By Dean Tom Gilligan

This past weekend I helped kick off the 2010 Alumni Conference of the Master of Science in Technology Commercialization (MSTC) program at the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center. The significance of this conference was perfectly expressed by the director of the MSTC program, Gary Cadenhead, who greeted the assembled alumni with a broad smile and the words, “We are now part of McCombs.”

Cadenhead spoke of his satisfaction in seeing the MSTC program adopted into the McCombs graduate program under Associate Dean Eric Hirst. This move embraces the longstanding ties between the business school and the MSTC degree; a majority of faculty members teaching in the program have long been from McCombs, and the goals of the program perfectly complement our mission.

The MSTC program focuses on the rapid transfer of research, knowledge and technology from ideas to the marketplace.

The assembled alumni enjoyed opening remarks from Ingrid Vanderveldt, MBA ’96, who emphasized the importance of building relationships. “The most important influences on your success are the people you know, those people you surround yourself with,” she said, “especially the five people closest to you in your business life.”

That theme was also emphasized by professor Kathy Edwards in her remarks at the fall commencement last week. “Learning is best done in relationship to other people, and you’re very fortunate to be…part of the largest learning community in the world,” she told graduates.

Building relationships of value between alumni is a key vision for our online publication McCombs TODAY. Whether you are connecting through an alumni chapter event, a business conference, a faculty webinar, or exchanging information on a class note, we hope that McCombs can be a central hub in your networked world. I encourage you to include McCombs TODAY as a regular stop in your online professional outreach.

And please help me welcome the students and graduates of the MSTC program into the McCombs network.