Bauer College of Business

History

The College of Business Administration was founded in 1942 as the business school of the University of Houston.

On July 12, 2000, businessman Ted Bauer, a Harvard University alumni 1942, announced a $40 million donation to the University of Houston's College of Business Administration. In recognition of his generosity, the college was renamed the C.T. Bauer College of Business.

The Bauer College is located on the campus of the University of Houston and has been housed in Melcher Hall since 1986. Melcher Hall is named after Leroy Melcher—an alumnus of the University of Houston and successful businessman—who donated $3 million to the business school.

The school has students from many countries around the world and is considered one of the most diverse schools in the US.

The Bauer College broke ground on June 5, 2008 for the Michael J. Cemo Hall. The hall is named after Michael J. Cemo—a University of Houston alumnus and former president and CEO of AIM Distributors—who donated $3 million to the college. It opened in 2010.

Programs

The College has five academic departments: Accountancy and Taxation, Decision and Information Sciences, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Finance, and Management. The student to teacher ratio is 3 to 1.

The AIM Center

The AIM Center for Investment Management is a business center at Bauer that teaches undergraduate and graduate business students about corporate finance, accounting, information technology, marketing and other disciplines. The center features a laboratory, a conference room with video conferencing capabilities, a classroom, and a lobby with news video and a stock ticker. It is a $5 million facility which opened on February 20, 2002. The center was recognized as one of the best designed business school classrooms in the United States by American School and University magazine.

The AIM Center houses the C. T. Bauer College of Business Cougar Investment Fund, L.L.C. The Cougar Fund is a private investment company run by graduate students, which manages real investors and real money. It began with an initial investment of $1.9 million and has regularly outperformed its benchmark on the S&P 500 Index. It currently manages over $9 million in assets. The Cougar Fund is rated third student stock analysis team in the world and number one, as of 2008, in the United States.

Global Energy Management Institute

GEMI offers undergraduate and graduate level programs in the energy sector. It opened in the fall of 2002. It offers certificate degrees in energy risk management, energy international project finance and energy accounting. It is a very specialized program that focuses specifically on the energy industry, one of Houston's main industries. The program has earned praise from Business Week.

Sales Excellence Institute

Launched in 2004, the Sales Excellence Institute is built on three pillars: education, research and partnership. Part of the Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, SEI offers undergraduate and Masters of Business Administration certificates, hosts a post-graduate program in sales and marketing and offers executive education to global corporations. Its undergraduate certificate program – The Program for Excellence in Selling – has been in existence since 1996 and offers over 180 hours of live sales training. The program has over 1,100 alumni.

SEI’s research provides current sales techniques, methods and theories to corporate executives, sales management and entire sales forces. SEI Executive Director Michael Ahearne has served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.

Working closely with strategically partnering corporations, SEI designs and delivers custom programs and services based on in-depth research in order to achieve their respective strategic business objectives. SEI regularly hosts conferences to provide and exchange with sales and sales management practitioners its most cutting-edge research findings. It is host to the annual Selling and Sales Management Conference.

Rankings and Awards

Bauer has been ranked among the top business schools in the US and is considered among the top 60 worldwide. It has been ranked the best entrepreneurship program in the United States by both the Princeton Review and BusinessWeek.

Full-time MBA program ranked 94th in the nation among 437 schools of business. (U.S. News & World Report 2011)
The evening MBA program is ranked 27th nationally, 4th regionally, and 1st in Houston (BusinessWeek 2007)
The Cougar Fund is ranked the #1 student stock analysis team in the United States and #3 in the world.
Ranked in the top 50 among public undergraduate business schools (BusinessWeek 2007)
Ranked 52nd among all undergraduate business schools (BusinessWeek 2010)
Ranked 1st among the top undergraduate entrepreneurship programs (Princeton Review, BusinessWeek Magazine, and Entrepreneur Magazine 2008)
Ranked 40th among public undergraduate business schools (U.S. News & World Report 2008)
Top Undergraduate Business Program in Houston
Top Undergraduate Sales Program in the U.S. (largest enrollment and most extensive curriculum)
MBA Program is ranked 5th among public universities for producing CEOs of S&P 500 companies
EMBA Program is ranked 17th in the U.S. among public EMBA programs (2004 Financial Times)
EMBA Program is ranked 76th in the World (2006 Financial Times)
Finance faculty is ranked 8th in the country by the Academic Analytics’ Faculty Scholarly Productivity (FSP) Index

Alumni

This is a partial list of notable alumni of Bauer College of Business. Names on this list should either have an accompanying existing article link which verifies they are an alumnus, or reliable sources as footnotes against the name showing they are a notable alumnus.