"Before I met Dr. O'Hara," wrote Dr. John King, head of marketing and finance, in his letter recommending O'Hara for the award "an LSU-Baton Rouge professor said 'Brad O'Hara is the best doctoral student that I have taught at LSU.' I must now say that Dr. Bradley O'Hara is the best researcher-writer that I have known in my thirty-five years as a university professor, director and department head."

Mike Cudd, acting director of SLU's marketing and finance department, also was equally complementary in his letter to the awards committee. "Dr. O'Hara's list of eighteen refereed journal publications include several of the most highly-regarded journals in his field.... Dr. O'Hara is rapidly developing a nationally-prominent reputation among his peers."

Dr. O'Hara, an assistant professor of marketing and director of the university's Master of Business Administration program, had initially planned to teach at Southeastern for a year or so then move on to another university. That was 1990. But he got to thinking -- "Why go to Chicago or Philadelphia where I don't know anyone. So I stayed here and I don't regret it."

Prior to receiving his doctorate and teaching career, the Ontario, Canada, native was a sales manager for Dome Petroleum, Canada's largest oil company. The company was later bought out by Amoco. While working for Dome, O'Hara taught part-time at the University of Calgary and later at the University of Windsor. Over the years, he worked his way up from the personnel office to assistant to the vice president for administration. He eventually went to work in the marketing department where he found a home -- and career. "I saw this is where I wanted to be. I enjoyed the interaction with people inside the company as well as those outside the company."

In the meantime, however, O'Hara began thinking about life in the university. "In the Ph.D. programs, I looked at marketing or management," he said. "Marketing was more practical and in more demand than management PhDs."

One thing was certain, however. If he was going to work on a doctorate, the university had to be in a warm climate. He narrowed the list down to five schools -- Texas A&M, Georgia, Kentucky, Alabama and Louisiana. LSU was his choice. He had visited Louisiana and like it. Moving from Canada to Louisiana was "not as traumatic as some people might believe," O'Hara said. "I had traveled here and when I moved to Louisiana for the doctorate, the program had a very good support group."

O'Hara made a big impression at LSU. His dissertation, A Multi-Criterion Transactional Model, was af finalist for the prestigous Distinguished Dissertation Award for 1992. During his relative short teaching career, to date he has had thirty articles published in scholarly journals and books as well as in regional and national proceedings. Additional articles are underway. He has done considerable research about trade shows and most recently in marketing to immigrant groups. "Service industries must be adaptive," O'Hara said. "Each group has its own psychology that we have to be aware of. Native-born Americans may expect more from service industries. Immigrants, however, don't know what to expect when they arrive."

In addition to Dr. O'Hara's prolific research record, he thoroughly enjoys teaching. "Students are challenging and they keep me young," said the boyish faced professor whose roaring laugh fills any room. "Out of a class of forty, there may be four or five you where you see a light go on. They understand you and you see it in their eyes. They come back after graduation and tell me that what they learned in the classroom was meaningful and applies in the real work place."

People also have a misconception about teaching. "When in industry sales and marketing, I thought I was very busy. Today, I'm busier and working in a more unstructured environment. Here there is more planning and research takes time. But it's not the same pressure of someone looking over your shoulder."