Thomas joined the UB faculty in 1968 as assistant professor of policy studies and served as director of UB’s Center for Policy Studies and the university’s JD-PhD program from 1979 to 1986. He went on to serve as associate dean for international programs at the UB School of Management from 1988 to 1997 and as dean of the school from 2002 to 2008. As associate dean, he established partnerships in Asia-based executive MBA education between the UB School of Management, the Singapore Institute of Management and in China with the Renmin University School of Business and Motorola University. 

In 1986 Thomas was a member of the visiting faculty of the UB-China MBA program founded in 1984 at the Dalian University of Technology in Dalian, China, the first U.S. MBA degree program in China sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the government of the People’s Republic of China. He served as the China-based dean of the program in 1989. 

Thomas was a visiting fellow with the Centre for University Socio-Legal Studies at Wolfson College-Oxford University in 1977 and 1984. In 1991, in recognition of his contributions in creating new business institutions in Lativa and Hungary with support from USAID, he was named an honorary member of the faculty of the Technical University of Budapest, Hungary, and awarded a special medal from the Riga Technical University in Riga, Latvia.