School of Business

Fall 2005

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New Faculty Join the School of Business Family!

Craig Norman
Craig Norman joins the PLU School of Business faculty after almost 10 years of service at EMC Corporation where he spent time in Washington, Minneapolis, Minn. and Hopkinton, Mass. With EMC corporation he gained extensive and broad experience in sales, operations and product management, strategic product planning and product marketing.  Norman started at EMC Corporation as a senior account executive (where he was honored as the top sales representative for the Western region in 1991) and rapidly moved up to area manager where is recognized for implementing best practices throughout his sales teams and achieving substantial year over year revenue growth.  He was able to take the product line from 0 to $1.65 billion in just three short years. As an honor and highlight of his time at EMC, Norman was awarded a new Harley Davidson Softail for being the #1 district sales manager in North America.
    Prior to his time at EMC Corporation, Norman was a senior account manager at Memorex Telex Corporation.
    Among the many honors and achievements, Norman also holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree and a Master of Business Administration degree from PLU.
Norman will be teaching BUSA 308: Principals of Marketing this fall.

Ben Jennings
     Ben Jennings brings to the PLU School of Business years of experience in financial planning and wealth management as well as a commitment to public service. 
    Jennings spent 15 years as a traditional financial advisor providing comprehensive wealth management services to affluent families.  He now has his own firm, Navigator Financial Planning, Inc., and practices as a fee-only advisor. He focuses his practice on an untapped niche: financial management and planning that meets the needs of middle-income families.
    Jennings is a past president and chair of the Financial Planning Association of Puget Sound, a past president of the Tacoma Estate Planning Council and he also served as a resident expert for the online discussion forum of Financial Planning magazine.
    Jennings holds a Master of Business Administration from PLU as well as a Master of Science degree in Taxation from Golden Gate University.  He is a CPA and earned the Personal Financial Specialist (PFS) designation from the American Institute of CPAs.  He also holds the Certified Financial Planner designation from the CFP Board of Standards and has been awarded the Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU) designation by The American College.
      Jennings will be teaching BUSA 327/427: Tax Accounting this fall.

Frederick Matthaei
    Fred Matthaei has been a part-time lecturer for the PLU School of Business for the past 10 years and continues his service in 2005 teaching BUSA 358: Entrepreneurship this fall.  Matthaei has also taught New Venture Management at PLU.
    Matthaei has years of experience in entrepreneurship and consulting as he formed Matthaei Group, Family Limited Partnership in 1998 and has also been providing small business consulting services for the past 10 years.
Prior to forming Matthaei Group, Matthaei dedicated almost 10 years working for the Roman Meal Company.  He started as a regional manager in 1977 and rapidly advanced to take the position of vice president of marketing.  He served as VP of marketing for four years before he made the decision to move into consulting.
    Matthaei is also an active member of the community being a 14-year member of the Tacoma Rotary Club and serving on the Tahoma Audobon Board, the Tahoma Nature Center Foundation Board and the Stetson’s Cove (Community) Board (president).
Matthaei earned his M.S. in Management from Stanford University, he also holds a M.S. in Bacteriology from the University of Idaho and a B.A. in Biology from Whitman College.

Carol Ptak
Carol Ptak comes to PLU as Visiting Professor and Executive in Residence after years of executive management experience at PeopleSoft and IBM Corporation as well as many years of consulting expertise. Most recently, Ptak served as the vice president and global industry executive for manufacturing and distribution industries at PeopleSoft. Here she developed the concept of Demand Driven Manufacturing (DDM) as an overall product and marketing strategy to align product development, market awareness and demand generation. Her innovative approach is credited with significantly improving the company’s position in the manufacturing industry software market and earned her national recognition in publications such as CFO Magazine and the New York Times.
    Prior to her accomplished record at PeopleSoft, Ptak spent four years at IBM Corporation starting as a member of the worldwide ERP/SCM solutions sales team and quickly rising to the position of global SMB segment executive.
    From 1993-98, Ptak owned Eagle Enterprises, a consulting firm that promotes company-wide excellence through education and successful implementation. Ptak worked with a wide-range of businesses including internationally known corporations such as Boeing and Starbucks.
    In 2005, Ptak was honored by the International Supply Chain Education Alliance (ISCEA) with the announcement of the Ptak Prize for Supply Chain Excellence, an annual award that will be given in her name to a coporation that "has made significant improvement in operations by combining clear objectives with aligned business practices supported by flexible and adaptable technology."  The first is to be awarded at the 2006 ISCEA Supply Chain Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas, NV held May 22-24, 2006.
    Ptak, who holds her MBA from Rochester Institute of Technology, is also certified by the American Production and Inventory Control Society in Production and Inventory Management (Fellow level) and in Integrated Resource Management and completed additional graduate work at Stanford University. She holds a bachelors degree in biology from State University of New York at Buffalo. Ptak has taught courses and conducted seminars for the PLU MBA program including the January term elective Project Management. She will now be teaching BUSA 310: Information Systems at the undergraduate level and BUSA 512: Value Creation: Operations and Information Systems at the graduate level.

Family Enterprise Institute Awards

• Small Business (under 50 employees)
• Medium Business (50-250 employees)
• Large Business (more than 250 employees)
• New Business (less than 10 years)
• Heritage Business (more than 50 years)

MBA Redesign

Fall MBA Speaker Series!