Maryland Names New B-School Dean

For the past six months, the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business has been searching for a “visionary, strategic, entrepreneurial and energetic leader.”

The school apparently thinks it has found that person in a veteran professor who has taught finance at Smith for the past 17 years, according to an announcement today (Aug. 12).

Alexander J. Triantis, 49, was named the new dean of the Smith School of Business, effective Sept. 1. He succeeds G. “Anand” Anandalingam, who left the $324,000-a-year job to assume the deanship of the Imperial College Business School in London. Anandalingam, whose five-year term as dean at Smith came to an end in June, had been in the market for a new deanship, having surfaced as a finalist last March for the post at the LeBow College of Business at Drexel University. Instead, he took up the job at Imperial on Aug. 1.

SMITH BOASTS MORE THAN 300 FACULTY MEMBERS AND AN $80 MILLION ANNUAL BUDGET

Triantis will lead a school with more than 300 faculty members and an $80 million budget. Smith’s full-time MBA program is currently ranked 31st best in the U.S. by PoetsandQuants, behind several other public universities including Ohio State, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The school’s highest ranking is from Bloomberg BusinessWeek which had Maryland in 24th place last year. U.S. News currently ranks the school 37th.

The successful completion of the national search by search firm Isaacson, Miller is in contrast to a number of failed searches this year for deans of several business schools at the University of Georgia, the University of South Carolina, Drexel University, Miami University and Clemson University. Several other major schools are also in the market for a new dean, including the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flager Business School, Emory University’s Goizueta School, and UC-Irvine’s Merage School of Business.

The school said Triantis “will build on the Smith School’s advances in student experience, alumni engagement, and connections with business leaders, policymakers and the media.”

WILL HELP THE SCHOOL ‘REACH ITS FULL POTENTIAL AS A WORLD LEADER IN BUSINESS EDUCATION’

“I am very honored to be appointed to this role,” said Triantis in a statement. “The Smith School already has strong momentum with exceptional faculty intellectual capital, leading centers of excellence, and diverse, creative and entrepreneurial students. I’m excited to have the opportunity to work in a new way with Smith’s outstanding community of faculty, students, alumni and staff to help the school reach its full potential as a world leader in business education.”

Triantis joined the Smith School faculty in 1996 and served as chair of the department of finance from 2006-2011. Under his leadership, the Smith School launched a master’s degree program in finance, innovative undergraduate fellows programs, and the Center for Financial Policy, which connects faculty with Washington policymakers to leverage the impact of faculty research on important financial policy issues. He has built strong connections between the Smith School and the corporate community, and has been actively engaged in executive programs. He is consistently recognized for his outstanding teaching, twice with the Krowe Award, the Smith School’s top honor.

Triantis’s research analyzes corporate financial strategies related to investment, financing, and risk management, as well as the valuation of strategic investments. His articles have been published in numerous leading academic and practitioner journals. He has served on the editorial boards of several major academic publications.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering science and master’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Toronto, and master’s and doctoral degrees in industrial engineering with a specialization in finance from Stanford University. Prior to joining the Smith School, he was an assistant and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin and a visiting scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Outside academia, he has consulted and provided executive training in the areas of corporate finance and valuation, including issues related to capital investment decision making, financing strategies, risk management, real options analysis, derivatives pricing, and project finance. Clients have included multinational corporations and organizations such as Airbus Industrie, BHP Billiton, CSX, Dupont, Ernst & Young, Hyatt, Jefferies and Company, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, Morgan Stanley, Northrop Grumman, PricewaterhouseCoopers, U.S. Dept. of Energy, and the World Bank. He is a frequent speaker at domestic and international conferences and executive forums.