UAH's eminent scholar emeritus is still eminent (5/30/2007) | | |
 Phil Gentry, (256)824-6420 | Seven years after he retired, Dr. William Souder, the UAH business school's first eminent scholar in management, has been named one of the top five scholars in new product innovation research by the Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM). "This was a big surprise" said Souder. "It’s a nice accolade." For its 25th anniversary, the journal commissioned two articles that looked at the journal’s evolution, its impact and at the scholars who made the greatest contributions. Souder ranked fourth in both the number of articles published by JPIM and 13 other top academic journals (18) and the number of times those articles have been cited by other researchers (417 times). "The top five IM scholars," one author concluded, "are Michael Song, Robert Cooper, Roger Calantone, William Souder, and Elko Kleinschmidt." "I sort of just did what I did," Souder said. "I can’t say I had a grand strategy. Mainly, I had fun." Although he turned his attention to other research interests after he retired — first finding new ways to preserve rare stamps, books and other paper products, and later collecting letters written by Civil War soldiers — this latest honor has Souder thinking about what he might contribute to academia. "After I got over the absolute surprise of this, my next thought was, 'What am I to do about this? How can I help someone?’" he said. "There's got to be something I can give back, but I've been out of the loop for seven years. "I’m open to suggestions." Souder was appointed to UAH’s eminent scholar endowed chair in management in 1990. He retired in June 2000. Before coming to UAH he was on the faculties at Bradley University, Northwestern University and the University of Pittsburgh. He earned his M.B.A. and Ph.D. from St. Louis University. Before shifting careers, Souder spent several years in private industry. That included eleven years with Monsanto, where he created an operations research function. ("They didn’t know what that was, so I could talk them into anything.")
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