Research associate professor brings passion for teamwork to Smith

                At a time when technology so drastically impacts everyday life, the importance of keeping up and infusing new ways of accessing information with business is vital, and it is the first thing on Dr. Joe Bailey's mind.

                "Engineers can come up with a solution, business people can come up with a solution, scientists can come up with a solution, but we get better solutions when the three different communities can work together," Bailey said.

                Smith school professor Bailey said he has been in school "his whole life," receiving his bachelors from Carnegie Mellon, his masters from Stanford and his Ph.D. from MIT, all in engineering. Even though he studied engineering, Bailey always knew he was going to do something other than design circuits, he said, and decided to study how the fields of business and engineering can work together.

                "When I was in undergraduate I had a double major with electrical engineering and engineering and public policy, and I recognized the value of infusing social science methodologies and questions about public policy in engineering," Bailey said.

                Bailey has worked for the Smith school now for 13 years, and he said he has "loved every minute of it."

                "One of the things I love about Maryland, is when I was on the job market, not every business school would consider me because my Ph.D. was not coming from business," Bailey said. "But we are very fortunate to have a collegial set of faculty around here and people who are very open minded. I'm very thankful for that."

                For the past two years he has been the executive director of the QUEST program. QUEST is an undergraduate honors program which brings together students from science, business and engineering and gets them to learn in teams. Students begin QUEST their sophomore year and take classes with the program along with the requirements for their majors.

                "When I had the chance to think about it, and to think about what I'm passionate about, I recognized that QUEST was everything I believed in in terms of trying to make sure that we have opportunities to learn by doing … by making sure that we think innovatively across disciplines, and the idea that teams can accomplish more than the sum of the individuals independently," Bailey said.

                Bailey, who is a self-proclaimed "geek," said he is most interested in the intersection of business and technology, specifically information systems.

                "I've been very interested in looking at how the internet can be used as an infrastructure and as a technology to promote market, change the nature of competition , the impact it has, the efficiency of markets … how information technology affects supply chains and operations," Bailey said.

                Bailey's favorite thing to do when he is away from work is to spend time with his wife, Wendy, his children Nicholas and Beatrice. Every summer, Bailey works on ascending the 46 high peaks of the Adirondacks with his brother-in-law. Right now, they have six, but hope to bring that number up to 12 this summer.

                "It's like a lot things, even with research, you just need to be slow and steady, and like the turtle of the fable, you'll ultimately persevere," Bailey said.