Clark Professors of Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise named

The J. Thomas Clark Professorships of Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise, three-year appointments for 2000-2003, foster participation in Cornell's universitywide Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise Program (EPE) by providing funding for faculty members throughout the university to develop new courses or engage in research in the areas of new business creation, innovation and development.

Appointed to Clark Professorships were Ralph Christy, professor, Department of Agricultural, Resource and Managerial Economics, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS); Bruce Ganem, the Franz and Elisabeth Roessler Professor of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences; Suzanne Loker, professor, Department of Textiles and Apparel, College of Human Ecology; and Michael Timmons, professor, Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, CALS. The provost reported the appointments at the May meeting of the Cornell Board of Trustees.

J. Thomas Clark '63, MBA '64, and Nancy Williams Clark '62, M.Ed. '64, created the Clark Endowment in 1993, and since that time 10 professors from across the curriculum have held Clark professorships.

Ralph Christy will focus on minority owned businesses with his research, "Entrepreneurship within Economically Depressed Areas: Sustaining Growth with Economic Opportunity." Its central purpose is to increase the understanding of the socio-economic determinants that influence economic opportunities for low-income minority communities. The research will attempt to integrate private-sector initiatives, or entrepreneurship, with public policies aimed at achieving economic development.

Christy's area of specialty is marketing management and economic development. From 1991 to the present, he established research and educational programs through Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development and the Mellon Foundation in Zimbabwe, Slovakia and Hungary. He also lent technical assistance to the College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in Port Antonio, Jamaica, through USAID (1986 and 1987), and the Ministry of Agriculture, Nairobi, Kenya, through Harvard Institute for International Development (1984). In addition, he was a scholar-in-residence at the Rockefeller Foundation and a member of the Department of State Food Security Task Force. He was editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics in 1991-93.

Bruce Ganem was elected to a second term as a Clark professor. He will continue developing courses and projects involving entrepreneurship in the sciences. Courses will include Entrepreneurship in Chemical Enterprise and Scientific Issues in Corporate Entrepreneurship. In addition Ganem hopes to offer one symposium or more on entrepreneurship in the sciences that is of broad interest to EPE, Cornell and the local community.

Ganem's research at Cornell has focused on the use of organic synthesis, structure-based drug design and protein engineering to study biological pathways. Recent studies in his lab on the biosythesis of phenylalanine have revealed key features about the production and regulation of this important amino acid, which is a global commodity used in the manufacture of Nutrasweet. Ganem's lab also is involved in the synthesis of chemically functionalized silicon surfaces for diagnostic and therapeutic technologies.

Ganem has been an A.P. Sloan Foundation fellow and a J.S. Guggenheim fellow. His awards include the Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Clark Teaching award and the 1999 Chemical Manufacturers' Catalyst Award. He consults for major pharmaceutical companies and serves on the scientific advisory boards of several biotechnology companies. Ganem obtained his Ph.D. degree at Columbia University and has taught at Cornell since 1974.

Suzanne Loker will develop an undergraduate course, Entrepreneurship for Designers, that will use an interactive electronic textbook she develops. Such a textbook will be easy to revise or adapt by others for use elsewhere on and off campus. The course also will give students a real-life entrepreneurial problem to solve.

Loker is interested in the entrepreneurial applications used by businesses to mass customize apparel, that is, involve the consumer or retailer customer in clothing design, style, size and choice of fabric. She works closely with the apparel industry and incorporates real-world problems into the classroom. She also directs Cornell Cooperative Extension's Apparel Industry Outreach program and plans to use the electronic textbook developed during this project in revised formats for the apparel industry.

She has co-edited two books related to apparel, one on home-based work and one on international apparel and textile marketing. She is the associate editor for international, business and industry research of the Clothing and Textiles Journal, one of the main professional journals in apparel studies.

Michael Timmons will develop a course, Engineering Entrepreneurship, Management and Ethics, that will link engineering students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences with students in civil and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering. The two departments have a joint program for environmental engineering majors. The new course will center on the food consumer product business and address business, entrepreneurial and professional ethical issues and principles.

Timmons does research on the design of the microclimate affecting farm animals and fish. He emphasizes the environmental sustainability of recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) technology and the economic competitiveness of such systems versus imported fish and seafood products. He was involved in Fingerlakes Aqua-culture LLC, a commercial start-up venture for RAS-produced tilapia in quantities of more than 500,000 kilograms a year.

Timmons earned his doctorate in agricultural and biological engineering from Cornell in 1979. He was an assistant professor at North Carolina State University before joining Cornell as a faculty member in 1983.