Drafting A B-School Dean: ‘You Are A Young Pup Compared To Joe Biden!’

Kelley School of Business

Ash Soni has been named the permanent dean of the Kelley School of Business for a two-year term

When Ash Soni was named interim dean of the Kelley School of Business eight months ago, he was looking forward to helping a successor transition into the permanent role and then spending more time with his wife, their son, and their two grandchildren.

After all, he had been a professor and administrator at the school for more than 42 years. ever since earning his MBA and Ph.D. from Kelley in operations management and quant analysis in 1981 when Ronald Reagan was sworn into office for his first term as President.

Yet, when Soni bumped into Indiana University Provost Rahul Shrivastav in a parking lot in advance of a scheduled meeting, the unexpected occurred.

“What do you think about staying on for two more years?” asked Shrivastav.

“That is not why I am here,” responded a shocked Soni.

PROVOST TO INTERIM DEAN: ‘YOU ARE A YOUNG PUP COMPARED TO JOE BIDEN’

He was dumbfounded. The university already had appointed a search committee, hired an executive search firm and even interviewed on campus three candidates, including two outsiders. But Soni took up the Provost’s invitation for dinner and became convinced he had to at least consider the opportunity, even though he was long past the age when many retire.

“You are a young pup compared to Joe Biden!”, Provost Shrivastav assured the reluctant 72-year-old interim.

And so a week ago on April 13th, the university announced that Soni, who succeeded Idalene ‘Idie” Kesner as an interim dean last August, would become the permanent dean for another two years.

‘YOU KNOW, YOU HAVE TO DO IT’

After the dinner with the Provost, he went home to talk to his wife, Sarita, who had been Vice Provost for Research at the IU Bloomington campus and a dean of the university’s School of Optometry. They both have been intellectually and emotionally invested in the institution, devoting their entire professional lives to the university. But she, too, had been looking forward to spending more time with the family.

“One year,” she said firmly.

“She stayed quiet for a couple of days,” he recalls. “Then, she said, ‘You know, you have to do it. When you get asked, you have to step up.”

Soni signed on, with a new leadership structure being put in place two two vice deans under him, one for the main campus in Bloomington and the other for the university’s campus in Indianapolis. Patrick Hopkins, executive associate dean for academic programs, will get a broader role in Bloomington, while Julie Manning Magid, executive associate dean for Indianapolis, will assume her new position in the school’s satellite campus.

CREATING NEW PATHWAYS AND CAREER SUPPORT TO BUSINESS MINORS

If anyone thinks Soni will be a mere caretaker for two years, they are mistaken. As executive associate dean for academic affairs for 11 years, he tirelessly worked with former Dean Kesner on institution-shaping initiatives that allowed Kelley to dramatically increase its faculty, staff, student enrollment, and academic programs.

Over the next two years, he will devote more time to external relations, including fundraising, play a key role in the university’s strategic plan, create new pathways into the school’s highly successful undergraduate business program and develop closer corporate relationships with the companies in and around its Indianapolis campus.

“I am excited about some of the things we have in the works,” he quips, “but by that time I will be getting close to Nancy Pelosi’s age.”

Kelley annually enrolls between 2,000 and 2,200 direct-admit freshmen into its undergraduate business program. “But now we have between another 1,800 and 2,000 students who come here and declare themselves as pre-business,” he explains. “They can go through the first year of undergrad at IU and apply at the end of the freshman year to Kelley. We usually take 400 to 500 of them through the standard admissions process. That leaves 1,400 to 1,500 students who wanted to get into the Kelley School but couldn’t.”

SEEKING GREATER GROWTH IN INDIANAPOLIS

So Soni and his predecessor have been putting together partnerships with other schools across campus to create at least a path for students to minor in business by taking a series of seven or eight courses in the business school. Currently, some 600 students take a minor at Kelley but Soni would like to provide that opportunity for hundreds more, possibly 1,000 or greater.

“What we are trying to do is formalize the pathways,” he says. “We are going to allow these students to take some of our career courses and get the advantages of professional development through our career office. Now they can interview at the Kelley Career Center and that gives them a much better probability of ending up with a business position. Over the longer run, it can grow to over 1,000 minors so we have to build that infrastructure to do it with faculty, classroom space, advisors and career coaches.”

He will also look at expanding the school’s current four-plus-one program that allows undergraduates in other fields to come to Kelley for an MS in business. “Can we provide a path for them? They can do biology and that would be valuable to a pharma company if they have a business background. We are opening up pathways for the four-plus-ones as well in all the STEM fields and in psychology where a student might want to get an MBA in organizational behavior.”

The Kelley footprint in Indianapolis, where the business school employs 70 faculty members and boasts additional undergrads and a successful part-time MBA, is another growth opportunity. The university last year disbanded its joint venture there with Purdue University and intends to expand its presence in the central Indiana area. Soni will double the time he spends in Indianapolis from one to two days weekly to further deepen corporate relationships with companies in the area and grow its importance in the business of life sciences.

‘THINGS WERE GOING ALONG PRETTY GOOD’

“In Bloomington, we are stretched a little bit but are at steady state,” he says, viewing Indianapolis as key to future growth. “We have a Physician’s MBA there and are now working with the dental and medical schools to provide other business education for their students,” says Soni. Indianapolis will be responsible for that.”

Meantime, Soni says he has no remorse about saying yes to the Provost. He and his wife have an apartment in Chicago to make it easier for them to see their two grandchildren, aged nine and seven.

“Things were going along pretty good,” he recalls. “We were on track. We went through the search process and the Provost and President started looking at the whole thing and said, ‘Look we have new plans for Indianapolis, we are putting in a new strategic plan for the university, and we need some continuity. I was ready to go and then a lot of faculty said, ‘You have run this school for the past ten years and there could be a vacuum.’ People got very nervous.”

No more.

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