Neuhaus Center for Entrepreneurship and Economic Education

The University of Texas – Pan American

Annual Report of Activities 2000-2001  

This report includes a statement of activities of the Neuhaus Endowment as well as a financial account of the Center’s activities.  We are happy to report that the National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) awarded the Center on July 26^th 2001, a full-five year re-accreditation for its outstanding performance over the last three years (please see attachment 1).  In addition, we have assembled a working paper series to better disseminate economic development and entrepreneurship issues among members of the business and academic communities.  These and other new projects will continue during the next year as noted below. We also provide here an assessment of our activities for the purpose of providing recommendations for the continuous improvement of the Neuhaus Center.

Administrative

The National Council on Economic Education Center Review.  We prepared a report of Neuhaus activities as requested by the NCEE for its 3-year activities.  Upon reviewing the Neuhaus’ report, the NCEE reaccredited the Center a full five-year affiliation status, which according to the Council, is “the highest level of recognition for a Center”. The Center will be recognized and presented a Certificate of Affiliation at the NCEE’s Annual Conference Awards Banquet on October 25^th in Chicago IL at the NCEE’s Annual National Meeting.

Development of the Neuhaus Center Website.  The Center undertook the project of redesigning the entire website including graphics, text changes and new menu links.  A special emphasis was placed on developing an easy-to-access working paper series.  This website can be found at http://www.coba.panam.edu/neuhaus/

Meetings

As part of the administrative activitiesof the Neuhaus Center, the Chair attended two national and three in -state meetings. These meetings serve to foster closer relationships among Economic Education and Research Centers in the United States and Texas, ties that are important to enhance the quality of the activities to the Center. The meetings' date and location were the following:

• Center Directors Meeting – Houston, May 2001*

•  Meeting with President of TCEE – Houston, May 2001

• Kansas City – Seminar on “Financial Fitness For Life” on March 2001 *

• 2000 National Council Meeting - Savannah, Georgia on October 2000*

• Meeting with TCEE executive board – August 2001 *

*  Travel and lodging expenditures for these meetings were covered by the TCEE as well as the

NCEE.

Education / Community Service

• Company Program.  The Neuhaus Center contributed $600 to the Company Program at Edinburg Career Center for the purpose of developing a program for special education students.  These students developed a business plan and marketing agenda with the assistance of two students from our Entrepreneurial Finance course taught at UTPA Spring 2001.

• Junior Achievement’s “Done in a Day”.  Hargill middle school students were instructed by University students on economic and entrepreneurship principles on March 2001. The Chair coordinated the program under the guidance of Junior Achievement.  In addition, the Chair and Erika Méndez, a Ph.D. student at UT-Pan American, recruited undergraduate students as assistants to conduct the program. The students created ten student-made companies, each of which contained a normal business organization (President, Finance department, Marketing and Sales Department, Human Resources Department, Production Department).  The students also learned to make business plans, market surveys, production and cost simulations, and corporate bank accounts.

• GLOBE.  In conjunction with Junior Achievement, the Neuhaus Center continued to coordinate the implementation of the “Global Learning of Business Enterprise” (G.L.O.B.E.) program between a local high school and one in Tampico, Mexico.  GLOBE is a high school and/or college program that teaches the value of international trade and the skills necessary to function in a global market.  The primary objective is for U.S. and foreign students to develop an understanding of international economics and finance principles through a real world experiential activity.  Namely, students start and run their own business in partnerships with students in another country (in this case, Mexico).  Students then import and export products to each other and in the process make capitalization, marketing and financing decisions that take place when operating a “real-life” international business.  The program was funded through an MCI grant to Junior Achievement and supplemented with Neuhaus funds.

• Economic Education Curriculum Mini-Seminars. The Chair, along with the TCEE and Junior Achievement officer, conducted two curriculum seminars, one for the directors of Edinburg North High School in November 2000 and the other for the Business Department faculty members at La Joya High School in August 2000. The purpose of these seminars was to outline the benefits of economic education to the respective high schools.

• Translations.  With a $5,000 grant from The National Institute for Consumer Education Academic Affairs (NICE), the Neuhaus Chair translated units from English to Mexican Spanish for use in Texas classrooms for the following grades:

• 1 Grades K-2 Language Arts unit

• 1 Grades K-2 Math unit

With the assistance of Sofia Ayala and Adriana Arnaut, the material was sent to the TCEE for review and approval. 

• Seminar on Economic Education. Held on October 2000 in Brownsville, the seminar, “Integration of Economics Strand into Social Studies Curriculum,” provided materials to teachers of all academic disciplines and grade levels for the purpose of expanding and improving the methodology used in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) to teach economic concepts.  The seminar had 40 participants.

• Edinburg UPS- Sponsored Workshop.  The Center received a $4,000 grant from the UPS Foundation (co-sponsored with Junior Achievement) to conduct a workshop for 20 middle school and high school teachers on economic principles.  This workshop was conducted June 2001.

• Economic Education Workshop.  On August 16, 2001, a one-day economic education workshop was conducted for 40 middle school and high school teachers at Del Rio High School.

