Crimson and Gold Connection; Dean Cortez

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection. I am Dustin Triber. Today's guest is Professor Dean Cortez. He is a professor in the College of Business here at Pittsburgh State University. Professor Cortez, thank you for coming in today. Well, thank you for inviting me. And you've actually won an award and accepted an award on behalf of Pittsburgh State University. And I'd like you to first of all tell us about what you do here at the college and then we'll kind of go into the awards that you won. Okay, good morning. My name is Dean Cortez. I am currently the associate dean of the KELS College of Business. And I also serve as the director of our MBA program. I've actually been at PSU for 30 years now. Time flies. And I was a faculty member for the beginning for many years until I was offered the chair position of the Department of Economics and Finance. So I did that for eight years and then also served as the editor-in-chief of our Journal of Managerial Issues for seven years. And then in 2015, I became the associate dean of the KELS College.

Well, congratulations on well actually spending all this time here at Pittsburgh State University 30 years while that's an achievement. Yes, thank you very much. Yes, I really love PSU and I especially love the community of Pittsburgh. Been here all the time. Well, except for two years when I was on sabbatical. So I left in 1993-94 for sabbatical in Hiroshima, Japan and then in 2001-2002. Also on another sabbatical I was a Fulbright scholar in Sendai, Japan. So same country but always come back to Pittsburgh. What brought you here in the first place if I may ask? They offered me a job. And my wife said it was a better alternative than being over in South Dakota. She loves the warmer climbs and I do too. And it was the best decision I made.

Getting back to the awards, one of them is the Outstanding Research Award by this year's Conference of the Institute for Business and Finance Research. And this is actually on a paper that you co-wrote, correct? That's right. I co-wrote that with my graduate assistant, my MBA graduate assistant, who actually did all the heavy lifting with respect to the data collection and getting them all in tables and proper order and so forth. So it made a lot easier for me to do the actual statistical testing and we got some really cool findings out of it too. For those of you who have not read the paper, can you tell us a little bit about what it gives an overview of this research project? It's about what we call micro-politian areas, which is sort of the opposite of a metropolitan area. You hear about metro areas like Kansas City all the time. But you don't hear about the opposite extreme, which is the micro-politian area. And Pittsburgh is a micro-politian area because Pittsburgh is sort of like a service that's an urban core for one or more counties in the area.

And there are over 250 or more of these micro-politian areas in the country and our research focused primarily on just the Southeast region, primarily because the Southeast is the region right now. We're experiencing a lot of economic growth. And so we presented that paper at the IBFR conference and it received an outstanding award, so we're very pleased. And I understand that this is now up for publication now. Yes, that's right. We just received a word from the conference that our paper, after I made some corrections and revisions. And revisions to it has been accepted for publication in their international journal of business and finance research. And then moving back to this other award, it is the IBFR Leadership Award plaque, which is given to Pittsburgh State University and you accepted this on behalf of Pittsburgh State University.

Yes, that's correct. Actually, this was a surprise to me. The conference during their awards dinner presented that and said that we're offering this Leadership Award, not to me specifically, but primarily to the university. And the Leadership Award is essentially given by the conference to universities that are very, very supportive of academic research. Since I've attended this conference, maybe two or three times now, I think they see that PSU is very, very strong supporter of scholarly work of their faculty members. So did you learn that we won the award or pitched it won the award while you were at the conference? Yes. So they just named the name and he's like, oh, wow. Oh, they already had the plaque ready for us. So that was really cool. It's an honor to accept that award on behalf of Pittsburgh State University. We do have a couple of minutes left here.

So if there's anything else you want to talk about the College of Business, this is the time to do it. Well, I'd like to thank you again, Dustin, for inviting me today. I just want to say that the Cal Scholars of Business is very, very focused and supportive of community outreach. And we have an Economic Development Center that publishes a quarterly report on micro-political and statistical areas. And that's where this research essentially came out of. And again, my thanks to Pittsburgh State University as a whole for the strong support that they provide us, provides a college in terms of research. Before we end, I understand that the Cal College is actually going to have an expansion or planning expansions in the near future. Yes, we're excited about it. The architects have done a wonderful job of designing a new building for us. And as soon as we get that money, we will start building, raising the old building and building a new on the same footprint.

Does this mean bigger classrooms? Bigger classrooms, more spaces for student interaction. New technology. New technology and so forth. Yes. And we always welcome that here at Pittsburgh State University. I spent some time at the Cal's Business College and learned a lot. And I know that we produce a lot of great students and alumni out of that college. So that's going to be exciting things for the future. That's right. That's right. Professor Dean Cortez, thank you so much for coming in speaking with us today on Crimson & Gold Connection. And we wish you the best of luck in the future. You're very welcome and thanks again. That's it.