Woodbury Is School Where Business Is King

Founded in 1884 as a business college, tiny Woodbury University has one of the oldest business programs in the nation. But in this case, longevity has not translated into legend.

Woodbury, which has 560 students in its graduate and undergrad business programs, is nowhere to be found in the rankings of major business schools by Business Week and U.S. News & World Report. Indeed, several of the journalists who helped prepare those lists said they’d never even heard of the school.

That doesn’t surprise university President Ken Nielsen, who said Woodbury isn’t trying to be an elite B-school that churns out CEOs for Fortune 500 companies. But he and others close to the program said the school is now trying to raise its profile in Southern California and abroad. And they’re pinning much of their hope on a 40-year veteran of international commerce who decades ago made it his “mission in life” to help foster trade between Asia and the U.S.

“My mission, goal, aim is to enhance the school of business and management and give it a higher profile in the business community in Southern California,” said Richard King, 69, the former chairman of Woodbury’s board of trustees, who took over as dean of the school of business and management in 1997.

King’s stint in academia follows a long career in business in which his eponymous consulting firm, Pasadena-based King International, helped California businesses from wineries to entertainment concerns find markets in Japan and China.

“After 40 years of doing business [in Asia], it creates a Pacific Rim presence around the university,” he said.

One of the first public manifestations of that heightened visibility is a formal management training program for Chinese business executives that was launched Monday with a reception on the bucolic Burbank campus.

For 10 days, two dozen top executives from China’s Magang Group and its parent company, Maanshan Iron & Steel Co. will be schooled in such areas as Western management and economic practices, business law and human resources.

It’s the first of what officials hope will be six such information exchanges for executives of the steel company, one of China’s largest, according to Charlie Wang, president of the Temple City-based US China Business Institute.

Wang developed the program with “my good friend and mentor,” King, a recognized expert on Sino-U.S. commerce and California’s first director of international trade.

The program, a first for both Magang and Woodbury, is part of King’s goal to create a niche for Woodbury in the crowded field of business education: providing entrepreneurial training for future managers of small and mid-sized companies, especially those that want to tap foreign markets.

The links created through such exchanges could eventually lead to student internships in Asia and, perhaps, more business opportunities in China’s increasingly open markets, King said.

“Let’s begin to move the program forward,” King said, “and create more relationships with the real world.”

Jennifer Reingold, associate editor of Business Week who helped put together that magazine’s 1998 annual report on business schools, said the kind of niche marketing that Woodbury is undertaking is becoming more common among some small business schools, especially those that do not have a “brand name.”

Even in its chosen niche--training managers for small companies with their sights set on international trade--Woodbury faces some stiff competition from the local brand-name schools, most notably USC’s Marshall School of Business and the Anderson School at UCLA.

King insists Woodbury’s “hands-on,” entrepreneurial focus separates his school from institutions with what he calls a more “esoteric” approach.

“The school of business and management at Woodbury University is not going to compete for numbers with USC or Claremont” graduate university, King said. “What we want to be is the best of our kind. Our niche is educating managers for small- to medium-sized and family-owned businesses.

“That’s where the growth is. Integral to that is globalization with a Pacific Rim emphasis.”

One accomplishment that King and Nielsen hope will raise Woodbury’s standing is separate accreditation for the business school, a bragging right that only about 30% of the nation’s four-year business schools can claim.

King had placed gaining accreditation high on his list of goals for Woodbury’s business program. Approval, albeit with a couple of conditions, came less than a year after King came to the program.

“More and more students these days are shopping around and asking the question “Are you accredited,” said King, who called the competition for students among the nation’s 1,200 four-year business schools fierce. “It’s a credibility tool for the university.”

But even that credential comes with a caveat.

Most of the major business school rankings, which are closely watched by potential students, focus almost exclusively on schools accredited by the St. Louis-based International Assn. for Management Education, more commonly known as the “Assembly.” Woodbury and 225 other schools, including some two-year programs, are accredited by the Assn. of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs, near Kansas City.

Roy Moore, who directs the latter’s bachelor’s and graduate degree accreditation program, said his association was formed 11 years ago to address the needs of programs at some of the smaller, non-research oriented schools, like Woodbury.

“The Assembly has basically been the accreditation of the elite,” Moore said. “There were a large number of schools with quality programs that had virtually no chance of being accredited by them.”

King hopes that accreditation, in part, will help with marketing efforts at the school, which saw a 10% drop in enrollment in the business program between 1991 and 1998, largely because of the “economic El Nino” that hit Asia. King said 95% of the school’s international students are from the Pacific Rim.

Some of King’s business allies think his presence is also a marketing bonus.

“The credibility he brings to that program, just with his name and associations, is a real plus,” said Jay Winter, executive secretary of the Foreign Trade Assn. of Southern California, which was formed in 1919 to help boost the Southland’s share of the foreign trade market.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they see a few more students than they would have otherwise.”

Winter noted that King has not forgotten the value of maintaining old contacts and forging new ones.

As old and new ties gathered Monday to meet, lunch and snap a few photos, many acknowledged the program’s potential.

“I think this is a very good idea,” said Xu Shi Guo, China’s deputy counsel general in Los Angeles. “We have big entrepreneurs in China. We’re working hard to reform for the market economy.

“I believe Sino-American relations are [developing] in a very good way,” he added. “In the future, we will have better relations in the business field.”

Meanwhile, 24 executives are preparing for 50 hours of training in Western business know-how.

With so many top-rated schools nearby, the head of the delegation explained briefly how they came to Burbank.

“We only can choose one,” said a smiling Zhao Jian Ming, vice president of Maanshan Steel. “Woodbury is a very famous university.”