School of Business dean finalists to visit campus

From the office of University Communications:

The three finalists for the position of Albert O. Nicholas Dean of the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be on campus in coming days.

Each finalist will spend two days on campus visiting and meeting with people at UW-Madison as the final part of the search-and-screen process.

During their visits, the three finalists will have contact with the broader campus community, from meetings with Chancellor Biddy Martin and Provost Paul DeLuca to gatherings with academic deans, shared governance groups, and students, faculty, staff, alumni and other members of the Wisconsin School of Business community.

The candidates will also hold open sessions in Grainger Hall, 975 University Ave., to answer questions from those interested in the future of the Wisconsin School of Business.

• Monday, June 6: Michael Trick, professor of operations research and associate dean for research in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, 10:30 a.m.
• Wednesday, June 8: Anil K. Makhija, Dean's Distinguished Professor of Finance in the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, 2:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, June 15: François Ortalo-Magné, Robert E. Wangard Professor of Real Estate at the Wisconsin School of Business, 10:30 a.m.

Live webcasts of the candidate presentations will be available at http://www.bus.wisc.edu.

This morning was the first of the presentations, with Michael Trick. As part of his presentation, he mentioned two books on the future of graduate level business education. I thought this was a good fit for our Reading for Life series (originated by Prof. Stephen Malpezzi, see previous entries in the series here).

The first is Rethinking the MBA by three Harvard researchers Srikant Datar, David A. Garvin, and Patrick G. Cullen; and the other is From Higher Aims to Hired Hands by Harvard professor Rakesh Khurana.

There certainly is no shortage of books on the subject of higher education. Have you read either of these books? What do you think of them? Please share your thoughts in the comments.