Professor Tom Speh has announced his plans to slow down this spring after more than 37 years in the classroom. Speh is a very special member of the Miami Tribe, and one that we need to try and duplicate over and over. I have been working with Roger Jenkins, Farmer's dean and Kirk Bogard of the Alumni Office to generate support for a tribute to Tom's great career and contributions at Miami University.
For those of you who sat in one of Speh's courses, you already know how special he is in the classroom. His last day of the semester lecture-on life's lessons-is for many students the best 50 minutes they ever spent in a classroom. Having Speh at Miami for all these years has been special. As a former industrial marketing and physical distribution business student from the early 1980s, I would put him in the same league as Wally Szczerbiak or Ben Roethlisberger.
Speh's career outside the classroom has been just as impressive. He is the only individual to have been president of both the Council of Supply Chain Management and the Warehousing Education and Research Council. Highlighting his career are his numerous accomplishments: Speh was invited to be part of a four-person academic advisory group for McDonalds as the company totally revamped its supply chain, as well as his work in other areas having resulted in the production of the Logistics Toolkit, which has been distributed to many universities around the world to be used in introductory marketing classes to teach the segment on logistics principles.
Speh has also had a global impact, and has been invited to speak on logistics and supply chain management in 18 countries around the world. In 2006, Speh was invited to serve on a 35-member advisory & communications board for the BestLog project, which was commissioned by the European Commission's Directorate General Transport and Energy-Speh is the only U.S. representative.
Heavily impacting the marketing field, Speh and colleague Mike Hutt published the first edition of the Industrial Marketing text in 1980. This edition was the market leader in its first year. The text-now in its ninth edition-is now called Business to Business Marketing. Every edition has captured over 50 percent of the market. The book is used in numerous foreign countries, including many European countries, Japan, China and India and has been translated into several different languages.
In my opinion, he is second in Miami professor prestige only to William Holmes McGuffey of McGuffey Reader fame. He is known throughout the physical distribution, logistics and supply chain global community as the academic standard for industry.
In terms of curriculum development, Speh played a leading role in revising the Miami MBA curriculum in 1980 and served as assistant dean to implement the new program in 1981. As associate dean from 2002 to 2004, Speh played the leadership role out of the dean's office to revamp the MBA program.
Speh led the team to develop the supply chain minor and major during a four-year span from 1998 to 2002. He created and then taught a new course, supply chain management Seminar, MKT/MGT 498, the first new course created from the Supply Chain Management major and minor curriculum.
Speh has won several university (Alumni Association Effective Educator Award) and Business School-wide teaching awards. He has also been nominated for the Alumni Association's Effective Educator Award in 13 different years with over 20 total nominations.
Tom's teaching evaluations have almost always ranged between 3.5 and 4.0 (on a four-point scale). His average over 33 years of teaching is around 3.75. At the same time, his GPA has averaged between 2.3 and 2.8, with an overall average of 2.6 on a 4.0 scale.
An active volunteer, Speh helps in various efforts in the Oxford community and with students. At Miami, Tom has been adviser to many, many student organizations and one fraternity. Tom has worked with the Athletic Department over the years in many capacities. In Oxford, Tom is currently the chair of the Board of Trustees of McCullough Hyde Memorial Hospital, and has served on the board for the past five years. Speh is also on the board of Habitat for Humanity in Oxford.
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These are just some of the highlights of the career of one of Miami's greatest. I think you can see Tom Speh is a very special member of the Miami Tribe. If there was ever a Miami professor who deserved the permanent recognition associated with an endowed chair in his name, it is Tom Speh. I will be making a contribution to this legacy effort to support Miami and would encourage your readers to also consider making a meaningful gift to the Tom Speh assistant professor chair of the Farmer School of Business through The Miami University Campaign For Love and Honor by going to: www.forloveandhonor.org/tomspeh.
Gregory C. Wagner '84 ALumnus gwagner@ppg.com
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