Getting LKCSB Accredited

The advantage I had was I had been Chair of the Board of AACSB in 2009-2010. I sat on the board on 2 separate occasions from 2002 to 2004, and then 2007 to 2011 so I knew how to do it and I knew all the people there. And I knew how to get reports written and I was able to tutor the people here. The other advantage for Equis was I was also Vice President for Business Schools, which is the senior Business school position at EFMD from 2000 to 2007, before I got co-opted onto the AACSB board. So I knew exactly how to do that. So we used all of my contacts, we did this in breakneck pace. We wrote the self-study reports in 2010 and early 2011, we got accreditation for both in 2011. And in Equis's case, we got 5-year accreditation which was totally unheard of for a young school. So I think we did really well. What we also did was; I was also chair of the board of GMAC which is the Graduate Management Admissions Council, which runs the GMAT test, which is the admissions test for business schools. I was on the board there from 1991-2000 but I was chair of the board from 1997-2000. So I wanted SMU to be a member of GMAC. It's a rank that's achieved by invitation. So I got them an invitation that immediately put them in the top 120 business schools worldwide. So by the end of 2011, we were in all 3. And so that was terrific because that gives you external credibility and it also makes the faculty, the faculty need to be persuaded why the heck they're doing this because they can't see the point. But once they were persuaded, they could see that that gave us external validity and external credibility, just like the University of Texas at Dallas ratings. Rankings gives us credibility on research and subsequently FT rankings, which we've also achieved. So faculty don't always get it, in those respects but you know, you are not only trying to build a terrific business school, you are trying to build a business school which is recognized, not just on this continent but globally. And I think the gain of accreditation is important from that point of view.