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October 04, 2021

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Legacies live on Two pioneering giants of Black business academics leave us By Michael Verchot, director, Consulting and Business Development Center

By Michael Verchot, director, Consulting and Business Development Center

Business education lost two pioneering giants when Dr. Thaddeus Spratlen of the University of Washington and Dr. Jerome Williams of Rutgers University-Newark died earlier this year.

Nowhere is their greatness and impact more vividly displayed than in the Williams-Qualls-Spratlen Multicultural Mentoring Award of Excellence. Given annually by the American Marketing Association Foundation, the award is the nation’s premier honor for mentors of people of color in the academic marketing community. Together with William Qualls of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Spratlen and Williams form the award’s cornerstones.

Their achievements span the spectrum of academic leadership. They opened the door, as two of the first African Americans to obtain Ph.D. degrees in marketing and professorships in the field at mainstream universities. Their research in marketing — focusing on African American business — totaled more than 125 scholarly articles, plus books, chapters, speeches and other contributions. They mentored many other people of color, enabling them to follow in marketing and other business disciplines.

Spratlen, who died in May at age 90, obtained his Ph.D. from Ohio State University and began his academic career at Western Washington University in 1961. After eight years at WWU and three more at the University of California, Los Angeles, he came to the University of Washington Michael G. Foster School of Business in 1972.

Williams, who died in January at age 74, received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Colorado in 1986. He came to Rutgers in 2010, having previously held chairs at Howard University, Penn State University and The University of Texas.

Along the way and through the decades, Spratlen and Williams diversified and enriched business knowledge and opportunity in universities and communities across the country. Their legacies will live long — with widespread effects.

“Thad’s tremendous impact on students and faculty is only surpassed by his impact on society,” said Frank Hodge, Orin and Janet Smith endowed dean of the UW Foster School of Business. “His work to help economically challenged communities of color thrive and prosper is exemplary and perfectly embodies the Foster School’s purpose of bettering humanity through business.”

Williams “was a leader in his field of marketing and renowned across the universe of business schools as an innovator and advocate regarding the urgency of diversifying the professoriate,” said Nancy Cantor, chancellor of Rutgers University-Newark, in a statement at the time of his death. “Indeed, his impact on every level will reverberate for many years to come, as surely as his warmth, wisdom, care and humor will reverberate among all who knew him.”

Spratlen was co-founder and guiding spirit of the UW Consulting and Business Development Center. The center pairs student consulting teams with minority business owners in economically underdeveloped areas. Over 26 years, the center has grown exponentially and inspired similar programs at universities nationwide.

At Rutgers University-Newark, Williams served as research director at The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development, which accelerates the growth of people of color-owned businesses in Newark and beyond. He also held the Prudential Chair in Business and was executive vice chancellor and provost of Rutgers University-Newark. He also held national leadership positions at the American Marketing Association.

The legacies of Spratlen and Williams live on in many ways, most notably through The PhD Project™ which they and others founded in 1994. Since its inception, this organization has supported 1,200 underrepresented minority students to earn their doctoral degrees in business and through them, Spratlen and Williams will continue to change business education across the nation.