• Mini-Society Workshop.  Organized by the Neuhaus Center and co-sponsored by the TCEE and The Kauffman Foundation, the Mini-Society workshop was conducted to train Valley elementary school teachers as a means to integrate entrepreneurship principles into the elementary school curriculum. This program was created by Dr. Marilyn Kourilsky and is designed to teach entrepreneurship to children through experiences, role-playing and instruction.  Specifically, the Neuhaus Center coordinated and supported this 3-day event, from July 10^th to the 12^th, 2001. Approximately $6,000 in materials, which were donated to the Neuhaus Center by the Kauffman Foundation, were distributed to the 80 teachers who attended the workshop.  In addition, the Kauffman Foundation grant also helped finance this activity by providing stipends of $150 per teacher ($12,000). 

Invited Speakers

Kansas State University Finance Professors.  The Neuhaus Center partially funded the visit of Drs. Robert and Bonnie Van Ness, Professors of Finance from Kansas State University, to give a seminar on publication strategies to PhD students who have a Finance concentration field.

Iowa Electronic Market.  The Neuhaus Center organized a seminar presented by the Associate Dean of Business from the University of Iowa to College of Business Administration (funded by a grant to the University of Iowa from NASDAQ).

Research

            To emphasize basic research activities pertaining to business issues along the US/Mexico border, the Chair advised and collaborated on a series of research projects[1] this past academic year:

• The Chair supervised Sofia Ayala’s undergraduate honors thesis, “The Impact of Mexican Economic Shocks Along the Texas-Mexico Border: A Comparative Analysis of Selected Cities in Four Border Counties for the Period of 1986-1999”.  This paper investigates how responsive the retail trade industry is to Mexican economic shocks, by taking into account the economic structure of the four major Texas-Mexico border cities: Brownsville, Laredo, El Paso and McAllen and their retail trade linkages to the Mexican economy.

• The Chair supervised the “Economic Impacts of NAFTA and Transfer Pricing Legislation Along the U.S. – Mexico Border” by doctoral student Alton Cook.  This dissertation analyzes the impact of the NAFTA on the United States as well as on U.S. states bordering with Mexico. A working paper on the primary results of the study will be submitted this fall to World Development.

•   Dr. Dávila and Dr. Marie T. Mora, Associate Professor at the Department of Economics and International Business at the New Mexico State University, revised and resubmitted “The Scholastic Progress of Students with Entrepreneurial Parents,” to Economics of Education Review in May 2001 and submitted “English-Language Skills and the Earnings of Self-Employed Immigrants to the U.S.” to Industrial Relations.

• The Chair and Dr. Gocke Soydemir continued the development of a forecasting model with the purpose of better understanding the small business sector of the RGV.  This study develops a model that helps identify causal linkages between the Texas economy, as measured by retail sales, and the U.S. and Mexican macroeconomies, for the period 1980:01-1999:12.

• Border Patrol Economic Impact.  The Chair, in collaboration with Adriana Arnaut, Sofia Ayala, and Dr. Lee Maril researched and provided an “Analysis on the Economic and Social Impacts of Constructing the Border Patrol Sector Headquarters and Station Buildings in a Community in the Rio Grande Valley”.   A presentation was developed highlighting the primary findings of this research that was presented by McAllen Station Patrol Agent in Charge, Jorge A. Garza on August 1, 2001 to community and business members of several RGV cities. The Chair and Dr. Maril were present at this presentation and the Border Patrol acknowledged the Neuhaus Center for this study.

• The Neuhaus Center conducted a study entitled “Self-Employment and Homeownership: A Cross-Sectional and Time Series Analysis,” to explore the association between self-employment and the housing decision.  Fifty residents of Edinburg, TX and the USDA recognized colonia of “Villa del Sol”, located outside the city limits, were interviewed to represent both urban and rural communities respectively.  The results present a positive expectation of individuals to the idea that being self-employed allows easier maintenance and development of one’s household.  These analyses are expected to provide important information on the housing acquisition determinants of ethnic minorities, particularly Hispanics. The study also generated policy recommendations to better coordinate the self-employment and housing acquisition social objectives of seemingly unrelated programs.  Employing the national data set provided by the American Housing Survey, Dr. Alberto Dávila and Erika Mendez prepared a working paper “Entrepreneurship and Housing” to be submitted to Applied Economics Letters this fall.

Assessment

            For the purpose of continues improvement, we surveyed the entrepreneurship centers of the top 13 universities in the United States.  This assessment yielded several recommendations that our Center will address this coming year:

•  We should increase student resources and entrepreneurship curriculum. 

Action Plan:  The Chair plans to survey the Kauffman Foundation for this purpose.

• The Center should have an advisory board to guide and monitor the program.

Action Plan:  The Chair will seek nominations from the COBA faculty and dean and will form this board in the fall.  Initial board meetings will start in the Spring 2002.

• The Center should continue to promote channels by which students can interact with the business community.

Action Plan:  The Chair will coordinate internship opportunities with Victor Huerta and University representatives for students who minor in entrepreneurship.

• The Center should continue to encourage students to participate in applied research.

Action Plan:  The Chair will coordinate with faculty teaching entrepreneurship courses a series of applied and experiential research projects for entrepreneurship students to undertake.

 Outlook

            We expect to have another full year of activities this academic year in the aforementioned categories.  With regards to economic and entrepreneurship education, the Center will continue to have the Mini-Society program with the Kauffman Foundation, will participate with the TCEE in education and financial programs funded by a Bank of America grant to the TCEE, and will continue to collaborate with Junior Achievement on programs to foster the economic and entrepreneurship literacy of our community. We will also continue our applied research efforts in the area of economic development along the U.S.-Mexico border, and we will further pursue basic research with the aim at understanding the entrepreneurs of our region. A special emphasis will be placed on disseminating this information to the business and academic communities.