In the bioscience start-up arena where cash can be spent at dizzying rates, Gail Naughton has been something of a pied piper, helping raise $300 million since 1987 for a tissue engineering firm founded on her technology. Now, as her Advanced Tissue Sciences Inc. is seemingly on a steady course with products both in the market and the near-and long-term pipelines, Naughton is headed back to academia.

Her newest challenge may equal the one she faced 15 years ago, when tissue engineering was so new the government didn’t even have a grant program to nurse it along.

This month Naughton, 46, takes the business dean’s slot at San Diego State University.

The College of Business Administration that Naughton leads has more than 5,600 undergraduate students, about 930 graduate students and 100 full-time faculty. Its international business program is ranked in the Top 15 by U.S. News & World Report and its Entrepreneurial Management Center is ranked among the nation’s Top 10 by Success Magazine.

Her goal is to move a successful undergraduate program into the nation’s top tier and improve graduate efforts so that an MBA from SDSU is mentioned in the same breath as one from Stanford or UCLA’s Anderson School, where Naughton got hers. Those efforts are expected to mold talent capable of leading the Torrey Pines biotech and other emerging technology firms that have yet to warmly embrace SDSU grads for top slots. Oh, and in the next 12 months Naughton expects to land funding for a new building and find a naming sponsor.

Everything, says the fast-talking scientist with the New York accent, is do-able, based on the quality of the existing programs.

“Once I met the faculty, the students, the deans, the provost and the president, I said ‘this is a class A establishment,’” Naughton says. “Over the past 14 years I have been able to get people enthused about a brand new technology and generate funds for it. I said, ‘I know I can do this.’”

In biotech, however, she started a field by herself. In education she faces strong business college competition, from home-grown National University and the University of San Diego to local schools run by out-of-town institutions like the University of Phoenix. San Diego also is fertile poaching grounds for the noted schools at UC Irvine, UCLA and Pepperdine.

Yet none of those is likely to prove as challenging as a program that has yet to enroll a single student. The mighty UCSD, a science and technology powerhouse located about a stone’s throw from the office Naughton will keep at Advanced Tissue as the company’s vice chair, is about to get in the game. A year from now, the UCSD Management School will enroll its first students. In a few months it will announce its dean, likely one with a national reputation. Already complete are architect’s drawings for a world-class building expected to school 700 to 900 students.

Depending on whom you ask, the two campuses will, won’t or might compete.

Regardless of UCSD’s efforts, SDSU is confident that its existing intellectual horsepower, programs and addition of Naughton provide the perfect platform for addressing the graduate level business training that science managers will need.

“I wish them well,” says Stephen Weber, president of SDSU. “(UCSD Chancellor) Bob Dynes and I have spoken about this on several different occasions. They are going in a different direction. Our institutions don’t by and large compete with each other.”

“They are very much focused on becoming the Western (version) of what MIT’s Sloan college is to the East Coast,” says Naughton. “At Sloan the MBA students are engineers and scientists.”

Indeed, the UCSD management school is aiming for the scientific community. And why not? The campus lays claim to seeding 150 biotechs in San Diego. Yet expectations are high at SDSU that Naughton is the key for the university to break into that very North City technology market UCSD already has plowed. A tour of UCSD’s slick Web site — http://management.ucsd.edu — shows Naughton has her work cut out. For example, Naughton already is promoting a joint doctorate/MBA program, so that a scientist working toward a Ph.D. can simultaneously earn a graduate business degree at SDSU. The UCSD site promises a similar program is “coming soon.”

Naughton is prepared to cooperate and compete. “I believe we can really offer a student a very excellent background in their MBA course,” she says. “And if in fact there are things the community wants above and beyond what we offer, I’m sure we can work with UCSD. (It) would be unfortunate if we had to compete. If we divide up what we are best at, we can both serve the community.”

Among those questioning the potential competition is the advisory board chairman for SDSU’s business school, Ron Kendrick. “(UCSD) certainly is free to do that; it is a free enterprise system,” says Kendrick, the executive vice president and head of the community banking group for $36 billion Union Bank of California. “I do think that with the business schools we already have in San Diego — USD and SDSU and others — those resources might be more effectively spent in some other area of education, or somehow used to support San Diego State.”

