Dean Of The Year: Jeffrey Brown Of Gies College Of Business

Jeffrey Brown, dean of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in August 2015. UIUC photo

SKEPTICAL UPFRONT OF AN INTERNAL CANDIDATE WITH LITTLE ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE

“I was a bit skeptical upfront,” concedes Julie Scott, an alumnus who is CEO of CTS Holdings and who served on the selection committee. “He was an internal candidate and I hoped this wasn’t a rubber stamp on an appointment. But when he presented his plan, everyone was captivated. He made a huge impression on us right from the beginning. He was not looking to maintain the status quo. What sticks out in my mind was the impression that he would be a true innovator and a visionary. And I don’t throw those terms around. He has this uncanny ability to see around corners and anticipate things.”

Brown prevailed over three other finalists for the job, taking over the leadership of the school in August of 2015, six months before the school enrolled its first cohort of online MBA students. Immediately, he faced what would be the most difficult set of decisions of his deanship. If he believed online learning was crucial to the school’s future, Brown had to double down on it. That was made difficult, if not impossible, by the resources already taken by several high-profile graduate programs that were struggling to bring me-too offerings in a crowded market.

First, he pulled the plug on Gies’ Executive MBA offering in downtown Chicago. Then, the school’s Master of Taxation program. And finally in May of 2019, Gies’ full-time residential MBA program and its part-time MBA, too. He made those decisions even when some faculty were still skeptical of online learning and when another Big Ten dean lost her job in the wake of trying to shut down a full-time MBA program. Just two years earlier, at University of Wisconsin’s school of business, a planned closure of the residential MBA led to a noisy revolt by students and alumni. The ensuing protests and petitions led to the dean’s abrupt departure and the reversal of the proposal. 

‘THE OPPORTUNITY COSTS WERE KEY’

Undaunted, Brown had to clear the deck to make the necessary investments in both the school’s undergraduate business program and its online learning initiative. “It was a really hard decision,” recalls Shelley Campbell, senior assistant dean of administration. “On paper, it seemed pretty easy. We were hemorrhaging money on this program and it was not necessarily reputation enhancing. To me, it seemed an easy idea to shift expenditures. The hard part was there were a lot of senior faculty very invested in that program. But he constantly kept focused on how it would benefit the college.”

Brown met with each faculty member who taught in the program in one-on-one sessions to explain his rationale. The college could continue to invest in declining programs that were in the red or it could shut them down and focus more attention and resources online, serving ten times the number of students. “From a mission standpoint, it was a no-brainer,” says Brown. “But I knew the emotional reaction would make it difficult. We were in a crowded market and we lacked scale. We did not have a unique identity, and the program was not distinctive. The faculty understood the decision and then I met with the EMBA students at the end of one of their classes and that was brutal. They asked a lot of tough questions including ‘What will it mean for the value of our degrees?’ We got through it.”

After closing the Executive MBA, Brown then focused on the more public decision of shutting down both the full and part-time MBA programs. The justification was the same. “The opportunity costs were key,” says Brown. “We needed to devote the time and resources to do online well. A leadership team only has so much bandwidth. And this, too, was a struggling market and we had never cracked the code on how to differentiate our programs in it. We had one of the widest reputation gaps between our undergraduate business program and our MBA. I just knew it would create a certain amount of disappointment and negativity that we would have to manage. “

A DECISION TO TOUCH THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS ONLINE

The disappointment was astutely managed and no major backlash erupted. Brown quietly spoke with key alumni. He made sure to respond to every email, no matter how negative. In some cases, it led to long phone calls and difficult meetings with alumni.  “He spent a lot of time behind the scenes on it,” remembers Gies. “He reminded everyone that we were touching 300 people with our full-time resident program when we could touch thousands online. A lot of people bought into that. It wasn’t an economic decision in a vacuum. It wasn’t a ranking decision. It was a decision about access. He had to convince with the university administration, the Senate, the faculty, and the students. He really took the time one-on-one with the thought leaders, including those who thought it was a bad idea. They appreciated that he spent the time even though some were going to be disappointed by the decision. To stop a residential MBA program took unbelievable courage.”

In retrospect, those difficult decisions set the stage for explosive growth. From an initial cohort of 116 students in Gies’ long-distance iMBA six years ago, there are now more than 4,300 students enrolled in the school’s iMBA, itself an innovative partnership with Coursera, the online education provider. During the 2020 iMBA intake, 3,280 applicants poured in from all over the world as Gies processed a record 1,577 new online MBA students. Another online degree option, Gies’ $11,000 master’s in management, boasts nearly 700 students, even though it was launched one year ago. It is the most successful launch of a graduate program ever on the University of Illinois’ Urbana-Champaign campus.

To accommodate the swell in students took massive resources. Brown got the school’s most senior tenured faculty to teach online, gave the okay to build six video studios and to hire an army of course and teaching assistants. Today, some 60 professors at Gies are teaching the live and pre-recorded classes, while course assistants, largely PhD and graduate students in a specific course-related discipline, now number 300 people who help with grading, assessments, and engaging students. All told, the total still-growing team to deliver learning online numbers 480 administrators, faculty and staff.

‘UNLIKE MOST DEANS, HE FOLLOWS UP WITH RESOURCES’

In one of his most perceptive personnel decisions, Brown plucked the head of the school’s accounting department to lead online learning. Brooke Elliott, put into the job as an associate dean in February of 2020, has been a dynamo. She has led the rapid growth, launched the highly successful online management degree, renegotiated the school’s terms with Coursera, enlisted Coursera’s help in creating new AI software for grading at scale, and forged a unique partnership with Google to prepare learners in the Google Career Certificate programs with critical business skills like leadership, teamwork, and strategic thinking.

Recruited by Brown at a local Houlihan’s, Elliott immediately saw the appeal of working with him. “One of the great things about Jeff is that he is willing to make very difficult decisions,” she says. “He is willing to speak and promote what he believes. He talks about the disruption in higher education and how we cannot rest on our laurels. He says that what we are going to do will look different from what anyone expects. He isn’t apologetic and he isn’t asking people to come on board with him. He says this is what we are going to do, and the faculty are inspired by his vision and his confidence. Unlike other deans, he lays out a vision and then follows up with the resources. You can’t ask for much more than that.”

Members of his leadership team praise Brown for giving them the freedom to act on big and small ideas. “All the things we’ve done couldn’t have happen without Jeff letting go and allowing people to contribute and lead and own different areas of the college,” says Jackson. “We have really made so many changes on so many fronts that require having the right people and letting them do it. That not only frees up Jeff to do other things that are bold but it helps develops leaders. That is a space where academia struggles. I think Jeff has really prioritized having the right people in leadership and then allowing them that space to grow as leaders. I think the college truly benefits from having that.”

Most impressive is that Brown has used that vision and leadership style to construct an online initiative with remarkable reach and scale to serve students in more than 100 countries and in every state (see below). To date, the school has taught 2.8 million MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) learners and 9,000 degree students. Gies can lay claim to having the highest MOOC-to-degree conversion rate of any partner on the Coursera platform. Thanks to online programs, the school now has more than 2,500 new Gies alumni. No less impressive, some 3,000 women are working toward or have earned a degree online, while 1,200 underrepresented minorities have been served.