Michigan Ross Finds A New Dean In Colorado

Sharon F. Matusik

Sharon F. Matusik will become dean of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan

One business school’s loss is obviously another’s gain.

After a national search lasting eight months, the University of Michigan today (May 19) announced it has hired Sharon F. Matusik to be the dean of the Ross School of Business. Currently the dean of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder, Matusik succeeds Scott DeRue, who stepped down as dean last year. Francine Lafontaine, associate dean for the Ross School’s Business+Impact initiative, has served as interim dean since May 2021.

The University of Michigan Board of Regents approved Matusik’s five-year appointment in a renewable term that begins August 1 and runs through July 31, 2027.

‘AN INCREDIBLE BLEND OF KINDNESS, COMPASSION AND STRENGTH’

Sharon Matusik

With Idalene Kesner stepping down from the deanship of Indiana Kelley School of Business in July, Matusik will be one of only six female deans of a top-25 U.S. business school. She also will be the second woman to be dean at Michigan Ross; Alison Davis-Blake was the first, from 2011 to 2016.

Only three weeks ago, the University of Colorado honored Matusik with its Excellence in Leadership Award. CU Boulder Provost Russell Moore singled her out for what he called “an incredible blend of kindness, compassion and strength, which is very rare in a leader.” At the time, Trisha McKean, assistant dean for advancement at Leeds, noted that “she stands out just in terms of her ability to connect with all sorts of people. She meets people where they are, demystifies academia’s issues and processes, and builds informed confidence in the projects and initiatives they’re seeking to fund.”

One of Matusik’s mentors, Barbara Miller, describes her as “a person who thinks before she answers a question. She is thoughtful and gives helpful insights whenever she comments.”

A first-generation college student, Matusik knows well the transformational power of higher education. Her father was a paratrooper in World War II and worked on an assembly line building locomotive engines. Her mother was an immigrant to the U.S. Growing up just outside Chicago, she was encouraged by her parents to go to college and pursue a professional life.  At first, she worked in employee benefits consulting with Hewitt Associates and then as a National Science Foundation Grant research assistant before enrolling  in a PhD program and shifting her career to academia. “To spend each day helping students open up opportunities for themselves through education is deeply meaningful to me,” Matusik said when receiving the leadership award last month.

LED RECORD-BREAKING FUNDRAISING AND INCREASED THE SIZE OF THE RESEARCH FACULTY BY 41%

Matusik earned bachelor’s degrees in both Economics and English from Colby College in 1986 before earning her Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the University of Washington in 1998. She began her teaching career at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Management, where she spent six years, and then joined Leeds in 2004 as an assistant professor. Ten years later, in 2014, Matusik became a full professor of strategy and entrepreneurship. Matusik’s teaching and research interests include strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, and knowledge assets.

For Matusik, the new job is a big step forward to a far more prominent business school, with an annual budget of $105.6 million in 2020-2021 as well as a worldwide reputation and brand. Ross’ full-time MBA program, ranked 12th in the nation,  is nearly four times the size of Leeds which entered a cohort of 104 MBA students in its Class of 2023 and has a full-time MBA that placed 61st in Poets&Quants’ most recent ranking of U.S. programs. Michigan’s undergraduate business program is ranked 7th by P&Q, while Leeds doesn’t even make the list of the top 99 undergraduate business schools.

She brings to her new role at Ross stints as a senior associate dean for faculty and research, academic director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at Colorado, and dean of the Leeds School of Business since 2017. Under her leadership, the business school also saw record-breaking fundraising and community engagement, launched two new MBA programs for working professionals, and increased the size of its research faculty by 41%, which included a significant increase in diversity.

BECAME LEEDS DEAN AT A CHALLENGING TIME FOR THE SCHOOL & THE UNIVERSITY

Matusik took over Leeds at a challenging moment, shortly after her predecessor, Dean David Ikenberry, abruptly resigned after it was disclosed that he was the subject of three federal gender discrimination complaints at the school between 2013 and 2015. One of those complaints led to a $40,000 settlement.

A three-year faculty review at the time was critical of Ikenberry’s treatment of women. Five of eight faculty committee members doing the review believed that Ikenberry was not meeting the expectations of the job. In a complaint to the university’s Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance, one woman described working for the dean as being “like a battered wives situation.”

Ikenberry resigned in August of 2016, and Matusik stepped in as interim dean in January of 2017. After six months, the university formally appointed her dean in June. 

She successfully put the controversy behind the school and pursued an agenda to help the school leverage the area’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Matusik partnered with the College of Engineering and Applied Science to bring the worlds of business and technology together, creating a Business and Engineering Technology Scholars Program.

‘HER LEADERSHIP HAS SHAPED THE GROWTH AND PROMINENT IMPACT OF THE LEEDS SCHOOL’

In announcing her departure, UC Provost Moore praised her service to the school and her leadership of it. Among other things, he singled Matusik out for providing a strategic vision and principal priorities—business and engineering, career impact and gender parity in CU business programs—which he added “played a central role in the Leeds School’s rising reputation in research and academic excellence.”

“Sharon’s unwavering commitment to public education and to making a Leeds education accessible are only a few examples of how her leadership has shaped the growth and prominent impact of the Leeds School,” said Moore.

In a recommendation of her appointment to Michigan’s regents, Michigan Provost Laurie McCauley cited Matusik’s success in developing and executing on three strategic priorities since becoming dean of the Leeds School of Business in 2017. The first was an innovative partnership between the business school and the university’s College of Engineering and Applied Science that included the planning, fundraising for, and completion of a new building connecting the two schools.

LED AN INITIATIVE AIMED AT GENDER PARITY IN BUSINESS LEADERSHIP

Other key priorities included the “End the Gap” initiative aimed at gender parity in business leadership and the “Career Impact” initiative designed to align the student experience with skills needed for long-term career success.

“Professor Matusik is a distinguished scholar and teacher whose foci include strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship,” Provost Laurie McCauley said in a statement. “As an academic leader, she has a strong record of accomplishment in critical areas – student success, diversifying the faculty, campus and community engagement – that will contribute to Michigan Ross achieving its goals.”

Matusik credited Michigan Ross for its “tremendous impact” on the field of business and her own career. “When I reflect on the transformational ideas in my field, the most influential mentors, and my teaching role models, they have a Ross connection,” Matusik said in a statement. “What unites them all is a deep commitment to making an important impact. It is truly my honor to work with the Ross community to further elevate this impact through students, research, and community connections, and to lead Ross as its next dean.”

Gregory Miller, a professor of accounting and area chair of accounting in the Ross School, chaired the 16-person search committee.

DON’T MISS: MEET THE MICHIGAN ROSS MBA CLASS OF 2023 or MICHIGAN ROSS DEAN SCOTT DERUE TO STEP DOWN 

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