real estate finance curriculum and provide contacts for graduate and undergraduate students entering real estate professions.
"It requires something more precious than money," says Gau of the advisory board appointments. "It requires time and an interest in being involved with the students." Gau says 16 advisory positions remain available on the board.
"We thought it was a natural," Gau says of the Center for Real Estate Finance, which had been set up in late 1999 within McCombs School of Business' finance department. "We have faculty who are interested in it and because of the strength of the real estate industry in Texas, there are national companies relocating their headquarters here."
The University of Texas McCombs School of Business is the only graduate school of business in Texas that ranks in the top 20 nationally. The university's undergraduate school of business is in the top 10 nationally.
Gau says UT hopes its real estate finance offerings will be comparable with other top business schools such as the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and the University of California at Berkeley. "Among the best business schools, only about one-third offer the real estate finance curriculum," says Gau.
Undergraduate and graduate business students will choose from courses covering topics such as fiscal analysis, financial project planning and evaluation and debt equity securitization. The center also will allow for new faculty, says Angela Dorsey, assistant director for the Center of Real Estate Finance.
"We intend to bring together students who want to pursue real estate finance professions with professionals who recruit in that field for both jobs and internships," says Dorsey. She says a resume book is being compiled and an undergraduate and graduate society for real estate professionals has formed on the heels of the center's formation.
Another goal is to support faculty research and faculty development within the department. UT has formed an academic conference partnership with real estate centers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. The conference will be in June in Vail, CO.
The chairman of the center's advisory board is Jeff Swope of Champion Partners, a Dallas real estate development company. Vice-chairman is Tom Delatour of RMB Realty in Ft. Worth. Other board members include, Sandy Gottesman of the Gottesman Co. in Austin, Walter Embry of Embry Partners in San Antonio and Robert Duncan, chairman of Transwestern Commercial in Houston.
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