CITY HIGHLIGHT, JUNE 2012

JULIAN DIAZ ON EMPOWERING DREAMS IN REAL ESTATE
Retiring professor and administrator talks about GSU’s real estate program and his role in launching careers.
Interview by Matt Valley

Diaz

The retirement of Julian Diaz as chair of the Department of Real Estate at Georgia State University on June 1 capped a fulfilling 25-year career as an educator. The native Georgian’s relationship with GSU actually began much earlier — in 1971.

To financially support his way through school, Diaz worked in a lithography shop in downtown Atlanta during the day before walking over to the campus to attend afternoon and evening classes. During this time, he also started doing some computer programming for his father’s appraisal company, which eventually evolved into a full-time position as an appraiser.

Diaz graduated with an undergraduate degree in real estate from GSU in 1975 and later earned a master’s degree in business administration, with a focus in real estate and finance, from the University of Georgia. He returned to GSU in 1983 as a doctoral student and graduated with a Ph.D. in business administration, with a focus in decision sciences, in 1987.

After teaching statistics for a few years at Georgia College in Milledgeville, Georgia, he accepted a temporary appointment at GSU, was later promoted and awarded tenure and became the chair of the real estate department in 2005. In 2012, he was selected as a REIAC Hall of Distinction inductee.

Southeast Real Estate Business recently caught up with Diaz to discuss his legacy as a professor and the impact of GSU’s real estate program.

SREB: When did you realize that you wanted to be an educator? Was it always your ambition, or did you grow into the role of professor over time?

Diaz: I always loved learning new things and discovered that I enjoyed sharing knowledge with others. But as an undergraduate student, I never really thought about becoming an educator. One day I overheard some professors say that they considered their job a sacred calling. That struck me. My personal pattern over the next decade was to follow my own curiosity. I often wondered how being a university educator was a sacred calling. Gradually, I came to believe that the university life was about empowering dreams. That understanding is what finally made me decide that I wanted to be a university educator.

SREB: What academic degrees in real estate does GSU offer today?

Diaz: We offer a range of options including a bachelor's degree, an MBA concentration, an MS in real estate and a Ph.D. in real estate. The real estate major at GSU’s Robinson College of Business offers a broad-based curriculum that provides a balance between theory and practice. Our programs emphasize the following major components of real estate: appraisal, corporate real estate, development, finance, investment and market analysis. A degree in real estate will give graduates the foundation necessary to succeed in this exciting industry.


SREB: How much more expanded is GSU’s real estate curriculum today than when you joined the faculty?

Diaz: I wouldn’t say that our curriculum has expanded so much as it has evolved. The department’s teaching mission has remained fairly constant over the years. We strive to prepare our undergraduate students to excel in real estate entry-level positions and to prepare our graduate students to excel in real estate leadership positions.

We regularly evaluate and tweak our curriculum based on industry need and student demand. For example, there is less student demand for the appraisal component today than 20 years ago, so it has a much less prominent position in our curriculum. Finance, investment, and market analysis courses retain strong positions in our curriculum, but each course has been calibrated to the industry.

SREB: In your view, how does the real estate program at GSU stack up against other real estate programs around the country?

Diaz: There are some very good real estate programs across the country, and I am proud to say that ours is one of them. We can point to our rich curriculum, the abundant experience and productivity of our faculty, the loyalty of our powerful network of alumni, and the steadfast support of the professional community as factors contributing to the excellence of real estate at GSU.

Our two biggest challenges are enrollment and funding. Demand for real estate education will rebound as the markets recover. We just need to continue to be relevant to our professional community and give value to our students. Faced with shrinking public sector support, we must continue to be assertive and entrepreneurial in securing the funding needed to deliver a world-class real estate program to our community.

SREB: How has GSU’s real estate program adapted and changed over the years in terms of program content? What impact has the Great Recession and the slow economic recovery had on the program?

Diaz: In my time, the big drivers of adaptive change have been real estate finance, especially securitization and technology, particularly with the increased availability of information. Moving forward, concerns for sustainability will likely stimulate adaptation. Our curriculum has evolved to reflect these and other changes in practice and knowledge by creating new courses, eliminating courses, grouping courses in new ways, changing courses from electives to requirements or vice versa, but most often by tweaking the content of existing courses.

The Great Recession has clearly impacted real estate enrollment across the country, but beyond that it has also influenced what we teach. Workouts, short sales, impaired markets, distressed assets, illiquidity, financial engineering, valuation without transactions, foreclosure, and real estate as speculation versus investment are all topics that have a growing presence in our classroom conversations.

SREB: As a professor and administrator, what accomplishments are you most proud of and why?

Diaz: Occasionally people will come up to me in social settings and introduce themselves as former students and then thank me for making a positive difference in their lives. These are my proudest moments. Nothing else comes close.

SREB: What did you like most about the job of professor or administrator? What did you like least?

Diaz: Conducting unique research that adds to the body of knowledge is very rewarding, but looking back I realize that the more I got to work with students, the more I enjoyed the work. The less I got to work with students, the less rewarding the job was.

SREB: To what degree do the alumni play a role in nurturing and financially supporting the GSU real estate program?

Diaz: I believe that we owe our excellence to our alumni. They steadfastly support us through their generous contributions of energy, expertise and wealth. Their successful careers are inspiring examples that ensure a continuous flow of students into our programs. The Real Estate Alumni Group is the gold standard of alumni clubs at Georgia State. It is much more than a good ol’ boy network. It raises the profile and the relevance of GSU by maintaining an annual schedule of industry events, including the highly regarded “Views from the Top” program. I’m not sure what real estate at GSU would be without our alumni.

SREB: What’s next for Julian Diaz upon retirement from GSU?

Diaz: I recently met a man who told me an interesting story about retirement. He said that he had made a lot of money by selling his real estate company and decided to retire. Just before the sale had actually closed, he accepted a lucrative opportunity to join another company. Within a month of joining the new company, he realized that he had made a mistake and wished that he had taken a little time to digest retirement and get to know himself.

I have had a few opportunities, but I remembered this story and postponed commitment. I’m looking forward to redefining myself in the months after retirement. I have a lot of reading to catch up on and a bit of writing, too. My wife has a plan that she says is on a need-to-know-basis, meaning that I don’t need to know yet.

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