People and Places: June 27, 2023
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 Mary Margaret Frank has been named the new dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Frank most recently was senior associate dean for faculty development at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business in Charlottesville. In that role, she managed recruitment and development of more than 100 faculty, created a faculty development plan, and led efforts to address the impact of the pandemic on faculty by creating new channels for connectivity. As the founding academic director of the University of Virginia’s Institute for Business in Society, Frank raised 12 million USD to endow the institute and led its initiatives on cross-sector collaboration. Prior to joining Darden in 2002, Frank taught at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. She becomes dean of Kenan-Flagler on August 15. |
On August 7, Eleanor Shaw becomes the new head of the University of Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School. She comes to the Adam Smith School from Strathclyde University in Glasgow, where she is an associate principal and sits on the executive team. Shaw has more than 25 years of experience working with entrepreneurs and creating research that has influenced entrepreneurial policy and helped scale up numerous ventures in Scotland. She was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) designation in 2022 in recognition of her services to entrepreneurship and education. |
 Edgar Meyer has been appointed dean of the Birmingham Business School at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. He will join the school in October. Previously, Meyer served as deputy dean at Leeds University Business School in the U.K. and as associate dean of undergraduate programs and education quality at Imperial College London. He also has held visiting professorial roles at Cotrugli Business School in Croatia, Tokyo Metropolitan University in Japan, and Universidad del Pacífico in Peru. He is an academic member of the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development, an active volunteer for AACSB, and a trustee of several charitable organizations. |
 Tammy Dieterich has been announced as the interim dean of the School of Business at the College of New Jersey in Ewing. Dieterich, who has served as assistant dean for 15 years, will begin her new role July 1. As assistant dean, she has managed the school’s daily operations, supported five new deans, and provided oversight of the school’s budgets, strategic planning, enrollment management, faculty processes, and continuous improvement. She also has played a lead role in helping the school maintain AACSB accreditation. |
 Melissa L. Gruys has been named the new dean of the Monte Ahuja College of Business at Cleveland State University in Ohio. She comes to Cleveland State from the Doermer School of Business at Purdue University Fort Wayne in Indiana, where she has served as dean and professor of management. She also has been a professor and administrator at Washington State University in Vancouver and Wright State University in Ohio. Gruys has expertise in assessment, accreditation, and strategic planning, and she has worked with business schools to introduce market-responsive programs for undergraduate and graduate programs. She has served as a consultant for public and private organizations and as a peer reviewer for AACSB. She joins Cleveland State on July 1.
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 Rohit Verma has been selected as dean of the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Verma joins the Moore School from VinUniversity in Hanoi, Vietnam, where he is the founding provost. Verma is also a professor of operations, technology, and information management at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business in Ithaca, New York. Before becoming provost at VinUniversity, he held other roles at Cornell, including dean of external affairs at the SC Johnson College, executive director of the Center for Hospitality Research, and founding executive director of the Institute for Healthy Futures. He begins his new role at the Moore School on August 1. |
 Sandy J. Wayne has been named dean of the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Business Administration. Wayne first joined UIC as an assistant professor of management in 1987 and became a full professor by 2003. In 2014, she became associate dean for faculty affairs in the College of Business Administration, a role she held until she was appointed interim dean last year. She also has served as the faculty director for UIC Business Scholars and the co-director of the Institute for Leadership Excellence and Development. She assumes the deanship on August 16.
New ProgramsStarting in September, King’s Business School in London will offer an EMBA that emphasizes how businesses can take multidisciplinary approaches to addressing the grand challenges that face society. Cross-departmental courses will examine how concepts such as finance and corporate social responsibility intertwine as companies make financial decisions influenced by sustainability considerations. In addition, King’s researchers from areas as diverse as life sciences and war studies will show EMBA candidates how business decisions fit in the context of wider technological and societal change. CollaborationsESSEC Business School in Cergy, France, and Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh have announced a new dual degree program. Each student will earn a Master of Management from ESSEC and a Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) from the Tepper School. During the program, which will take a minimum of two academic years to complete, students will spend at least one academic year at each school. ESSEC students who graduate from the MSBA program may be eligible to work in the United States for a certain amount of time under the Optional Practical Training initiative. The two schools are exploring additional opportunities, including executive education programs, student exchange and study abroad programs, and joint postgraduate programs. Vlerick Business School in Ghent, Belgium, has partnered with Howest Academy, an institution of applied sciences in Bruges and Kortrijk, Belgium, to launch a new executive program called Metaverse for Business. The six-day program will cover the key concepts of the metaverse, the ways businesses can extract value from it, and the skill sets managers need to work within it. Participants will experience the metaverse firsthand in lab environments as they use technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and 3-D modeling. The SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, is partnering with global investment firm KKR on the Accelerator Scholars Program, which is aimed at Cornell students who are the first in their families to attend college. The program, which is slated to begin during the 2023–24 academic year, offers a comprehensive four-year curriculum that will provide students with training in professional and life skills, as well as networking, relationship-building, and coaching opportunities. KKR’s participation will support 50 students from the classes of 2026 and 2027, in addition to 17 upperclass mentors. Activities will include virtual career counseling, mentoring sessions with Cornell alumni at KKR, mock interviews, and a visit to KKR’s headquarters in New York City. Grants and DonationsFlorida International University’s College of Business in Miami has received a grant from the Microsoft Corporation to launch the Center for Engaged Management Scholarship (CEMS). At the center, which is scheduled to open by the end of the year, Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) students and graduates will provide research-based guidance to businesses. This practitioner-scholar model allows DBA students to gain real-world skills and publishing opportunities, while businesses receive evidence-based solutions to existing problems. The University of South Florida in Tampa has received a 10 million USD gift from James “Jay” Nault, owner of Anclote Holding Company, a real estate firm. The money will support students pursuing master’s degrees at the USF Nault Center for Entrepreneurship, part of the Muma College of Business. Nault’s gift will expand pitch competitions for the center, create a new living-learning community, broaden the center’s mentoring program, and support potential new degree options for executives. The Alix Foundation is committing 1 million USD to the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School in Baltimore to support the school’s Design Leadership MA/MBA dual degree program with the Maryland Institute College of Art. Of the gift, 500,000 USD—which will be matched by Carey Business—will provide direct scholarship funding to students, particularly those from underrepresented groups. The other half will be used to enhance the MA/MBA student experience and provide experiential learning opportunities. The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business has received a 1 million USD gift from alum Marshall Eubank to support the Center for Leadership and Ethics. Eubank, who serves on the center’s advisory council, is owner of SEG Interests, which manages energy, real estate, and venture capital investments. Other NewsNazarbayev University (NU) has launched a new campus in Almaty, Kazakhstan, focused on executive education. The new campus, called NU Executive, will provide advanced training programs designed for business leaders as well as master classes conducted by experts in their fields. As part of the campus expansion, NU will introduce short-term advanced training programs similar to MBA and EMBA courses, conducted in English with simultaneous translation into Kazakh and Russian. Programs also will benefit from strategic collaboration with Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The Page Prize for Sustainability Issues in Business Curricula has been awarded to the Master of Science in Sustainability Management program at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, D.C., and David Bartlett, director of the program. The prize is managed by the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. The Page Prize is awarded annually to the program that best integrates sustainability into the business curriculum. Honorable mentions this year went to the Social Impact Marketing graduate course taught by Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas; and to the Net Zero Energy Module delivered by the Palumbo-Donahue School of Business at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. If you have news of interest to share with the business education community, please send press releases, relevant images, or other information to AACSB Insights at [email protected]. |
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