Please join us for the Mitchell-Reed Community of Learners Lecture Series. Feb. 21 at 12:30 p.m. in the library, room 203. Refreshments will be served.

Dr. Thomas Bell will present “Creating Shared Stakeholder Value While Avoiding Negative Externalities by Using Continuous Process Improvement.”

With the escalating cost of earning a bachelor’s degree, increasingly, students are questioning the value of college. The most significant incentive for a college degree is access to higher-paying jobs. Generally speaking, bachelor’s degree holders earn approximately $32,000 more per year than those with only a high school diploma or GED. But before enjoying the higher salaries, undergraduate students will have to earn the degree over typically four years, which comes at a price.

To address this growing concern, colleges and universities must create value for their students and stakeholders (alums, staff, community groups, industry, professions and government). But creating value is challenging and will differ across stakeholders. Warren Buffett states that "price is what you pay, but the value is what you get." Competing on price is fleeting, but stakeholder value sets the Texas Wesleyan experience apart and creates demand for our services. Creating value is becoming even more necessary in higher education, and finding innovative ways to develop shared stakeholder value holds the promise of generating greater brand awareness and service growth.

The discussion will explore how continuous process improvement identifies inefficiencies and waste in existing processes that, if sufficiently addressed, can improve service quality and increase efficiency and productivity while decreasing cost and streamlining services. And such activities will create long-term stakeholder satisfaction that ultimately yields stakeholder value.

Dr. Thomas J. Bell III is a professor of business administration in the School of Business and Professional Programs. He received his Ph.D. in Information Science with an emphasis on creating user-friendly information systems interfaces from the University of North Texas, an M.S. degree in Engineering Management from Amberton University, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Prairie View A&M University.

Dr. Bell also has professional certifications in project management, agile scrum, information systems auditing, risk management, IT service management, quality management, IT governance, business system analysis, cloud services administration, network administration, system security and cloud application services.

His research interests span various areas, including developing certificate-based course curricula, IT auditing projects, creating value using balance scorecard techniques, project management and agile development approaches. Dr. Bell has over a dozen publications in multiple peer-reviewed journals. The Bebensee University Scholarship and multiple Bass research grants have sponsored his research. He has served on editorial boards as an associate/academic editor for several journals.