LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – Mark Griffin and David Alderson founded the Alderson & Griffin Center for Family Business and Entrepreneurship, which partnered with Texas Tech’s Davis College and the National Ranching Heritage Center this year on a new initiative focused on agri-business.
Griffin said the center works to connect the business world with the academic side of the Davis College.
“We are a natural extension from business back to the academic side at the Davis College to provide insight, more real-world type experience and information,” Griffin said.
Alderson said the collaboration extended across multiple areas of the university.
“Today’s event was a great thing of collaboration within Texas Tech. The Alderson & Griffin Center is housed in the Rawls College of Business, but we have family businesses and entrepreneurs in engineering, ranch management, all across architecture,” Alderson said.
New literature focuses on ranching families
This year’s focus was new literature. The Rawls and Davis colleges worked with the Ranching Heritage Museum to create a book to guide ranching families on how to keep their livelihood viable for generations. The project’s motto is “keeping the ranch in the family, and the family in the ranch.”
Jim Bret Campbell, director of the National Ranching Heritage Center, described the collaboration.
“Our job really was to work with the ranching families, first to identify the need. And we have, you know, a tremendous number of ranches that will be passing to future generations in the coming years. So, identifying that need, but then working with collaborators and riders all across campus to really bring solutions. And that is culminating in the Families and Ranching Succession Toolkit,” Campbell said.
New class to accompany book
Along with the book comes a new class. Anish Quenim, director for the Rawls College, shared how he hopes the project will affect families across the nation.
“But more than that, this also progresses to the launch of a class called First, which is being built for families in ranching, which they can take from anywhere in the world. And then from here, we wish to engage with them through a professional development series to continue to assess the ranching families to succeed the ranch to the next generation successfully,” Quenim said.
Quenim came to Texas Tech from India. He said international agriculture is close to his heart and was part of his motivation for the project.
“And I think it was a natural fit for me to come to America to share this message of broader impact. And if we can go back home and every year to have our family meeting and celebrate the success of our family but also celebrate the success of other families that we could help through the center, I think it’s a natural fit for us to go home with a great blessing,” Quenim said.
You can access the book and the class at Texas Tech Press.
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