People and Places: December 20, 2022
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 Nate Y. Sharp has been named dean of the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University in College Station. He currently holds the Nelson D. Durst Endowed Chair in Accounting at the school, where he has received numerous teaching awards. Sharp’s areas of research expertise include corporate financial reporting, financial analysis, financial journalism, and financial misconduct, and his research has earned him the 2021 Distinguished Contributions to Accounting Literature Award from the American Accounting Association. He was named a Texas A&M University Presidential Impact Fellow in 2018 and became department head in 2020. He previously served from 2016–20 as PhD program coordinator in the James Benjamin Department of Accounting. He will become dean on February 1. |
 On July 3, Jamie Darin Prenkert will become the next dean of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Prenkert currently is the Charles M. Hewitt Professor and executive associate dean for faculty and research in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University in Bloomington. Prior to that appointment, he served as associate dean of academics, associate vice provost for faculty and academic affairs, and chair of the Kelley School’s department of business law and ethics. During his time at Indiana, Prenkert has been committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB): He convened the Kelley School’s first DEIB committee, organized a semesterlong DEIB professional development series for faculty and staff, and led the founding of the Kinsey-Kelley Center for Gender Equity in Business in collaboration with the university’s Kinsey Institute. Prenkert succeeds Sri Zaheer, who steps down in July after 10 years as dean. She will return to her tenured faculty position as the Elmer L. Andersen Chair in Global Corporate Social Responsibility. |
 On January 3, Rachel Clapp-Smith will become the Teddy Jacobi Dean of the College of Business at Purdue University Northwest (PNW) in Hammond, Indiana. Clapp-Smith, who has served as interim dean of the PNW College of Business since February 2022, is a professor of leadership and academic director of the Leadership Institute at the university. She previously served as associate vice chancellor of academic affairs for PNW and recently won PNW’s Outstanding Administrative Leader award. In her role as dean, she will oversee school operations in managerial studies and quantitative business studies, as well as the White Lodging School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, the White Lodging Professional Selling Center, and the Center for Business and Economic Development. She also will host the Northwest Indiana Small Business Development Center. |
 Earlier this year, Fouziya Bouzerda became director and dean of Grenoble Ecole de Management in France. She will oversee the school’s strategic plan and continue its focus on five causes: ethics and integrity, equality for all, education for all, economic peace, and the green transition. Over the course of her career, Bouzerda has spent 25 years as a barrister at the bar of Lyon, taught urban planning at the University of Lyon III, and served as president of the Lyon transport system. She recently cofounded the Chair of the Transition of Urban Agglomerations and Rural Territories with the president of the University of Lyon I, with the goal of responding to environmental and social challenges that require collaboration among private and institutional stakeholders. At Grenoble, Bouzerda took over the dean’s role from Loïck Roche, who had served in that position for 10 years. |
 In November, Shu Schiller became interim dean of the Wright State University Graduate School in Dayton, Ohio. Schiller is a professor of information systems and associate dean at Wright State’s Raj Soin College of Business. As associate dean, Schiller oversaw the college’s successful AACSB reaccreditation activities and guided the collaborative effort to establish the Data Analytics and Visualization Environment Lab. Previously, Schiller served as chair of the department of information systems and supply chain management and as academic director of the Master of Information Systems program. The Wright State University Graduate School offers almost 100 programs, including those in accountancy, business, business analytics, leadership development, marketing analytics, and human resources.
New ProgramsThe McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has announced a new MS in Global Real Assets, a real estate degree that incorporates environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Graduates will be prepared both to improve investment performance for their organizations and to make positive impacts on the world. The 12-month, full-time, in-person program is offered in partnership with the school’s Steers Center for Global Real Estate. The program begins with an opening residency and includes a clinic course where students work on underwriting real estate deals. It concludes with a global capstone project where students travel abroad to observe how real estate, infrastructure, and ESG issues are evolving in the real world. The first cohort will be welcomed in the fall of 2023. Earlier this year, the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley piloted a course called Difficult Conversations: Conflict Lab, where MBA students roleplayed uncomfortable workplace scenarios. Thirty-two students enrolled in the ten-week course, which was created by instructors Bree Jenkins and Francesca LaBaron. Students had opportunities to practice being in stressful workplace situations, such as delivering a poor performance review, receiving unwelcome feedback, and firing a staff member. Ten undergraduate UC Berkeley students and a group of Haas alumni played the parts of bosses and co-workers participating in the difficult conversations. Throughout the class, students offered each other feedback, wrote papers analyzing their conflict management styles, and examined media reports of conflict in the real world. The instructors plan to offer the class again in 2023. Centers and FacilitiesThe Johns Hopkins Carey Business School—which has locations in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.—will be moving its D.C. operations in 2023. The new facility will be equipped with technology to support online, on-site, and hybrid modalities. Starting next fall, four full-time programs will be offered at the new site, including master of science degrees in finance, information systems, business analytics and risk management, and real estate and infrastructure. Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida will expand its business school with the support of a 26 million USD donation from the John J. and Sheila Rinker and the Marshall and Vera Lea Rinker Foundation. This is the largest financial gift in the school’s history. The Rinker Family’s donation kicked off a 75 million USD funding campaign to build the six-story, 125,000-square-foot Rinker Business Building in downtown West Palm Beach. In addition to housing undergraduate and graduate classrooms, the building will feature a professional stock trading room, a 314-seat tiered lecture hall, the LeMieux Center for Public Policy, and the Titus Center for Franchising. The building is expected to be completed by 2025. The Frankfurt School of Finance & Management in Germany and asset management group DWS have established the Centre for European Transformation, which is dedicated to facilitating sustainable growth in Europe. When the center launches in 2023, it will feature two new professorships, whose holders will lead new research and host international conferences. DWS has committed to funding the center until 2028 with support totaling approximately 2.6 million EUR (about 2.7 million USD). 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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