Business Schools Roland Rust Awarded University of Maryland's Highest Faculty Honor

College Park, Md. - January 9, 2008 - The University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business today announced that Roland Rust, David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing and marketing department chair at the Smith School, has been named distinguished university professor. The title is granted as a formal title of the highest distinction by the university president. It recognizes University of Maryland faculty who have earned exceptional merit nationally and internationally for the importance of their scholarly and creative achievements, contributions and service.

Professor Roland Rust is rightly honored with his advancement to the rank of distinguished university professor because of the extraordinary breadth of his scholarship, his innovation in research, and his extensive service contributions. His appointment brings honor to the title, said University of Maryland President C. D. Mote Jr.

"Roland is widely regarded as one of the worlds most creative and prolific marketing researchers. His influence on modern thought concerning service and the financial impact of marketing cannot be overemphasized," said Howard Frank, dean of the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. "I am very pleased that he has been selected for this highest of honors from the university."

Rust earned his PhD in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published extensively in top journals, such as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science and Management Science. He currently serves as editor of the Journal of Marketing. Rust has also published his work in strong practitioner-oriented journals, such as the Harvard Business Review.

Rust's work is highly regarded worldwide. He presents regularly at major marketing conferences internationally, and his models are applied by top companies worldwide. He is the founder and chair of the AMA Frontiers in Services Conference, the leading annual international conference on service research. In 1998, he founded what has become the premier research journal in the service domain, the Journal of Service Research.

Rust's book, "Driving Customer Equity", won the 2002 Berry-AMA Book Prize for the best marketing book of the previous three years. Rust has received six lifetime achievement honors and he has won numerous best article awards for work published in Journal of Marketing (three times), Journal of Marketing Research (twice), Marketing Science, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Advertising, andJournal of Retailing, and has received the Marketing Science Institutes Robert D. Buzzell Best Paper Award (twice).