September 25, 2013

Collins named business school’s first Ruane Endowed Chair

Cary Collins
Dr. M. Cary Collins, professor of finance and Michael A. Ruane Endowed Chair for Innovation in Business Education

By Vicki-Ann Downing

Dr. M. Cary Collins, professor of finance, has joined the School of Business faculty as the first Michael A. Ruane Endowed Chair for Innovation in Business Education.

The Ruane professorsh ip, the College’s second endowed chair, was made possible by a donation from Michael A. Ruane ’71 & ’13Hon. and his wife, Elizabeth. Ruane retired from the PC Board of Trustees this year after serving as chair since 2002.

In addition to teaching two courses in the fall semester and one in the spring, Collins will direct the newly established Business Education Innovation Center.

Dr. Sylvia Maxfield, business school dean, said the center will work with the Center for Teaching Excellence to curate and showcase best teaching practices. It will present awards each year to professors who demonstrate outstanding classroom innovation and will host an annual conference on teaching innovation, among other activities. Programming will begin this fall.

Collins worked for the past six years at Bryant University, where he was associate professor of finance, trustee professor of entrepreneurship, and director of the Global Entrepreneurship Program. He has an M.B.A. in finance from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a Ph.D. in business administration with a major in finance from the University of Georgia.

Collins said he is excited to join “a world-class faculty” at PC at a time when the newly accredited business school is growing.

“I’m lucky to be joining the faculty here, although it appears I’m a little late to the party,” said Collins. “You’ve been turning out great leaders at Providence College for almost 100 years.”

Collins, who is a Texan, was a faculty member at the University of Tennessee and later held an endowed professorship. He also founded, and later sold, a software and consulting company that provided statistical programming to financial institutions for fair lending analysis.

At Bryant, he established the school’s first entrepreneurship program. Under his leadership, both a concentration and a minor in entrepreneurship were implemented, and a social entrepreneurship concentration was established in the College of Arts and Sciences.