Jamison Rounds Joins MMC as Business Chair and Associate Professor

Bringing real-life legal and business, as well as teaching, experience to Mount Marty, Jamison Rounds has been chosen to serve as department chair and associate professor of business.

Rounds says he is fulfilling a calling: to return to teaching and influence Mount Marty’s business program for the better.

“We have a chance to create a new type of business school,” Rounds says. “One in the Benediction tradition that values hands-in-the-dirt hard work as much a scholarship, puts stability (think reliability), humility (think servant leaders), and hospitality (think customer service, community service, and employee well-being) at equal levels with profit — which is a good thing, as long we keep that profit under control relative to the market.”

Prior to joining Mount Marty, he taught government, management, lobbying, political campaigns, planning and zoning, and economic development at the University of South Dakota for almost six years. His legal background and business experience — which includes owning multiple businesses throughout his career, helping other firms expand and teaching entrepreneurship at the University of Sioux Falls — enable him to apply hands-on expertise to his leadership and instruction.

“Fundamentally, I am a ‘pracademic’; I blend the world of work and experience into the theory and deeper understanding that comes from a liberal arts education,” Rounds says. “No class can really exist in isolation. I hope that my experience in helping small businesses, doing legal work, valuing businesses, and helping people and companies buy and sell businesses can permeate the classroom in every class I teach regardless of the exact subject matter.”

Rounds received both his Bachelor of Arts degree and Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the University of South Dakota in 1993 and 1997 respectively. His education also includes theological study at Pontifical University St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, Italy, and theological and philosophical study at the University of St. Thomas.