Kogod’s David Marchick To Become American University’s Interim President

David Marchick built a reputation at American University’s Kogod School of Business by moving fast. When two tech executives told his students in early 2023 that AI would reshape every profession – and that workers who couldn’t use it risked being replaced by those who could – Marchick didn’t convene a committee. He gave his faculty six weeks to draw up a plan, then executed it at what he called “private sector speed.” 

Within months, Kogod had become what Bloomberg Businessweek would later call the country’s first AI-first business school. Poets&Quants named it the best AI program in the nation and described the effort as “the most consequential AI transformation in business education.”

Now Marchick is taking that same disposition to the president’s office.

American University announced today (May 27) that Marchick will become interim president on July 1, following the departure of Jonathan Alger, who is stepping down June 30 to become the inaugural America 250 Fellow – a joint appointment with the American Council on Education and the American Association of Colleges and Universities focused on civic engagement and the role of higher education in strengthening democratic institutions. American’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to select Marchick.

THE AI DEAN

“A history major with public affairs and law degrees, he combines a scholar’s curiosity with a record of results and a breadth of experience few can match,” says Charlie Lydecker, chair of the AU board, in the announcement of Alger’s departure and Marchick’s elevation. “He has the full confidence of the board to lead American University in this important moment.”

AU will launch a national search for a permanent president, guided by a committee drawn from across the university community. The board has not yet set a timeline.

Casey Evans, currently associate dean for undergraduate programs – and the administrator who led the curriculum reform that embedded AI into Kogod’s academic offerings – will serve as interim dean of the B-school during Marchick’s tenure in the president’s office.

AN EXCEPTIONAL TENURE

The promotion comes on the strength of a tenure at Kogod that has been exceptional. Under Marchick, the school’s MBA program climbed 30 spots in the U.S. News & World Report rankings since he took the helm in 2022 – among the largest jumps of any B-school over the same period – reaching a top-50 position. (The school is ranked 46th in U.S. News’ 2026 list, up from 76th four years earlier.) Kogod also broke into the top 10 nationally for both entrepreneurship and sustainability. Fundraising surged: the school raised $41 million over the past three and a half years, five times what it collected in the preceding five years.

But it is the AI transformation that most visibly defines Marchick’s deanship. What began with a six-week, faculty-led strategy sprint in January 2023 grew quickly into something institution-wide. Today, 100% of Kogod’s departments, degrees, majors, and minors include AI-integrated coursework. The number of AI-infused courses grew from 40 in academic year 2023-24 to 142 in 2025-26 – a 3.5x increase in two years. More than 90% of faculty actively use AI in teaching, classroom activities, or both.

Kogod classifies AI course engagement on a spectrum: “Sage” courses, where more than half the content is AI-driven; “Artisan” courses, where students use AI to create business value; and “Coach” courses, where AI tools enhance the learning experience. Almost two-thirds of all courses now fall into the Sage or Artisan categories.

Marchick also oversaw the launch of an undergraduate AI major, minor, and specialization; an MS in Business Analytics & Artificial Intelligence; and the Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence to coordinate research and cross-campus collaboration. Six new AI and machine learning faculty have been hired in the past two years – the largest concentrated faculty investment in any single field at a school of 80 faculty.

Faculty training has been equally deliberate and unconventional. Rather than ask Kogod’s professors to train each other, Marchick brought in private-sector experts, including a 26-year-old alumnus from Wall Street who taught finance faculty how to underwrite investments using AI tools. The school has organized dozens of training sessions, and the initiative has reached deep enough into the organization that junior staff are writing their own AI-based software tools to improve operations.

BEFORE KOGOD

Marchick’s background offers clues to his approach as B-school dean. He served in both the Clinton and Biden administrations, working on international trade at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the State Department before later serving as COO of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. Between stints in government, he was a managing director at the Carlyle Group and a partner at the law firm Covington & Burling. He has taught at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and at Georgetown Law.

His most visible pre-Kogod role may have been as director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service, where he played a central role in the 2020 transition – serving, according to one account, as the back channel between the Biden team and Trump White House Deputy Chief of Staff Chris Liddell to ensure as smooth a handoff as possible. That work became the basis for his 2022 book, The Peaceful Transfer of Power: An Oral History of America’s Presidential Transitions, with a foreword by Ken Burns. It was his second book; his first, U.S. National Security and Foreign Direct Investment, was published in 2006.

That mix of government, private equity, law, and scholarship shapes how Marchick talks about higher education’s purpose – and its failures. In a January 2025 op-ed for Poets&Quants, he argued that universities were moving too slowly on AI, describing academia and Silicon Valley as “two species evolving in parallel, at different speeds, with little overlap.” The piece called on faculty to treat AI as a foundational technology and on universities to leverage industry partnerships not just for research but for teaching.

WHAT COMES NEXT

He will carry that argument into the president’s office. “At a time when higher education matters profoundly and faces significant headwinds, American University is strongly positioned because of our stirring mission, excellent programs, talented students, exceptional staff and faculty, global reach, and more than 160,000 high-achieving alumni,” Marchick says in a statement announcing his move to the university’s president’s office. “The unifying thread across everything we will do is preparing every AU student for a complex, rapidly-changing, and AI-enabled world.”

The board has charged Marchick with accelerating implementation of Meet Our Moment, AU’s five-year strategic plan, Alger’s signature initiative launched in January 2026 that emphasizes guaranteed funded internships or research experiences, AI literacy, civic engagement, and deeper integration of Washington, D.C., into the student experience. He also will be charged with driving enrollment and sustaining fundraising momentum.

But Marchick has made clear that he doesn’t want to be considered for the permanent position and will return to Kogod when the interim concludes.

DON’T MISS AMERICAN KOGOD DEAN: HOW HIGHER ED IS MISSING THE AI REVOLUTION and AN AI MAKEOVER: A BUSINESS SCHOOL’S AMBITIOUS EFFORT IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 

© Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.