McGuire Center Names First Academic Director
The McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship is pleased to announce that Senior Lecturer Carlos J. Alsua has been appointed as the McGuire Center’s first Academic Director.
“It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. Alsua into his new role as Academic Director of the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship,” said McGuire Center Executive Director Joseph P. Broschak. “His international background and teaching and research interests complement our mission of being a global leader in entrepreneurship education and research. He has been a wonderful resource for our students in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Initiative and will continue to be a great asset to the McGuire Center in this new and expanded role.”
Academic Director is a newly created position in the McGuire Center with responsibilities for directing the McGuire Entrepreneurship Program, coordinating the McGuire Center’s academic offerings across undergraduate, MBA, and PhD platforms and programs, and developing new academic courses and programs. Dr. Alsua is excited about the opportunity to grow the McGuire Center’s academic offerings and expand its reach and reputation globally.
“I am very excited about the opportunity to serve the students and the community through this position,” he said. “It is a labor of love, indeed, to work towards helping McGuire continue to be a national and a global reference for teaching of innovation and entrepreneurship”
Dr. Alsua is well positioned to help the McGuire Center expand globally, not only because he is bilingual in English and Spanish, fluent in Portuguese and French, and has a working knowledge of several other languages. His research and teaching interests focus on global entrepreneurship and innovation, cross-cultural management and leadership, global ethics, motivation in an international context, and the implementation of managerial practices and entrepreneurship in developing economies.
Prior to joining the McGuire Center in 2014 as Senior Lecturer, International Management and Global Entrepreneurship, Dr. Alsua was a Professor at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez Business School in Chile, consistently ranked among the top three business schools in Latin America. He was also a tenured faculty member at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and has been a visiting professor and lecturer in Asia, Europe, Latin America, Russia, and at universities across the United States. His research has been published in academic and practitioner journals and presented in numerous national and international conferences. He is currently working on collaborative global entrepreneurship education projects with several other international universities.
“International reputation and global exposure is essential these days to continue to be a prestigious player,” Dr. Alsua said, noting that U.S. News and World Report most recently ranked the McGuire Center #3 among public undergraduate programs and #5 among public graduate programs nationwide. “We owe it to our students and to our community to continue to be a leader in innovation education, and to become a global referent when people think of entrepreneurship education. This will help us attract more talent to the University of Arizona and better a quality of ideas to our community."
In addition to serving as the McGuire Center’s Academic Director, Dr. Alsua will continue as Senior Lecturer and will teach Global Social Entrepreneurship in the Online MBA program, as well ENTR 485, a course which enrolls 700-800 students each year and fulfills the Eller College of Management’s strategic objective that every student in the undergraduate business program graduate with transferable knowledge and skills in innovation and entrepreneurship.
“With Dr. Alsua serving as Academic Director, we are confident the McGuire Center will be able to expand its academic reach and bring quality experiential entrepreneurship education and opportunities to more students at the University of Arizona and worldwide,” said Dr. Broschak.