OSU professors to be inducted into Higher Ed. Hall of Fame

Monday, October 1, 2007

Two former Oklahoma State University business professors, Dr. B. Curtis Hamm and Dr. Jeanine Rhea, will be inducted into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame on Tuesday, Oct. 2, at the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City.

Hamm, professor emeritus in marketing, and Rhea, professor emeritus in management at the William S. Spears School of Business at OSU, are among ten individuals selected from across Oklahoma to receive the state’s highest honors for educators this year.

Hamm taught at OSU for more than 38 years and led a major expansion in the business school’s extension efforts. In 2004, he became the first OSU professor to be honored with a fully endowed $250,000 scholarship in his name. Hamm has traveled and lectured extensively worldwide and is currently involved with efforts to establish funding for a new building for the Spears School of Business at OSU.

Rhea, who started work at OSU in the ’70s, broke new ground with courses directed specifically at women and minorities in management. She was also instrumental in helping establish the annual Women’s Business Leadership Program. Rhea is the namesake for a fully funded endowed professorship at OSU and was inducted into the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame in 2005. She is a performance consultant for Greenwood Performance Systems Inc. in Tulsa.

Hamm graduated from OSU in 1955 and earned an MBA after a leave of absence, during which he spent time in the U.S. Army and five years working for IBM. He received his doctorate in business administration from the University of Texas at Austin in 1966. His doctoral dissertation was accepted for presentation at the American Marketing Association National Convention. His book, “The Art of Partnering,” is used by several universities.

Hamm assumed the director role of the Center for Executive Development at OSU and significantly increased the number of corporations reached by the Spears School of Business. He was a Fulbright Professor in China and a Rotary International scholar at the University of Jordan and has taught executive seminars in over 30 countries. Hamm is also the founder of CEO Day, which brings alums who are company heads to campus to share their insights and experiences with students each year.

From 1976 to 2004, Rhea dedicated her classroom to promoting diversity in the workplace. Under a grant from OSU, she pursued extensive research on women in management. Rhea gained national attention when she developed a college course from her study called “Administrative Strategies for Women in Business,” which eventually became known as “Managing Diversity in the Workplace.” Over 4,200 students have participated in the course.

Rhea earned a B.S.E. in English from the University of Nebraska in 1961, an M.S. in business administration from Memphis State University in 1969, and her doctorate from Oklahoma State University in 1975. She is the recipient of an AMOCO Outstanding Teacher Award, the Kenneth Greiner Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Women in Business Advocate of the Year Award for 1997, and Rhea was named among the Top 50 Women of the Year in Oklahoma in 1998 by the Oklahoma Journal Record.

Rhea helped establish the annual Women’s Business Leadership Program, which brings hundreds of business professionals and students together annually to network and advance their business and career prospects. The program, co-sponsored by OSU and the Oklahoma International Women’s Forum, is now in its 17th year.