BROWNSVILLE — After seven years as dean of the University of Texas at Brownsville School of Business and then the UT Rio Grande Valley Robert C. Vackar College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Mark Kroll is stepping down as of Aug. 31.
BROWNSVILLE — After seven years as dean of the University of Texas at Brownsville School of Business and then the UT Rio Grande Valley Robert C. Vackar College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Mark Kroll is stepping down as of Aug. 31.
In an interview Thursday, the Harlingen native said he has enjoyed being dean but felt the urge to return to faculty and focus on teaching, research and publishing.
“I am, first and foremost, a tenured full professor of entrepreneurship,” he said. “If you were to ask me what my professional accomplishments are I’m most proud of, it’s the publications I’ve produced over the years. When you’re a dean nobody talks about that.”
Kroll said a big slice of his 30 years in higher education has been devoted to publishing and research.
“Before they put me out to pasture I’d like to think I can get in a few more top-drawer publications,” he said. “It’s going to be good to get back. I’m not falling off the planet, I just won’t be dean anymore.”
Kroll said there’s a good chance he’ll travel to Singapore next year for a yearlong visiting professorship. In 2009, he spent a year as a visiting professor at the NanYang Technological University there.
“It’s sort of like the Texas A&M of Singapore,” he said. “It’s the engineering school and that sort of thing. They’ve invited me back for another visit.”
Kroll described Singapore as a beautiful, ultramodern city.
“If a Swiss watchmaker was responsible for creating a city it would be Singapore,” he said. “It’s immaculately clean. There is no crime. Everything’s up to date. The per-capita income is one of the highest in the world. It’s like perfect, except the humidity. It’s 80 miles north of the equator, so it’s very humid.”
Kroll said he likes to think he helped accomplish some things as dean, including getting first the UTB business school, then the merged UTB and UT Pan American business schools, accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the international accrediting body for college business schools.
When he took the helm as dean seven years ago, it was made clear that accreditation was a top priority for UTB administration, Kroll said.
“That’s what (former provost) Alan Artibise said: ‘In case you’re wondering what you’re job is, that’s it,’” he said. “He didn’t need to tell me that.”
Kroll said he’s also proud of his role in merging the two business schools — successfully, he believes — and also cited the $15 million Robert C. Vackar scholarship endowment in 2016 as a significant milestone for the university.
Asked to predict Brownsville’s and the Rio Grande Valley’s economic future, Kroll said as long as the county avoids another economic meltdown ala 2009, and “if we can get NAFTA done right,” he foresees more manufacturing operations like Cardone Industries coming in.
Cardone, a large automobile-part remanufacturer that supplies all major U.S. parts retailers, has operations in Brownsville, Harlingen and Matamoros, and this month announced plans for a new distribution center in Harlingen. Kroll also cited a new Black & Decker manufacturing plant announced for Mission.
He thinks such companies are looking for a relatively young workforce and relatively inexpensive, plentiful real estate — in short supply in economically prosperous parts of the country such as California.
“The key is going to be workforce development,” Kroll said. “We have a workforce that’s younger than the rest of the state but it’s also less well educated.”
The advanced manufacturers the Valley wants to attract don’t necessarily need employees with four-year degrees, but rather people with “midrange skill sets” such as machinists, tool-and-die makers and workers with computational skills, he said.
“Not everybody needs to be an industrial engineer to get a job, but people are going to have to be able to manage digital control systems and things like that,” Kroll said. “You can’t do that and not know your fractions. If we can do that then I think we’ll be in good shape.”
