Dean at Michigan Ross Calls Time on Tenure: MBA News

One of the top-10 business schools in the US and Canada (see QS’s latest MBA rankings) will be on the hunt for a new leader, after current dean at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, Alison Davis-Blake announced her intention to step down at the end of her first term, in June of next year.

Davis-Blake’s decision has come to light through an email to the student body and comes more than a year ahead of the end of her stipulated term; she says she wants to ensure a smooth transition for the school - a search committee will be formed in due course to begin the process of selecting a replacement.

Alison Davis-Blake has been school’s first female dean

After five years as dean at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, Alison Davis-Blake took up a five-year appointment as dean at Michigan Ross in 2011. She was the first female head of both institutions.

On her watch, a master’s in management program was launched at Michigan Ross specifically to meet demand for a shorter, pre-experience degree. In addition, the school’s executive MBA and executive education offerings were expanded – for example, with the launch of an EMBA in Los Angeles.

In the estimation of the annual QS Global 200 Business Schools Report, Michigan Ross climbed into North America’s top 10 this year, having held positions just outside the top 10 for the past three years in succession.

Against this, a report in Poets & Quants points to acceptance rates to the school - said to be higher than many of its peers in recent years – and says that the school was the only top-50 US school not to submit acceptance data to US News & World Report last year, when applications to its MBA programs also underwent a fractional decline. The Poets & Quants report also puts forward the suggestion that not all faculty members may have been happy with Davis-Blake’s administration, citing the departure of several academics and officials during her tenure.

Even so, it’s clear that Alison Davis-Blake joined the school in a troubling financial climate and one in which the school was suffering, in particular, from a huge drop in revenue received from its executive education programs. With a recovery in this department now sustained, Davis-Blake says she is satisfied that she is leaving the school on a firm financial footing.

Beyond Michigan Ross

In her message to the Michigan Ross community, Davis-Blake pointed to a time of flux ahead for higher education as a whole and said she was keen to “turn the focus of my professional service to the broader problems and opportunities facing universities.”

Perhaps this will extend to the issue of gender equality in higher education. At an event last month, Davis-Blake spoke of her experiences alongside the United States Agency for International Development’s chief strategy officer, Carla Koppell, as part of a discussion on the subject of female empowerment and the importance of girls' education.

Meanwhile, just a day before news of her departure broke, Alison Davis-Blake spoke of her admiration for Galileo Galilei in the Financial Times and revealed that she greets new students to Michigan Ross with a discussion of why she believes the Renaissance-era astronomer and physicist offers a valuable lesson in evidence-based management. Davis-Blake says business students can learn much from Galileo’s refusal to accept conventional theories (among his contemporaries for instance, that the Earth was the center of the Universe) and for his steadfastness in going out and finding the evidence to refute them.