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The newspaper of The Johns Hopkins University October 29, 2007 | Vol. 37 No. 9
 
Carey Business School Names First Dean

After 14 years at the helm of three prominent, established business schools, Yash P. Gupta (photographed here at the University of Southern California) says that being involved with a startup 'is a great opportunity.'

Yash P. Gupta chosen to reinvent the model of business education

By Dennis O'Shea
Homewood

The goal: audacious. The challenge: daunting. The dean: ready.

Yash P. Gupta wants to help make Johns Hopkins' new Carey Business School one of the most innovative and most prominent schools of business in the world.

"This is a great opportunity to create a world-class business school in a world-class university," said Gupta, appointed by the board of trustees Sunday to serve as the school's first dean.

The university aims to build a school that purposefully teaches students not only business skills but also critical cross-disciplinary knowledge taught in other Johns Hopkins divisions.

It wants to prepare business students broadly, to arm them with all the skills they need to lead companies and organizations in emerging industries.

In other words, the university wants to reinvent the model of business education.

A worthy goal. But why would someone who has already spent 14 years as dean of three prominent, established business schools want to involve himself with a startup?

"It's a great opportunity," Gupta said. "If there is no risk, there is no reward. In this case, the reward is creating a business school that is one of the leading business schools in the world Š truly the most innovative business school in the country."

Gupta, who most recently served as dean of the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business from 2004 to 2006, will begin in his new position Jan. 1.

"Yash is a visionary academic leader," said university President William R. Brody, who recommended Gupta to the trustees. "He is a creative and resourceful strategic planner. He is a scholar and a teacher. And he has been a builder of close and meaningful relationships, within schools, within universities and between the university and business communities.

"He has the imagination, the energy and the skill to build the Carey Business School into one of the nation's most innovative and respected," Brody said.

"Dr. Gupta is an energetic leader with a great appetite for work," said Kristina M. Johnson, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. "He will build relationships across Johns Hopkins, establishing programs of 'selective excellence,' thus distinguishing the Carey Business School and deepening the Johns Hopkins brand."

The school, built on a tradition of business education at Johns Hopkins that dates to 1916, was launched last January on the strength of a $50 million gift from trustee emeritus William Polk Carey through his W.P. Carey Foundation. The new school already collaborates with other Johns Hopkins divisions to offer, for instance, joint master's/MBA programs in biotechnology, nursing, public health, communication, information and telecommunications systems, and government.

"We have a strong base to leverage from to create a new kind of business school," Gupta said. The first priority, he said, is to form even stronger working relationships with other Johns Hopkins schools, where faculty and students are hatching new ideas in science, health, technology, international relations and other fields.

"The issue is one of innovation," he said. "The business schools that can teach students how to be innovative and how to understand the process of innovation will be the anchor points for the evolution of new businesses."

Other key tasks in building the new school, Gupta said, include making program and curriculum

decisions, establishing partnerships with the business community, the critical undertaking of faculty recruitment and "the mother of all, if you like, fund raising."

John J. Fernandes, president and chief executive officer of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, said he has followed many dean searches. Johns Hopkins, he said, has chosen well.

"I said that Johns Hopkins is going to need someone who is going to put heart and soul into the job, someone who knows curriculum, a successful innovator, a relationship builder and a prolific fund-raiser," Fernandes said, "someone who will work tirelessly, who has the vision, the energy and the human relations skills.

"Yash has been successful in all those areas," he said. "This situation requires someone who can go in a lot of directions, the right way, at a hundred miles an hour. I think you've got the right person."

Gupta has been dean at the University of Colorado at Denver, the University of Washington and, most recently, USC, where he led the creation of a new five-year strategic plan. During his tenure, USC's Marshall School raised more than $55 million; expanded its faculty; increased emphasis on faculty research; created research centers focused on such areas as global business, bio-business, sports business and brand management; reorganized the job placement center for students and alumni; and developed a new innovation-focused MBA curriculum.

Gupta was dean of the University of Washington Business School from 1999 to 2004, a period in which its endowment grew from $44 million to $82 million, the MBA program was redesigned to enhance students' global perspective, and the school's entire curriculum was re-examined. The school also established a technology management MBA for scientists and engineers.

Gupta also headed the College of Business and Administration at the University of Colorado at Denver from 1992 to 1999, doubling the number of research grants, expanding the faculty and student body, establishing mentoring programs and setting up a program where teams of graduate students and faculty provided consulting for local businesses.

Gupta said he looks forward to meeting and working with the current faculty and staff of the Carey School. "I really believe that they have an opportunity to be a part of a great school in the making," he said. "What a sense of pride you can have that you are the builders, the creators."

A widely published scholar in operations management, Gupta served before he became a dean on the faculties of the University of Louisville, University of Manitoba and Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is a 1973 graduate of Panjab University in India, holds a master's degree in production management earned in 1974 from Brunel University, West London, and earned a PhD in management sciences in 1976 from the University of Bradford in England.

Gupta is married with two sons. One is participating in the Teach for America program, and the other is a senior at the University of Washington.

For more about the Carey Business School, go to www.jhu.edu/~gazette/2007/29oct07/29careyfacts.html.

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