F D Jabara

A certified public accountant, Professor Jabara earned his undergraduate degree from Oklahoma State University and completed his graduate studies at Northwestern University. Fran joined the faculty at Wichita State University in 1949 and served the University for 40 years. He was made a Distinguished Professor in 1971 and served as Dean of the College of Business Administration for seven years. Jabara, recognized as a national leader in entrepreneurship, was awarded the Freedom Foundation's prestigious Leavey Award of Excellence in Private Enterprise Education and the George Washington Honor Medal. Fran was the chairman of the Kansas delegation to the 1986 White House Conference on Small Business. In 1991, he was the recipient of the Ernst Young, Merrill Lynch, Inc. Magazine Award for Entrepreneur of the Year. In 1991, he founded Project HOPE, a program designed to encourage entrepreneurial thinking in multicultural fifth graders. Wichita State University dedicated Jabara Hall in 1996, the same year Jabara was inducted into the Hall of Fame at Oklahoma Sate University. He was a 1997 Laureate for the Wichita Business Hall of Fame. Founder of a merchant banking and investment company, Jabara Ventures Group, and the Jabara Family Foundation, Fran is a board of directors' member of numerous private and public corporations.