| Register/Subscribe Home |
|
UNDERGRADSMain Page2007 RankingsAdmissions Q&AsCareer Q&AsUndergrad ForumReading ListRecruiter Q&AsSchool Report CardsSchool ToursUndergrad 24-7Undergrad VideosNews HeadlinesPREMIUM CONTENT
| |
NOVEMBER 29, 2000 B-SCHOOL NEWS Chicago's Hamada Joins the Departing Deans Club After eight years, he's ready for a change, like two other big-name deans. The school, too, now has an opportunity to find a new direction
The three deans represent a combined 42 years of management education. Their departures come at a time when the field is morphing into a new model of relevancy, technology, and entrepreneurship. Hamada's departure will help make way for new blood at these vibrant B-schools ñ- which under the leadership of the three deans, opened close to 12 centers and institutes, raised over $270 million for their endowments, and have spread their fingers abroad into foreign markets. Hamada, 63, bid his colleagues adieu in a memo distributed on the evening of Nov. 21, before he boarded a flight to the school's young campus in Barcelona. For Hamada, who had taught finance at Chicago since 1966, accepting the deanship in 1993 was a big change. "It's time to get back into things," he now says after eight years of what he calls a balancing act. "NONSTOP JOB." "A dean is very much unlike a CEO" but is treated like one, Hamada says. "Deans can only get things done by building consensus, and that's the toughest part." Being a dean isn't simple. Jack Gould, former dean of Chicago's B-school and current president of Cardean University, the academic arm of e-learning company, UNext.com, says any deanship demands keeping many people are happy at once. "You spend a lot of time trying to balance the competing interests," Gould recalls. "Hamada did that, but it's a nonstop job." To make things harder, Chicago slipped seven spots from 1998 to No. 10 in Business Week's 2000 ranking, released in September. Weak student satisfaction caused the shift south, along with complaints that the school wasn't covering the New Economy adequately. But Hamada says if anything, that slide made him want to stay. "I'd worked very hard two times before to get the rankings up." Hamada is the first to say that his eight years were anything but simple. An academic by training, he admits that he often had a tough time working with the university's former president, Hugo Sonnenshein. Coupled with trying to keep students, faculty, board of trustees members, and administrators happy, he says, "after eight years, it sort of wears on you." LENGTHY LEGACY. Hamada says the thought of moving on became more real when Jacobs left Kellogg. "When he made his announcement, he gave [the school] nine months' notice," Hamada says. "I counted on my fingers and started thinking: 'If I give nine months, when do I make my announcement?'" Still, a lot has happened at Chicago under Hamada. He established campuses in Barcelona in 1994 and in Singapore in the summer of 2000. He also began an international MBA program, which requires that its 121 MBAs are fluent in at least two languages and includes required fieldwork abroad. Under Hamada's leadership, the school raised $111 million since January, 2000, will break ground on a new integrated B-school campus in 2001, and has established nondegree executive education programs at the school. One faculty member, Myron Scholes, won the B-school's fifth Nobel prize in economics during Hamada's tenure. Recent grads say Hamada had a good reputation overall, but many complained that he wasn't in the picture enough. Sol Kanthack, who graduated from the MBA program in June, 2000, and is now president and co-founder of brightroom Inc., a photography company, says the deputy dean was the students' point person. The students didn't see Hamada on a regular basis, he says. Classmate John Pena, an associate with Arch Venture Partners in Chicago, adds that Hamada's entrepreneurship center was a selling point in getting him to enroll at Chicago. But he adds that "Chicago has to come up to the times a little bit." OPEN TO OUTSIDERS. As for the next dean, the school has a long history of choosing academic leaders from within its own ranks. But it may be time to break from tradition. John Huizinga, deputy dean for faculty and professor of economics, sat on the search committee in 1993. He says the school had considered hiring a nonacademic dean and that he would be shocked if the new committee didn't consider someone from outside the school. Kanthack is rooting for a less-academic dean or one who "knows how to market the school" to future students. And Hamada? "Unlike a corporation, where a good CEO would train the sucessor, it's exactly the opposite at a university. It's not good form to do that." He says it may be time for the school to move in another direction. While Chicago forms a search committee and starts interviewing for a replacement, Hamanda will decide what to do next year. Rather than looking for a job, he says he's considering where and what he wants to study during the one-year, paid sabbatical that's handed to all Chicago deans who complete five years in the position. Wherever he lands, Hamada says he has lots of work to hand off to the next dean -- and that he'll "enjoy the difference" in his life.  Mica Schneider  | | Learn about your online education options |
 Copyright 2000 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.Terms of Use | Privacy Policy |
MBA Insider
Printer-Friendly Version
