Author: Nicholas Gerlich

The second edition of BuffTreks took place September 26-28 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Faculty leaders were Dr. Anne Macy and Dr. Nick Gerlich, with four students in attendance (Tory Trahern, Maylee Wertz, and Gizelle Borunda, all BBA students, and Josue Banda, an MSFE student). The Engler College of Business plans to expand on this offering in the coming months, as an effort to foster student engagement at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The purpose of the trip was to explore the roles that Route 66 heritage and the film industry play in the local economy, from tourism to jobs and economic impact. The roster of activities included a motor tour along Central Avenue (Route 66) with Dr. Gerlich narrating, and a second motor tour of Breaking Bad filming locations. Both of these are significant tourism drivers. Other highlights of the weekend included shopping at The Breaking Bad Store, where... Read more

It’s funny how fast time flies when you’re busy, and that is precisely what has happened to Dr. Syed Tariq Anwar, Professor of Marketing. He is in his 39th year at WT, his one and only job after grad school. His is a career marked with outstanding teaching, stellar research, and abundant service. If anything, younger faculty should be modeling their careers after his. “I drove 19 hours from San Diego. I rented a small van, and this is how I started. The marathon race is still going on. You need to keep running” he remembered of his journey to WT. Canyon Texas presented its own challenges, too. “It was a big shock. It was like, ‘Beam me up, Scotty’. Compared to San Diego, life was very slow. I had no transportation, so I ended up getting a car in the first week. I kept that car for 27 years,”... Read more

The Engler College of Business is pleased to announce that the 2026 Study Abroad trip will be to London England. We visited London previously in 2011 and 2013, and are preparing a culturally significant trip that will be both educational as well as enlightening. Drs. Anne Macy and Nick Gerlich are co-leading the adventure, which is slated for late-May into early-June. London is an ideal destination for Study Abroad, and is perfect for anyone who has never been out of our country and has concerns about language barriers or other comfort zone factors. It is an easy nine-hour direct flight from Dallas to London Heathrow, and from there we will quickly immerse ourselves in the ground transportation network of the underground Tube, historic London taxis, and walking. We will get around quite handily. While tour specifics are still in progress, previous trips have included a day-long bus trip to Stonehenge... Read more

Rather than focus on just one student in our Spotlight series, this time we will showcase the four students who recently went on the BuffTreks adventure to Albuquerque. It was during this long weekend that they and their two faculty leaders all got to know one another much better. And that is precisely the type of engagement the Engler College of Business seeks to promote. Maylee Wertz is a Senior from Balko, Oklahoma, majoring in Marketing and minoring in Finance. She works in the Undergraduate Business Programs Office. “I chose WT because it’s close to home, affordable, and offers the community and opportunities I wanted in college. I enjoy the small-town feel of Canyon while still having access to the opportunities in nearby Amarillo,” she said. In her free time, she likes to paint, do crafts, go for walks, and play basketball. She also loves the personalized attention she is... Read more

The new MindSpark agency launched this semester in the Engler College of Business. A revival of the former Media Minds, MindSpark seeks to serve the internal marketing needs of the COB, from social media and other digital applications, to old-school print. Specifically, MindSpark oversees strategic marketing & digital engagement. Chaired by Dr. Mary Liz Brooks, the Associate Professor of Digital Business and Communication & Barbara Petty Professor of Business Communication, the team consists of her and five students tasked with creating, scheduling, and posting the marketing efforts needed for day to day operations in the College. Students on the team include Maylee Wertz, Heidi Giesbrecht, Carli Carter, Cassandra Gamboa, Shelby Risher, and Summer Tebeest. Example of the scope of work include semester-long awareness campaigns, event announcements and promotions, club and organization brochures and flyers, graphics, photography, press releases, all COB social media, and a new internal faculty newsletter. By centralizing... Read more

By Nick Gerlich (This is the first in an ongoing series of faculty-written essays and stories that feature the off-campus sides of their life. We’re looking for some good volunteers to help write this column, too!) I grew up near Route 66. It’s just that it wasn’t in Amarillo. And now that it is about to turn 100 years old in 2026, we are all going to be hearing quite a bit about it. It’s too easy to take things for granted when they are in your backyard, kind of like Palo Duro Canyon or the beach. That’s how Route 66 was for me in Chicagoland. It was just another road emanating out of the downtown district, just another spoke on a wheel. We drove it on vacations to the south and west. And I heard my father regale us many a time with fond memories of the 1955 road... Read more

The Engler College of Business recently learned that its participation in a pilot program involving the Coursera certification platform is getting attention. The College is one of five Texas A&M University System schools or colleges of business incorporating Coursera offerings in its classes. Collectively, the A&M System was named a finalist for the Outstanding Achievement Awards at the Coursera Connect Conference in Las Vegas. The System was given the Rising Star award as a first-year partner. Dr. Mary Liz Brooks, Associate Professor of Digital Business and Communication & Barbara Petty Professor of Business Communication, is Coordinator of the Coursera program in the College. She attended the conference, which had representatives from academic units, corporations, and governmental agencies as participants.  Coursera offers a wide variety of professional certifications, with courses developed and provided by companies such as Google, Meta, and IBM, as well as selected universities. As such, they are a... Read more

Not everyone wants to go to work for someone else. Instead, they want to be the boss. Entrepreneurship is the cornerstone of our economy, with new businesses entering the marketplace and taking a chance on the future. Dr. Jimmy Dongwook Kim, Assistant Professor Management, is leading his students into this great unknown with an academic adventure this semester that finds them having to pitch their ideas just like entrepreneurs do on TV’s Shark Tank. It’s all happening in his MGT 3332 Entrepreneurship class. “The goal of this class project is to enhance students’ understanding of the entrepreneurial process—particularly the initial stages of idea generation, development, and presentation,” Kim explained. “This semester, we are partnering with the West Texas A&M Enterprise Center, giving top-performing students the opportunity to present their ideas to a larger audience beyond the classroom.” This type of project is common in entrepreneurship and new venture courses. But,... Read more

The Online Learning and Teaching Innovation Committee has been serving the Engler College of Business for several years, providing a means whereby best practices and faculty insights can be shared not just within the committee, but also across the entire College.  The College first started offering online courses in 1997, which quickly evolved into the online MBA. A few years later, complete online majors in Marketing and Management were offered, followed by other majors within a few years. Dr. Jillian Yarbrough, Assistant Dean, Clinical Assistant & Virginia Engler Professor of Business Management, is Chair of the committee. The fall semester brought a new sub-committee from within this committee, whose purpose is to focus on the various types of student engagement in online classes. Yarbrough, along with Drs. Humpherys, Ramos-Salazar, and Gerlich, comprise this group that was commissioned by Dean Abdullat. There are three types of engagement: student to professor, peer... Read more

This fall the Engler College of Business welcomed three new faculty members, including two Assistant Professors, and one Instructor.  Dr. Ashley Escudero has joined us as Assistant Professor or Economics. She is currently teaching Macro Economics, which she will do again in the Spring along with Labor Economics. “I’m interested in health and labor economics, especially the interaction of these two fields where labor market policies influence health outcomes,” she said, indicating her research interests as well as teaching.  She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Dallas, her master’s degree from the Engler College of Business, and her PhD from Texas Tech. She also taught Algebra 1 at Amarillo High School for three years, and is certified to teach math 7-12 in the state of Texas. In her spare time, she has two smaller dogs and loves getting to play with them and take them on... Read more