Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business landed another nationally recognized scholar when Anthony Sanders, a professor of finance at Ohio State University, signed a contract to join ASU's ramped-up MBA program in real estate.
"It was an easy decision for me, because ASU is on a growth plan in terms of academic quality," said Sanders from his home in Columbus, Ohio. "The school is making great strides under President (Michael) Crow and Dean (Robert) Mittelstaedt."
Sanders will join longtime friend and professional colleague Crocker Liu, who came to ASU last summer after the business school and local industry leaders considered how to increase the quality of real estate education there.
Liu, previously a professor at New York University, is renowned in real estate academic circles. He and David Yermack, also from NYU, recently were featured in BusinessWeek magazine for research they conducted into how some chief executives purchased multimillion-dollar personal residences, in many cases through complicated and questionable stock deals.
"I've known Crocker for many years. He has a reputation for being one of the top people in the field of real estate in the world," Sanders said. "We complement each other and make a nice blend." Sanders and his family will move to the Phoenix area in July. His addition to the faculty adds momentum and credibility that began with persuading Liu to join ASU last summer. It was quite a coup for the university, which until then did not have a graduate program with a real estate emphasis. Now it has two.
Liu heads up the MBA real estate program, which emphasizes high-level real estate financing activity, institutional in¬vestments, capital markets and the emerging field of housing futures. The master's in real estate development program, in contrast, is an interdisciplinary program developed as a collaboration of the College of Design, the Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law and the Del E. Webb School of Construction.
"Our idea within the School of Business is to deliver real depth. Real estate joined with finance," said Jeff Coles, department chairman and professor of finance with the W.P. Carey School of Business. "We're aspiring to hire the very best faculty"
Liu, who also has a reputation for candor and humor, had been at NYU for 18 years when the academic environment there began to change.
"The new administration did not feel real estate was an academic discipline. The (new) dean's words to me were, 'Why should we give you money?" Liu said.
The veteran professor was stunned by the dean's attitude.
"It's a little odd when you look at most business schools and they're named after a real estate guy," Liu said.
An entirely different scenario was playing out at ASU. The business school, with input from local real estate heavyweights such as Steve Evans and Jeff Covill, was making plans to revise the real estate curriculum. The undergraduate real estate program was moved to the Morrison School of Management at the ASU Polytechnic campus, and heavier emphasis was placed on the real estate graduate program. Liu was selected from an elite crop of five candidates to lead it.
"He's been a broker. He's worked on Wall Street. He has the academics," Coles said. "Crocker is the single most prominently cited expert on the investment side."
Another impressive entry on his résumé: He's the co-editor of the Journal of Real Estate Economics, one of the foremost scholarly research publications in the world. He also sits on the boards of several other industry journals.
NYU's loss was ASU's gain. "I wanted to be at a school with a good reputation and a place where I could make a difference," Liu said.
He also wanted to direct a program with a strong emphasis on finance, and where he could exercise a certain autonomy.
"Bob Mittelstaedt bought into the concept. So did Jeff Coles, and so did the president," Liu said. Sanders, whose research and teaching focuses on investments, has served as a consultant to firms including Merrill Lynch, UBS, Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank. He also has served as an expert witness on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice and others on fixed-income valuation and risk management.
He has received six teaching awards and three research awards. Recently, he gave presentations in Frankfurt, Paris and Geneva on the subject of the housing bubble in the U.S. and the mortgage market. In addition to building ASU's real estate MBA into a nationally acclaimed degree program, Liu is creating the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice, which will develop and circulate databases and sophisticated real estate research to the local, state and global business communities.
"You have to give back to the industry in order to get them to buy into the concept," Liu said. "We're funding (the center) through donations, but we need more donors."
Coles agreed that the challenge of distinguishing the real estate program within a short time frame can be frustrating, but he said the addition of yet another big name in real estate academics — a name he will not reveal yet — will help build ASU's real estate MBA brand.
"It takes more than a year to cobble together a great program," Coles said. "It will take a while to do it, but we're in it for the long run."
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