Malcolm A. McNiven, 1951
B.S., Denison University
M.S., Ohio University
Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University
Professor, Senior Manager
Athens, Ga.
Citation awarded June, 2001
Malcolm McNiven, an authority on advertising and market research, forged a career that successfully bridged the worlds of academic and practitioner. From an early point in his career, he served as a member of management in several of the largest corporations in the United States. He holds the M.S. from Ohio University (1952) and the Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the Pennsylvania State University (1955).
Mal started his career as a teacher with Pennsylvania State University and then The University of Maryland. He later served as Adjunct Assistant Professor at The Wharton School of the Univer-sity of Pennsylvania and at Georgia Institute of Technology. He held senior management positions with DuPont, Coca-Cola, Pillsbury, and IMS International, con¬cluding his corporate career at the Bank of America as Senior Vice President for Marketing, Planning and Analysis. In 1988 he became Director of the Center for Marketing Studies at the University of Georgia, and he retired from that post in 1998. Since 1988 he has headed his own marketing consulting firm and continues to do so today.
Mal’s professional affiliations and publications attest to his stature within the marketing discipline. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and a member of the American Marketing Association. He has served as Director of the Advertising Research Foundation, the Association of National Advertisers, and The Audit Bureau of Circulation, and as a Trustee of the Marketing Science Institute. His text, How Much to Spend for Advertising, for which he was both editor and author, remained for years an often-cited work in the field.
Mal’s lifelong work also includes extensive volunteer service to Denison. He was a member of the Board of Trustees from 1971 to 1993, serving at various times on the Committees on Invest-ments, Finance, Development, and Instruction. In the late 1980s he chaired the Strategic Plan-ning Committee, which laid the groundwork for the College’s highly successful Campaign for Denison (1989 to 1995). Throughout his tenure as a Board member, he also participated in a number of fund-raising initiatives. Mal remains a life Trustee of Denison, and served on the Golden Anniversary Reunion Committee for the Class of 1951.
Mal and his wife Elaine Vellacott McNiven ’53 make their home in Athens, Georgia. They are the parents of three grown children, one of whom, Geoffrey D. McNiven, is a member of Denison’s Class of 1980.