Voicing similar concerns is Craig Collins, marketing vice president at Vistant Corp. and 1997 graduate of SDSU’s Executive MBA program. His fear is that UCSD’s fund-raising prowess, prestige and established bioscience relationships will siphon off the best candidates.

“I think the UCSD Management School is one of the most important developments in San Diego business in the last few years,” Collins says. “I don’t think a lot of people in town realize what a big deal it is. The question is, should the state of California have two top-tier business schools right across town from each other, competing with each other, and they are presumably funded by the same government?”

The concern is not universal.

Roy Lessard, a 1965 SDSU graduate and partner in the investment banking firm of Flemming & Lessard, predicts cooperation. “The schools will have their own personalities,” Lessard says. “It does take a while to start a business school and yet with the resources UCSD has they will be able to come out of the blocks quickly. The smart thing for the community would be some interaction between the two schools. Whether they can go so far as to offer a joint degree, that is a possibility. If I were at UCSD and the best accounting, marketing and business professors are at SDSU, it would be a smart move to share those resources.”

Jeffrey Dunham, chairman of Dunham Trust Co. and Dunham & Associates Investment Counsel, calls those who fret “worrywarts.” “San Diego State is certainly not known for its gene-splicing program nor is UCSD known for its cutting-edge MBA program,” Dunham says. “I think competition is healthy; in education, in my business, in any capitalistic company.”

Tom Darcy, executive vice president and chief financial officer at SAIC, was part of the advisory committee that recommended Naughton to Weber. He is supportive of both programs. “I think both universities share a place in this community,” he says. “Both can co-exist and execute their missions; there will be enough market. Realistically, over time they will work together and share programs for both of their benefits.”

Steven Davis, senior vice president of customer service and external relations for both SDG&E and Southern California Gas Co., also was on the SDSU advisory committee. He predicts it will take UCSD a long time to establish its business school.

“My desire is that they complement each other and provide the needed human capital that our business community is yearning for,” Davis says. “I think there is room for two.”

How much the schools will cooperate will likely take years to determine. But the answer should start taking shape once UCSD hires its dean: “Someone of major stature in the field,” promises Peter Cowhey, the UCSD dean of the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies who is serving as a spokesman for the new program.

Cowhey says it is too early to discuss course offerings and what kinds of cooperative efforts may ensue. The new management school dean will make those decisions.

Until then, anxious eyes at SDSU will focus on Naughton, the only nonacademic finalist in a field where the head hunter was instructed to include just such an individual.

“We are really looking to go to the next level,” says Nancy Marlin, the San Diego State provost who oversees the university’s deans. “This is not a school that has basic problems that need to be fixed.”

Weber is proud of the way the school faculty is supporting the nontraditional hire. “That says this is a very healthy, self-confident college that is eager to work with, dialog with and partner with the business community,” he says.

His voice also is one of many that stress the school’s existing successes under Michael Hergert, who remains as a management professor.

“The thing I hear the most buzz about is that we have just hit the tip of the iceberg with their entrepreneurial management center,” says Dunham. He expects the center to attract significant donations because “there are so many entrepreneurs that frankly have been trained by San Diego State that really are rich folk out in the community.”

Naughton’s foray into the business world began when she discovered how to grow skin in a petri dish. She took a sabbatical from her job as an assistant professor of biology for the City University of New York’s Queensborough Community College to start a company. The scientist with an undergraduate degree in biology, master’s in histology and doctorate in basic medical sciences never went back.

Until now.

She is looking forward to the experience.

“As I learn more about this school, I am more and more impressed with the programs and its diversity,” she says. “We have joint degrees with Mexico and Canada. We offer an MBA in Taiwan. That is just the beginning. We are going to be a force in the national and international educational communities. The talent pool that we have in San Diego is great. We are in a very unique situation.”

Can she use that unique situation to make the state college a presence on the mesa? “I certainly intend to,” Naughton says.