People and Places: January 2025
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 Nancy Albers will be the new dean of the College of Business at East Texas A&M University in Commerce. She joins East Texas after serving as dean at the University of South Carolina Aiken’s School of Business Administration. Albers previously served as dean of the College of Business, Education, and Human Development at Louisiana State University Shreveport. At LSU Shreveport, she oversaw a 300 percent increase in student enrollments. She takes up her role at East Texas on March 15. |
 Elon University has appointed Haya Ajjan as dean of the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business. She is currently the associate dean and a professor of management information systems at the North Carolina school. Since joining the university in 2010, Ajjan collaborated with other faculty to develop business analytics and financial technology programs, helped launch the Center for Organizational Analytics, and was selected as a Faculty Administrative Fellow to create and launch the strategic planning initiatives. The new appointment is effective June 1. |
 On January 1, Lynnette Purda became interim dean of the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. Purda, who joined Smith in 2002, most recently served as associate dean of graduate programs, overseeing the research of students in the school’s MSc and PhD in management programs. Her primary research area is corporate finance with a focus on governance, and she won the business school’s 2022 award for research supervision. She also served as a visiting researcher at INSEAD in France and a workshop organizer at the Halbert Centre for Canadian Studies located at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Purda has presented her work to policymakers and practitioners, including the Bank of Canada, the Accounting Standards Oversight Council of Canada, and FP Canada. |
 Richard “Rick” Locke has been named the next dean of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Sloan School of Management in Cambridge. He first joined the faculty at MIT as an assistant professor in 1988. During his career there, he held several academic and leadership positions and co-founded MIT’s Global Entrepreneurship Lab. In 2023, he left academia to take the role of vice president and dean at Apple University, an educational unit within Apple Inc. focused on educating the company’s employees on leadership, management, as well as its culture and organization. |
New ProgramsBabson College in Massachusetts has designed a new Doctor of Business Administration program. The 33-month program, which begins in fall 2025, is tailored to professionals with one to two decades of experience in leadership roles, empowering participants with academic research skills and the tools to address today’s complex business challenges. The program further aims to prepare graduates for a variety of career paths, whether they choose to remain in their current roles and implement significant changes or explore new projects. Simon Business School at the University of Rochester in New York has redesigned its master’s programs to accelerate time to graduation, increase specialist study options for participants, and offer competitive pricing. In addition to adding core AI content across all MS programs, Simon has launched a full-time Master of Science in artificial intelligence in business program designed to equip students with the technical, strategic, and hands-on skills needed to harness AI for business value. Further, students enrolled in the updated MS in finance program can specialize in the areas of investment management, corporate financial strategy, and financial technology. To better accommodate learners' needs, all full-time MS programs will now begin in August. Sevin Yeltekin, dean of Simon Business School, also announced that the school has reduced the tuition for its core full-time MS programs by more than 10,000 (USD) for each program. Starting in August 2025, the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will offer a new Master of Science in management degree designed for candidates who haven’t previously studied business. Topics in the 10-month program will include accounting, finance, marketing, analytics, economics, strategy, leadership, operations, and business communication. Learners have the opportunity to choose a concentration in finance or marketing to deepen their expertise. The school will also offer experiential learning projects, networking opportunities, and workshops with their career services team. Hult International Business School is expanding its undergraduate programs at the school’s Dubai campus. The Bachelor in Business Administration degree will start in September and provide participants with a foundational understanding of how business disciplines work together. Students also have study options for marketing and entrepreneurship. CollaborationsThe Sasin School of Management at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand and Zhejiang University’s School of Management in China signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen collaboration, including the joint opening of a regional business center in Bangkok. Launched in November, the Zhejiang University School of Management–Sasin School of Management Regional Business Center aims to bring new vitality to academic and cultural exchanges in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and beyond. The schools will establish exchange opportunities and explore the development of business education, dual degrees, and executive training programs for managers and entrepreneurs in the region. The partnership will also encompass joint research projects aimed at advancing business and management education. The Dolan School of Business at Fairfield University in Connecticut teamed with James Ricci, the chief marketing officer at local Italian restaurant Romanacci, to develop experiential learning opportunities by leveraging community partnerships. In the semesterlong project, students enrolled in the school’s social media marketing course were tasked with creating and executing a multiplatform social media campaign for the restaurant, which has five locations in Fairfield County, and were responsible for tracking content performance, including metrics such as likes, comments, and website traffic. As a result of the successful collaboration, Romanacci offered two students an internship for spring 2025 semester. The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) is partnering with the Office of Executive Education at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business in College Park to give members enhanced access to continuing education that will help them progress in their careers. As part of the partnership, the Smith School will offer discounted rates on open-enrollment courses for AFP members. Some course topics include artificial intelligence, Python programming, data analysis and decision-making, digital transformation, and financial accounting. Centers and FacilitiesThe School of Business at The American University in Cairo in Egypt was renamed the Onsi Sawiris School of Business. The name honors the legacy of the late Onsi Sawiris, a titan of business in the Middle East and founder of the Orascom Group, and represents the largest philanthropic gift in the university’s history. The gift was a collaborative donation from the NNS Foundation, the Naguib Sawiris Charitable Fund, Naguib Samih Sawiris, the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development, and Orascom Construction. A portion of the money will also support scholarships, a professorship in artificial intelligence/data science, and visiting faculty and student exchange programs with U.S. universities, including the University of Chicago. The gift has an estimated value of more than 30 million USD. Grants and DonationsThe Chapman University in Orange, California, has received a 5 million USD gift from Alex Hayden to establish the Alexander E. Hayden School of Real Estate at the George L. Argyros College of Business and Economics. The school will help to enhance faculty recruitment efforts, build stronger partnerships with industry, and provide expanded resources for academic programs, including the MS in real estate degree. Alex Hayden, an alum of Argyros College, is a founding partner and vice chairman at CBRE, a commercial real estate and investment company, which provides global advisory and strategic planning services to some of the largest companies in the world. The School of Management at HEC Paris has received a 10 million EUR commitment from Andrea Pignataro, an Italian financier, and his organization, the ION Foundation. The new gift will endow the ION Management Science Lab within the Deep Tech Center. The gift will support research aimed at understanding the impact of mentorship on performance and innovation, helping to foster a collaborative environment between academia, industry, and nonprofits. The lab will closely collaborate with the existing ION Management Science Lab at Università Bocconi in Milan, Italy, and at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, which was previously featured in our September People and Places article. If you have news of interest to share with the business education community, please submit press releases, relevant images, or other information to AACSB Insights via our online submission form at aacsb.edu/insights/articles/submissions/guidelines. |
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