Pacific Lutheran University Provost Patrician O’Connell announced last week that James Brock, 63, has been named dean of the School of Business.

Brock served 11 years as dean of the Sigmund Weis School of Business at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania, and stepped down last year to return to teaching. From 1991 to 1996 he was vice president of marketing at Pacific Steel & Recycling, a Great Falls, Mont., steel and distribution company, the university said in a press release.

Beginning in 1987 and serving five years, Brock was dean of the business school at Montana State University. Before that he was marketing professor at Montana State for seven years, and held academic posts at Oakland University in Michigan and at Michigan State University.

He earned his Ph.D. in Marketing from Michigan State University; his MBA at San Francisco State University; and his bachelor's degree in marketing from University of California Berkeley.

Brock has authored articles for scholarly journals and has presented numerous conference papers, the university said. Most recently, he and a Chinese co-author submitted an article for publication on awareness and redemption behavior with respect to credit card reward programs.

Brock succeeds William Frame, who has served as interim dean of the school since September.

Brock is traveling in China this spring, and will take his new position in August.

The former Pierce County ferry M/V Steilacoom moved to a new moorage on the Foss Waterway today where it will serve as a floating showroom for the Point Ruston development near Point Defiance Park.

Point Ruston developer Mike Cohen said he plans to open the ferry to the public beginning in mid-April when a Tacoma condominium show is scheduled. The moorage is adjacent to Johnnie's Seafood retail store on the west side of the waterway just north of South 15th Street.

M/V Steilacoom being modified as a condo showroom

Cohen bought the ferry from a man who bought the 72-year-old boat on Ebay from Pierce County. Cohen has had the ferry refitted as a sales office and showroom for his development on the former Asarco smelter site.

Cohen said he expects to get the final permits to begin construction of the first mixed-use building on that site with the next few weeks. That building will contain 99 condo units ranging from 800 to 3,100 square feet.

Projected prices aren't firm yet, but Cohen expects the asking prices will range from $350,000 to over $2 million.

The building will also include some 20,000 square feet of retail space and 320 parking stalls.

The structure, to be called the Copper Line, is part of the first phase of Point Ruston development. That first phase also includes a 44-unit condo and a small office building.

Cohen has already begun laying the foundations for the first custom single family homes on "Stack Hill" above the waterfront condo site. That hill was formerly the site of a tall stack that carried aloft the emissions from the copper smelter. That smelter closed in 1984.

Cohen bought the smelter property when Asarco, the company that owned the smelter and the site, was in bankruptcy. As part of the purchase deal Cohen pledged to finish the environmental cleanup Asarco had begun.

The ferry-showroom will eventually return to the Point Ruston site when Cohen's permits for moorage there are approved.

United Airlines today withdrew its latest airfare increase attempt from the industry's computerized reservation systems.

That withdrawal of the higher fares ended a move initiated by Delta Air Lines last week to raise fares an average of $10 roundtrip. Delta withdrew its higher fares Monday.

Airlines have raised fares successfully six times this year to cope with higher fuel prices. Here's a chronology of those fare increase attempts and their fates from Farecompare.com:

o January 3rd, initiated by United, $10 roundtrip, successful

o January 11th, initiated by United, $30 roundtrip, unsuccessful

o January 17th, initiated by American, $20 roundtrip, unsuccessful

o January 24th, initiated by Continental, $20 roundtrip, successful

o February 22nd, initiated by United, $10 roundtrip, successful

o February 28th, initiated by Delta, $10 roundtrip, successful

o March 7th, initiated by United, $10 roundtrip, successful

o March 14th, initiated by United, $4-$50 roundtrip, successful

o March 19th, initiated by Delta, $10 roundtrip, unsuccessful

This blog entry is business-related, so don’t worry about supervisors looking over your shoulder or into your hard drive.

Actually, that’s what this is about. A company in Atlanta, InternetSafety.com, announces today that it is marketing a hardware appliance to business owners – especially owners of small businesses – that monitors and obstructs employees who may be using workday time to visit social networking sites, naughty sites or sites related to, well, a certain college basketball tournament that is happening as we speak.

The appliance filters Web sites in 35 categories, it maintains a database on “policy violations” and it costs from $1,000 on up.

Which sort of begs the question(s): If you’re an employee, are you following the NCAA Tournament and how are you getting along with supervisors who might not want you to be doing this? And if you’re a supervisor, how are you keeping employees tethered to the straight and narrow, Web-wise? Is anybody being creative about all of this?

Leave a comment if you dare. Thanks.

Do your coworkers spend more time checking their e-mail during meetings than paying attention? Do you?

Some companies are cracking down on not participating in meetings.

Here's a story from the Los Angeles Times that illustrates the frustration:

SAN FRANCISCO — As the birthplace of technology, Silicon Valley may have more gadgets per capita than any other place on the planet. Yet, even here, “always on” can be a real turn off.

Frustrated by distracted workers so plugged in that they tune out in the middle of business meetings, a growing number of companies are going “topless,” as in no laptops allowed. Also banned from some conference rooms: BlackBerrys, iPhones and other personal devices on which so many have come to depend.

Meetings have never been popular in Silicon Valley. Engineers would rather write code than talk about it. Over the years, companies have come up with innovative ways to keep staff meetings from sucking up time. Some remove chairs to force everyone to talk fast on their feet. Others get everyone to drink a glass of water beforehand.

What do you think? Does your company ban laptop use in meetings? Should it?

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The Port of Tacoma's proposal to build a logistics center in Thurston County has never been a sure thing.

Port officials have said they seized the opportunity two years ago to buy the 745-acre Maytown property in South Thurston County – and that point, how and if it would be used was up in the air.

It still is.

But the past few weeks have posed some interesting challenges to the controversial project – and raised questions about whether the Tacoma-Olympia ports partnership needed to pursue it has a future:

* First the Port of Tacoma's e-mail mess which included Tacoma port employees questioning the Olympia port's competency and the viability of the project.

* Then the Port of Olympia on Friday withdrew its support from what had been a joint request to Thurston County from both ports.

* The Olympian reports that the Port of Tacoma took Lewis County up on its offer to tour potential sites there for a logistics center.

* And quotes from Olympia commissioners in Sunday's Olympian are less than enthusiastic regarding the project's future.

Here's an excerpt:

Two Olympia port commissioners said they felt it was a good idea for Tacoma to keep exploring other sites.

“It’s probably wise for them to do that; they appear to have strong opposition here,” said Olympia Port Commissioner George Barner.

=> Read more!