Professor gets spot on advisory board

UTPB professor Leslie Toombs has been elected to the West Texas Coalition for Innovation and Commercialization Advisory Board.

Toombs holds the Pinkie Roden Chair of Entrepreneurship and is a professor of management at the university. She has supervised MBA capstone classes on campus where students worked with inventors to determine whether their projects could become marketable ideas.

The coalition chooses candidates from West Texas as potential recipients of Texas Emerging Technology Funds. During quarterly meetings, Toombs and other coalition advisers will be screening applications, looking for inventions that can be turned into marketable products in the energy industry.

Toombs has authored numerous articles and case studies in professional journals. Recently, she and her co-authors received the McGraw-Hill Irwin Distinguished Paper Award for a paper to be presented at the 2010 Southwest Case Research Association Conference.  Among the offices she holds is proceedings editor for The Academy of Management and vice president of publications for the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship

Toombs said she is honored to have the chance to work with people from area industries.