Research center gets new director

Jim Conover officially has become the new director of IU's Indiana Business Research Center, replacing Morton Marcus, who had led the center for more than 15 years.\nConover officially took over July 21. He was the director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at Northern Arizona University, where he was also a professor of marketing. \nAccording to an IU press release, in his former position, Conover helped shape the economic development strategy for the state of Arizona.\nConover said he was attracted to the strong reputation of the research center. \n"I chose to come here because IBRC has a strong reputation that's been built up for almost 80 years to provide good, quality, reliable information about the economic and population demographics," Conover said. "A lot of government agencies, companies and legislators rely on that information."\nMarcus said the research center is going to have some positive changes and strong leadership under Conover.\n"I have an economic background, while Conover has both psychology and marketing," Marcus said. "His style of management is going to be different from mine, and IBRC needs to have positive change, as marketing studies are more in demand in the market. Conover will have a new vision for IBRC on what we will achieve."\nMarcus, who is leaving IU officially in November, said he is going to spend his retirement helping the community.\n"I will continue working for publications," Marcus said. "The only difference is that I am free from administration responsibility."\nConover said he expects something more than what has been done by the research center in the past. He hopes to provide more services to individuals, businesses and organizations to help them make better choices. \n"I expect much of what we do in the future will build on what we have done in the past," Conover said. "We may pursue a different kind of work or situation in which our services could be useful." \nConover also said he hopes to provide products and services beyond the state of Indiana.\n"We have detailed info about population characteristics and economic characteristics at small geographic levels for the entire U.S., not just Indiana," Conover said. "There's a potentially large market of users for that sort of information in other states. We can help them geographically analyze the best prospects in terms of places to consider where they should locate going beyond Indiana."\nConover said he also expects to strengthen the research center's ability to benefit particular industries in Indiana.\nAlthough the business research center is part of the Kelley School of Business, there never has been much interaction between IBRC and the students of the business school.\n"We don't have much interaction with students, but it'll be nice to cultivate that over time," Conover said. "We do find students to work with us here as research assistants. Each year usually we have one or a few graduate assistants who might be MBAs or master students or Ph.D. students in other fields."\nConover said he would like to see more student involvement in the research center at both the undergraduate and graduate level.\n"I would like to bring in more students where appropriate," Conover said. "I think it will be an interesting experience for students, as well as giving them insight as to where they want to go into or not want to go into, especially if they are interested in research kind of work or graduate studies"