Stevens named new College of Business dean
Janel Shoun |
“Since last summer, we have been conducting an extensive, national search for the best person to lead our College of Business. As we surveyed the growth of the college in the past few years, including the addition of three MBAs and various corporate training programs grounded in Nashville’s business community, it became apparent that we needed someone with exemplary skills at engaging community stakeholders,” Lowry said. “We quickly realized we had an outstanding leader with vision and energy in Turney Stevens.”
Stevens joined the Lipscomb faculty as executive-in-residence and assistant professor of business in December, after retiring from 35 years as an active member of Nashville’s business community in banking, publishing and printing.
“Turney has started businesses, funded businesses and grown businesses in his career. He has operational and transactional experience in the local and national markets. And he has collected all this experience while based in the Nashville business market,” Lowry said. “He brings a unique, first-hand perspective to our college faculty and students that no one else could, and his commitment to become a part of the success of Lipscomb University speaks highly of the institution and our students.”
Stevens moved from there to found a commercial printing company, formed from the acquisition of Williams Printing Co. That company grew to more than $240 million in revenues and facilities in 10 U.S. cities. In 2001, he co-founded the Harpeth Companies, a diversified investment banking and consulting company, which over the years has included various veteran professionals as advisory directors such as Winfield Dunn, former governor of Tennessee, and Jack Faris, former president of the National Federation of Independent Businesses. He retired from that company in October.
Stevens grew up literally two blocks from the Lipscomb campus in Green Hills. He attended David Lipscomb Campus School from kindergarten to high school graduation and then earned his bachelor’s in political science from Lipscomb in 1972. He went on to earn an MBA from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University in 1981.
For the past three months he has served as executive-in-residence at Lipscomb. In addition to his teaching duties, he has led several strategic planning efforts for the business college and the university as a whole. Stevens said he is excited to begin building on the strategic initiatives begun in the past year to maximize Lipscomb’s involvement on a global stage, on a national scale and certainly in the Nashville community
“The college currently offers business programs where students study on four different continents, an opportunity that is crucial for students in a world where business happens internationally and instantaneously. But many of those future businesspeople will be working locally, and our college will serve the Nashville market by providing quality academic degree programs and professional development such as certificate, continuing education and enrichment programs in business. I am looking forward to finding many new ways for our faculty to take on leadership roles in the local community,” Stevens said.
For example, in the coming months, Lipscomb’s business faculty will be providing ethics training for all the managers, in Nashville and Chicago, of a major international corporation, he said. The College of Business introduced Middle Tennessee’s first Green MBA concentration in sustainability last fall, and it is in the process of securing new faculty to lead the management program and a national search to fill the Hilton and Sallie Dean Chair of Accounting.
“We will be actively involved in bringing our strengths in the College of Business to all types of organizations. Among these strengths are a very strong faculty and a values-based approach to business informed by our long Christian heritage,” he said.
Stevens lives in Franklin with his wife Ann, a residential real estate broker at Bob Parks Realty. They have two sons, C.T., 23, who is a certified public accountant with Ernst and Young, and Mark, 19, who is a sophomore in the College of Engineering at Auburn University.