McCombs Dean Leaving For Hoover Institution

McCombs Dean Thomas Gilligan

The dean of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin is moving to Stanford University’s conservative think tank as the next director of the Hoover Institution. After a seven-year stint as dean, Thomas W. Gilligan will assume his new job on Sept. 1.

A relatively low-profile dean, Gilligan helped to raise money to create a new center for graduate studies at McCombs called Rowling Hall which is expected to open in 2017. For Gilligan, the new job represents something of a return to Stanford. He had earlier been

a national fellow at Hoover in 1989-1990 and had taught business economics as a visiting faculty member at the Graduate School of Business in 1989-1990 and again in 1994.

Gilligan, a scholar of economics and political science, will assume his post as the Tad Taube Director of the Hoover Institution on Sept. 1. He will succeed John Raisian, who announced his intention to depart after more than 25 years in the job.

U.S. NEWS RANKING ROSE THREE PLACES UNDER GILLIGAN

“Tom Gilligan brings to the Hoover Institution a blend of academic scholarship and leadership experience, as well as government and military background, that will be a tremendous asset to the institution and to Stanford broadly,” Stanford President John Hennessy said in a statement. “Tom has already spent time at Stanford as a National Hoover Fellow and as a visiting faculty member. He knows us well, and we look forward to welcoming him back in this new capacity.”

In 2008, when Gilligan became dean of the McCombs School, UT-Texas was ranked as having the 18th best MBA program in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report. This year, McCombs was ranked 15th best, three places higher.

Prior to his appointment at the University of Texas, Gilligan held several key administrative roles at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California between 1987 and 2008, including interim dean, vice dean of undergraduate education, director of the PhD program and chair of the Finance and Business Economics Department. He taught economics at the California Institute of Technology from 1984 to 1987.

AN ACADEMIC WHOSE RESEARCH HAS FOCUSED ON APPLIED PRICE THEORY AND MICROECONOMICS

“Tom Gilligan is the ideal leader to build upon John Raisian’s impressive legacy. His broad capabilities will help capture the Hoover Institution’s extraordinary future potential to develop and cultivate policy ideas defining a free society,” said Tom Tierney, chair of the 120-member Hoover Board of Overseers, which approved Gilligan’s nomination along with the Board of Directors of the Herbert Hoover Foundation and the Stanford Board of Trustees.

Gilligan’s academic research has focused on microeconomics, applied price theory, industrial organization, antitrust economics and public choice. He was a staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in the White House under President Ronald Reagan. He also served as a Russian linguist in the U.S. Air Force from 1972 to 1976.

Gilligan received his BA in 1979 at the University of Oklahoma and his PhD in economics at Washington University in 1984.