Questrom Dean Susan Fournier To Step Down

Susan Fournier, the dean who helped move Boston University’s Questrom School of Business into a higher competitive tier through bold bets on curriculum, research, and online education, will step down at the end of the 2025–26 academic year. BU Provost Gloria Waters announced Friday that Fournier will leave her post on June 30, 2026, and retire from the university at the end of the calendar year.

Fournier, who has led Questrom since 2018 after serving previously as senior associate dean, framed the decision as both rational and deeply personal—an inflection point that comes after more than two decades at BU and what she describes as the natural rhythm of a deanship.

“It was one of the hardest decisions of my professional life,” Fournier told Poets&Quants in an interview. “This work has been my life for 30 years as an academic—and 21 years at Questrom. But there’s a real seven-year cycle to a deanship. You have to ask yourself: Do you have another full cycle in you? For me, the honest answer was no. I don’t think people should be deans for 15 years.”

RECALLING HER DAD’S ADMONITION: SHE IS LEAVING QUESTROM IN A STRONGER PLACE 

Provost Waters, who also is leaving her job at the end of this academic year, credited Fournier with elevating Questrom’s standing across virtually every dimension that matters to business schools: rankings, research visibility, program innovation, and career outcomes.

Under Fournier’s leadership, Questrom’s undergraduate program climbed sharply in the rankings, rising from No. 49 to No. 36 in U.S. News & World Report and from No. 30 to No. 17 in Poets&Quants. Career services made an even more dramatic leap, moving from No. 47 in 2018 to No. 18 today. Those gains were fueled by the most inclusive curriculum redesign in the school’s history, engaging more than 80 faculty and staff. “That was a super accomplishment if only for the scale of the culture change effort,” said Fournier. “If you are touching 80% of your faculty in a program that few want to change, that is pretty awesome.”

She also poured substantially more resources into career development to improve student outcomes.

Research productivity also surged. Questrom climbed from No. 47 to No. 30 in North America for business school research, with three departments now ranked in the top 20. A third of the school’s full professors are among the top 2% of research scientists worldwide, and Questrom faculty are increasingly visible as expert voices in the media, in congressional testimony, and on government committees.

“Inarguably, the school is in a radically different place than it was a decade ago,” Fournier said. “My parents always used to say, ‘Did you leave the place in a better place than you found it?’ From the faculty to the programs to the reputation, the research, the institutes, and the innovation—we did.”

A BOLD BET ON A $24,000 ONLINE MBA PROGRAM 

One of Fournier’s most consequential—and initially controversial—moves was the launch of Questrom’s Online MBA during the pandemic. Priced aggressively at under $25,000 and designed for scale, the program now enrolls more than 2,000 students annually and is widely recognized for its curricular design and student engagement.

“We were bold. We were risky,” Fournier recalled. “We got it in under the radar, and half the people who were skeptical now see what it’s become.”

The Online MBA has far exceeded enrollment targets and helped stabilize Questrom’s finances, giving the school flexibility to invest elsewhere. Under Fournier, Questrom also launched new specialized master’s degrees in business analytics and finance, with an online MS in AI in Business debuting this fall.

“The reality is that people are migrating to online degrees,” Fournier said. “The MBA landscape is changing fast. Selectivity will remain critical, but schools also have to meet students where they are.”

INVESTING IN FACULTY AND IDEAS 

Fournier, a scholar in branding and consumer behavior, never stepped away from her academic identity. She ranks among the top 2% of scientists worldwide, with more than 37,800 Google Scholar citations and nine articles cited more than 1,000 times.

Her tenure as dean was marked by aggressive faculty hiring and promotion. “I’ve had a hand in a vast majority of the people we’ve hired and promoted,” she said. “That’s something I’m incredibly proud of.”

In 2024, Questrom launched the Ravi K. Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets & Society—one of the most highly funded institutes at BU—focused on how businesses should be governed and markets regulated to deliver durable value. The institute recently partnered with WBUR and launched a monthly initiative called the CEO Breakfast Club, featuring top business leaders in interviews with Ari Shapiro, former host of NPR’s All Things Considered. The inaugural broadcast featured Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert.

“I believe in business,” Fournier said. “I believe in markets, competition, and capitalism—but we have to get business right. That’s the work that still matters most to me.”

THE HUMAN SIDE OF STEPPING AWAY 

Despite the metrics and milestones, Fournier said the emotional reality of stepping down has been harder to process than the strategic calculus.

“It’s exciting and terrifying,” she said. “Not even happy and sad—just an emotional roller coaster. Your whole world is structured around this role. I’ll miss the everyday rhythm, the unpredictability, even the 11 p.m. text messages.”

She credits her leadership team as one of the great joys of her deanship. “I don’t know if other deans talk about their leadership teams, but I had the best in the world,” she said. “We built something special together.”

WHAT COMES NEXT

Fournier will not return to the faculty—a path she dismisses with characteristic candor—but she is far from finished.

“There will be something else,” she said. “Another leadership role, boards, maybe even a book about the lessons we’ve learned in higher education. There’s a reckoning coming for business schools, and we need to face it honestly.”

Provost Waters said BU will appoint an interim dean for the 2026–27 academic year and launch a national search for Fournier’s permanent successor.

As Questrom prepares for that transition—and an eventual capital campaign—Fournier leaves confident in the school’s momentum.

“We’re in a different tier now,” she said. “The progress is steady. The momentum is real. And that’s exactly how you want to leave it.”

DON’T MISS: Brainstorming The Future: Boston University’s Disruptive $24K Online MBA or Inside The Redesign Of Boston University’s Undergraduate Business Program

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