Anthony Hendrickson, PhD

Dr. Anthony Hendrickson is considered a radical in some corners of the academic world. Why? Because as he prepares young people for careers in business, he recognizes that businesses are his true customers.

As dean of Creighton University’s Heider College of Business, Hendrickson’s main goal is to become the number one school of business for business. My ambition is “not to get students through the next four years of college, but to prepare them for the next forty.”

A businessman turned educator and educational innovator, Hendrickson has significantly increased enrollment at the private university since his arrival in 2005. Under his leadership, Heider now extends the classroom into the workplace at every opportunity with a strong focus on applied “real world” learning. From etiquette dinners to mock interviews with actual employers, students are immersed in the world of business from day one.

Students may select from thousands of internships with companies such as Union Pacific Railroad, Cerner Corporation and Nike, Inc., and many complete two or three job stints before they get their degree. Notably, Heider College of Business has the only student-run campus Apple store where management is integrated into the business college’s curriculum.

This focus on work vs. theory pays off in consistently high placement rates for Heider students following graduation, averaging 97 percent in the past two years alone. Heider graduates have been hired by well-known companies such as Berkshire Hathaway Inc., TD Ameritrade, ConAgra Foods, Inc., Kiewit Corporation, Mutual of Omaha, Toyota Motor Corporation, Sony Corporation of America, Barclays PLC, Microsoft Corporation, Boeing Company, IBM, General Electric and many more.

According to Hendrickson, Heider grads hit the job market with skills employers need both today and in the future. “The number one complaint of most CEOs is that they can’t find enough people with all the professional and personal skills to be successful. We intend to fill the pipeline with strong applicants who can lead with knowledge, character and vision.”

Creighton University consistently ranks No. 1 in U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of Midwest Regional Universities and several Heider College of Business programs have ranked among the report’s best in the nation. Creighton University is also No. 1 in Washington Monthly’s Master’s Universities Rankings.

About

Education

Dean Hendrickson received his Ph.D. in Computer Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis from the University of Arkansas in 1994. Prior to joining Creighton University in 2005, Dr. Hendrickson was an associate professor at the College of Business at Iowa State University, where he served as Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Accenture Faculty Fellow from 2002 - 2005 and chair of the Department of Logistics, Operations, and Management Information Systems.

View Dr. Anthony R. Hendrickson’s Curriculum Vitae.

Other Experience

Dr. Hendrickson has always been a businessman first. Before becoming an educator, he spent a dozen years in a variety of consulting and executive roles with companies such as Arthur Andersen & Co (formerly Andersen Consulting and now Accenture), MNX, Inc. (now a subsidiary of Swift Transports), Booth Enterprises, Inc. and Sprint, Inc.

It was during his work with Sprint that Dr. Hendrickson’s wife asked, “What would you want to do if you won the lottery?” He surprised himself by saying he would want to return to college, earn a Ph.D. and become a college professor, which is exactly what he did.

Board Memberships

Dean Hendrickson sits on a number of business boards, including: Business Ethics Alliance Board of Trustees Governing Board; First Westroads Bank Board of Advisors and Grameen Bank of Omaha Board of Directors. Past board memberships include the Eurasian Business Center Board where he was chair from 2004 - 2009, and the Iowa Small Business Development Center State Advisory Board from 2003 until 2005.

Association Memberships

Dr. Hendrickson is a member of the Jesuit Colleges and Universities Business Deans, serving as president in 2012, as well as the Decision Sciences Institute, the Association for Computing Machinery and INFORMS. He is a charter member of the Association of Information Systems.

As dean of Creighton University’s Heider College of Business, Hendrickson regularly attends the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce meetings and other business-oriented functions within the community. He is an avid business networker, having personally met with more than 500 individual business leaders in the past year on behalf of Heider students.

Honors & Awards

Among his many accolades, Dean Hendrickson is a recipient of the Creighton University Distinguished Administrator Award. He has also received many prestigious grant awards throughout his academic career, attesting to his academic rigor and research acumen. Most recently, he was awarded more than half a million dollars from the National Science Foundation for an interdisciplinary, university-based education partnership.

Publications

Dr. Hendrickson has been published extensively in the areas of e-commerce, virtual teamwork, virtual collaboration, and virtual organizations.

Journal Contributions

Dr. Hendrickson is an associate editor for the European Journal of Information Systems. He also was a guest co-editor of a recent issue of International Journal of E-Commerce Service.

His research is published in leading journals including, MIS Quarterly, Decision Sciences, Information Systems Research, Communications of the ACM, Academy of Management Executive, Journal of International Business Studies, DATA BASE, International Journal of Electronic Markets, Computer Personnel, Computer & Society, The Journal of Computer Information Systems, Journal of International Information Management, and Journal of Labor Research, as well as in other journals and at numerous conferences.

A full list of Dr. Hendrickson’s journal contributions may be found in his Curriculum Vitae.

Papers

Dr. Hendrickson has co-authored several editorially reviewed and invited papers in publications such as the Journal of Jesuit Business Education and e-Service Journal.

A full list of Dr. Hendrickson’s editorially reviewed and invited papers may be found in his Curriculum Vitae.

Book Chapters

Dr. Hendrickson is co-author of several book chapters, most recently including Digital Media: Future Research Directions with Trent Wachner and Brook Hudson, Digital Product Management, Technology and Practice: Interdisciplinary Perspectives by Troy J. Strader (Editor): IGI Global, September 2010, pp. 225-234.

Media Resources

Dr. Hendrickson has been quoted in publications such as Bloomberg Businessweek, Chronicle of Higher Education’s Bottom Line Blog, Silicon Prairie News, Nebraska Entrepreneurship, Omaha.com and more.

Speaking Topics

Dr. Hendrickson is an expert speaker on a variety of topics, including:

Higher education
Business education
Business
Business intelligence and analytics
Big data
e-Commerce
Virtual teamwork
Virtual organizations
STEM careers with respect to the technology field

Please feel free to contact Dr. Hendrickson directly about his ability to speak to these and other topics.

Talking Points

As Dean of Creighton University’s Heider College of Business, Dr. Anthony Hendrickson thinks of himself as a businessman first and an academician second.
Dr. Hendrickson believes his business is preparing young people for careers in business; he sees businesses as his customers.
Dean Hendrickson envisions the Heider College of Business as the most connected college of business with business in the world.
An educational innovator, Dr. Hendrickson has significantly increased enrollment at the private university since his arrival in 2005.
Dean Hendrickson wants to prepare students for lifelong success by helping them understand how to apply what they’ve learned in school to the real world.
Under Dean Hendrickson’s leadership, Heider extends the classroom into the workplace at every opportunity with a strong focus on applied “real world” learning.
Heider students can select from thousands of internships, and many complete two or three internships before they even earn a degree.
A strong focus on work vs. theory pays off in consistently high placement rates for Heider students, averaging 97 percent in the past two years alone.
Heider graduates have been hired by well-known companies such as Berkshire Hathaway Inc., TD Ameritrade, ConAgra Foods, Inc., Kiewit Corporation, Mutual of Omaha, Toyota Motor Corporation, Sony Corporation of America, Barclays PLC, Microsoft Corporation, Boeing Company, IBM, General Electric and many more.
Creighton University consistently ranks No. 1 in U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of Midwest Regional Universities and several Heider College of Business programs have ranked among the report’s best in the nation. Creighton University is also No. 1 in Washington Monthly’s Master’s Universities Rankings.
Creighton University Heider College of Business is hot-wired for innovation, constantly testing and implementing new methodologies for applied learning and relevant curriculum.