Department of Management, Marketing and General Business

My father is a very smart man.

An accountant by trade, he never failed to remind me that I was going to go to college. It was non-negotiable. A survivor of the Great Depression, he knew that hard work alone was not enough to get you through the hard times. You needed an education, too. An education in a field that could weather any storm. Something to set you apart.

So when he found out that I didn't want to major in a business discipline, he was taken aghast. My father set me down and told me words I will never forget: "Son, you need to be in business if you want to have any security in this world." Words well spoken. The businessman in him was speaking loud and clear. His honest appraisal hit me like a ton of bricks.

That was my junior year in high school. I quickly shifted gears and wound up in a job co-op program. In the process, I fell in love with marketing, so much so that I committed my life to studying it. I now understand that it was in my DNA all along. Along the way I took nearly every marketing and management course I could find.

I've been at WTAMU since 1989, proudly trumpeting the benefits of a degree in my department. As the department head of MMGB, I'd like to introduce you to an academic department whose faculty is eager to give you the skills you need to survive in the long haul. Your degree will be one filled with a wealth of experience and exposure, for our professors are as varied as the world is round. It will be a mind-opening exercise of epic proportions as you see commerce through different lenses. And it will be one in which your creativity is a cherished asset, the key to innovative solutions to problems old and new.

For the title of our story is Business::Unusual. Turn a few pages and see.

R. Nicholas Gerlich Ph.D.
Department Head
ngerlich@wtamu.edu
Room 212 Classroom Center
WT Box 60809
Canyon TX 79016
806.651.2500 (MMGB Dept.) or 806.651.2492 (Office)