Yesterday, people of many communities came to St. Simons Presbyterian Church to celebrate the life of Reg Murphy. His personal story is filled with many places including the Atlanta Constitution, the San Francisco Examiner, the Baltimore Sun, the National Geographic Society, the United States Golf Association just to name a few. While humble and quiet, yet thoughtful, Reg’s impact on the world was that of a giant.
Reg and I met in 2012 when he was named the inaugural Brown Family Executive-in-Residence in the School of Business and Public Management at the College of Coastal Georgia. As Executive-in-Residence, Reg held office hours, met with students, participated in classes, joined faculty meetings, and met with anyone who dropped by. He gave of his time generously, always without question.
Truth be told, I was more than a frequent visitor to Reg’s office. Little did I understand and appreciate at the time Reg’s influence as Executive-in-Residence. Quite simply, he transformed us. One my visits with him was significant in the development of the School of Business and Public Management into a unit of the College that is of Brunswick compared to one that is simply located here – from being inward-focused to being community-focused. I want to tell you about this visit and our conversation.
In the fall of 2017, Don Mathews completed a study of the local economy focused on its experience in the Great Recession of 2007 to 2014. According to the data, our part of the world entered the recession first compared to the rest of the country. In addition, we were the last to exit it. If you do the math, the Golden Isles was that part of the country in recession the longest.
During this visit, Reg and I discussed these findings. He asked two questions. The first was what media outlet was available to us to get these findings out? Reg felt this research was so important that it needed to be circulated among the public. Several days later, I talked to Don about a media outlet. He suggested an article for the Brunswick News as he had been thinking about doing a weekly column. I said that such a column was a lot of work for one person and suggested that the College’s three economists – Don, Melissa Trussell, and I, – share the writing by having each of us take a week. This is how the Wednesday column in the Brunswick News – ‘From the Murphy Center’ – came about. It is the primary product of the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies at the College. To date, 370 articles have been written for our community, all from an interdisciplinary group of seven academics. Nowhere in the United States will you find such a thing in a local paper running for over 7 years.
Reg’s second question was why was our local recessionary experience so long? What made recovery so difficult? Together, we felt that the local economy was relatively stagnate, lacking something driving change and creativity, the hallmarks of a healthy and vibrant economy. We discussed a possible lack of a culture of entrepreneurship in our community and among our students. In time, this question has led to the building of an entrepreneurial ecosystem for the Golden Isles. Now seen in the Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship, programs focused on the development of area entrepreneurs have touched over 700 residents and students in the past three years. No other center supporting entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship can claim such an impact.
Edward Norton Lorenz, a mathematician and meteorologist, developed the notion of the Butterfly Effect. This is the idea that in complex and interrelated systems like the climate, the flap of a butterfly’s wings in one corner of the world could cause a tornado elsewhere in the world weeks later. This captures the impact of this one conversation with Reg. This conversation was the impetus ultimately leading to the creation of two unique ventures found in the School of Business and Public Management and the College: the Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies and the Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship. Due to one simple conversation, our School, College and community will never be the same. Thank you, Reg.
Dr. Skip Mounts is a Professor of Economics and the Dean of the School of Business and Public Management at the College of Coastal Georgia. He is also an associate of the Reg Murphy Center for Policies Studies and the Art and Lindee Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship.
Reg Murphy Center