Susan Brorson
Brorson to Serve as Department Head for Business at UMC
University of Minnesota, Crookston (UMC) officials have chosen Susan Brorson, Ph.D. and professor of business management, to serve as department head for the college’s Business Department.
Brorson holds a Ph.D. in educational leadership with a minor in research from the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, N.D. Her master’s degree in marketing education is also from UND. She completed her bachelor’s degree in distributive education at Minnesota State University, Moorhead.
Brorson joined the UMC faculty in the fall of 1977 as a business instructor and earned the rank of professor in 1997.
Most recently she has served as the program manager for the business management degree program. Her research interests have focused on technology enhanced learning, e-commerce, women’s entrepreneurship issues and rural economic development.
Excellence in teaching has been a hallmark of Brorson’s career at UMC. In the spring of 2003 she was honored by faculty peers and alumni with UMC’s Distinguished Teaching Award in recognition of her significant contributions to teaching. She had previously earned the same honor in 1986.
In addition to her teaching and advising responsibilities, Brorson has worked on a number of grant-funded research projects. In 1999 her proposal "Using Internet Based e-Commerce as a Strategic Business Tool" was funded through the University of Minnesota’s Technology Enhanced Learning Grant Program. Later that year and into 2000 she developed and managed a grant, "Emerging Women Entrepreneurs Program: Online Incubator and Portal," funded by the Ford Foundation and the Red River Trade Council. That grant built on Brorson’s previous work on a grant from the Ford Foundation, "Emerging Women Entrepreneurs Telecommunications Technology Project,” which helped regional entrepreneurs develop websites and marketing strategies for small businesses.
Recently, Brorson coauthored a grant funded by the University of Minnesota’s Council on Public Engagement (COPE) to support “Beyond the Numbers: Finding and Engaging Community Energy in Very Small Towns.” The interdisciplinary study involving business, agriculture, and the humanities proposes to identify success factors that make small communities and “community” (in the social sense) sustainable and successful in rural northwestern Minnesota.
In June of 2001 Women in Technology International (WITI) recognized Brorson for her contributions to the advancement of technology. An international organization, WITI was founded in 1989 to help provide access to and support from professional women working in all sectors of technology.
“Dr. Brorson’s distinguished career at UMC, her demonstrated excellence in teaching, and her interest in research and development of e-commerce as an economic development tool in rural Minnesota illustrate a commitment to new ways of thinking about business and education,” said UMC Chancellor Velmer S. Burton, Jr. “Her accomplishments and outlook will serve her well as the head of UMC’s Business Department.”
The announcement of department heads at UMC caps a six-month discussion of academic restructuring for the campus. The goal of the process, according to Chancellor Burton, was to take the current academic administrative structure and align it more closely to the kinds of structures one would see at other four-year colleges. Burton says the resulting structure at UMC more closely matches the one in place in departments at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus.
The five departments making up UMC’s new academic structure include the Agriculture Department; the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Department; the Business Department; the Math, Science and Technology Department; and the Natural Resources Department. David DeMuth, Jr., Ph.D. and associate professor of physics and math, was recently selected to serve as department head for the Math, Science and Technology Department; Ronald Del Vecchio, Ph.D. and professor of animal science, has been named department head for the Agriculture Department; and Sharon Neet, D.A. and professor of history, was chosen department head for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Department. The name of the head for the Natural Resources Department will be announced subsequently.
UMC’s Business Department includes bachelor’s degree programs in accounting; business management with emphases in management, marketing, entrepreneurship, and business aviation; hotel, restaurant and institutional management; and sport and recreation management. The discipline of economics is also included in the department, as is the bachelor of manufacturing management degree program, which offers the unique feature of on-site educational programming at regional manufacturing plants, such as Marvin Windows and Doors, and at technical and community colleges in the Twin Cities metro area.
Posted 05/20/2004
Contact: Andrew Svec,
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