Speaking to a packed ballroom on the 100^th anniversary of the founding of business education at The Ohio State University this past year, Provost Bruce McPheron noted the critical role of groundbreaking faculty thought leadership.

“While every college and university in the nation uses textbooks, only a handful of those colleges and universities write the books,” he said last March. “Ohio State is a place where we write the books.”

Fisher capped its recognition and celebration of 100 years of faculty thought leadership with an Alumni Conference hosted by the college’s Department of Finance. The event, held at Pfahl Hall, connected current faculty members, PhD and faculty alumni from across the world for presentations on key financial topics, including fraud, overvaluation, innovation, money market funds, exchange-traded funds, investing and credit ratings and constraints.

Andrew Karolyi, associate dean for academic affairs and the Harold Bierman, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Management at Cornell, delivered a keynote on the culture of collaboration. Karolyi was a finance faculty member at Fisher from 1989-2009 who held a number of leadership positions, including the Dean’s Distinguished Chair in Investment Management, the Charles R. Webb Designated Professorship in Finance and the Dean’s Distinguished Research Professorship.

“Events such as these underscore my belief that our alumni are our college’s greatest legacy,” said Anil K. Makhija, dean and John W. Berry, Sr. Chair in Business. “Seeing so many talented researchers and thought leaders back on campus reaffirms our PhD program’s role as a critical differentiator for Fisher and a powerful tool in our mission of creating ideas, encouraging scholars and positively making a difference in communities around the world!”

The Alumni Conference was one of a series of research-centered events that brought alumni from each of Fisher’s academic departments back to campus in recognition of the college’s centennial year. This past fall, the Department of Marketing and Logistics combined its annual Marketing Research Camp with a celebration of PhD alumni.

The event featured panel discussions, research presentations, tours of campus facilities and a luncheon to honor Professor Emeritus Bud Lalonde.

Fisher’s Departments of Accounting and MIS, Management and Human Resources, and Management Sciences celebrated their PhD alumni at an event held last spring. The reunion featured keynotes from three PhD alumni — Chan Hahn (management sciences), Henock Louis (accounting) and Charlie Stevens (management and human resources) — who shared reflections of their time in the PhD program at Ohio State and all the ways it has influenced their careers.

The PhD reunions and Alumni Conferences celebrated a storied history of business thought leadership at The Ohio State University, including a number of firsts:

• the first PhD in Business Organization (modern-day marketing) was awarded in 1924
• the first PhD in Economics, which was housed in the college of business, was presented in 1926
• the first accounting PhD was awarded in 1950
• the PhD in Labor and Human resources was established in 1979
• the Management Information System (MIS) PhD coincided with the creation of the Academic Faculty of Accounting and Management Information Systems in 1984