As dean of the Whitman School of Business at Syracuse University, Dr. Melvin Stith does the same job as other top administrators. He recruits talented faculty and graduate students, mentors new professors, seeks partnerships with corporations and foundations, and strengthens relations with alumni. What makes Stith unusual is that he is African-American, a rare minority among administrators at the approximately 1,600 business schools in the U.S.
“We’ve just done an elaborate survey,” says KPMG Foundation President Bernie Milano. “We believe there are five African-American deans, nine Hispanic-American deans and we don’t know of any Native American deans.” Milano also directs The PhD Project, an organization devoted to boosting the number of Black, Hispanic and Native American business school professors. In the 16 years since The PhD Project launched, the number has risen from fewer than 300 out of 26,000 to more than 1,000 today.
But among the ranks of the administrators, progress has been particularly slow. According to Dr. Quiester Craig, dean of the College of Business at North Carolina A&T State University, the numbers are still not particularly impressive even at the approximately 85 or 90 historically Black colleges and universities with business programs. Craig has conducted his own informal survey and concludes that of those, “No more than 50 percent are headed by persons of color, and that might be a little generous.”
In recent years, several men and women of color have been appointed to high-profile leadership positions in business schools. These include Dr. Carolyn Callahan, director of the School of Accounting at the University of Memphis, and Dr. Peter Blair Henry, dean of the Stern School of Business at New York University. Notably, the Henry B. Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa has both an African-American dean and assistant dean in charge of its school of management. The University of Georgia’s College of Business also has an African-American associate dean.
Dr. Jeffrey Robinson is an assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at Rutgers University and a product of The PhD Project. He says top administrators can be critical agents for change. “As dean,” he says, “you are actually able to impact local areas as well as global areas. The dean sets the tone for who’s going to be hired as professors. The dean sets the theme for the school. At Rutgers, the dean was interested in entrepreneurship and thought about impacting the local community.”
Robinson says he recently saw another vivid example of a dean’s leadership driving the agenda. “I went to Syracuse for a conference on African entrepreneurship,” he says. “It may have been supported by the faculty but I know it was actively supported by (Stith). He came to speak to us and talked about the importance of African businesses. They have a center for African business. I don’t think that it is a coincidence that the dean is African-American.”
Building on The PhD Project’s success, Milano and several business school administrators have developed the Achieving Higher Education Administrative Diversity (AHEAD) Project. Founded last summer, the AHEAD Project attracted 41 professors at its first interest meeting. Organizers are working with groups like the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, a Tampa, Fla.-based body that accredits business programs to create webinars.
