Michael Sesnowitz Retires as Dean of VCU School of Business

By Tom Gresham

Michael Sesnowitz, Ph.D., will retire as dean of the VCU School of Business on July 1 and join the Department of Economics as a professor. David Urban, Ph.D., who has served on the VCU faculty for 20 years, will replace him as interim dean.

Sesnowitz arrived at VCU in 2000 after serving as dean of the School of Business Administration at the University of Vermont. During his tenure, the VCU School of Business grew in size and prestige and developed a strong collaborative relationship with the VCU School of Engineering, cultivating a reputation for technological savvy. Sesnowitz also contributed vision and fundraising efforts for the Monroe Park Campus Addition, a residential campus that opened in January 2008 featuring a new School of Business co-located with an addition to the School of Engineering.

“Dean Sesnowitz ushered in a number of major developments for the VCU School of Business and was a tremendous influence on the school’s impressive progress,” said Eugene Trani, Ph.D., president of VCU. “He has been a tireless advocate for the school and its students, faculty and staff, and the school is fortunate that he will remain at VCU as a professor.”

Sesnowitz helped to create the School of Business Foundation in 2005 and led the school through a successful re-accreditation visit with the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business in 2006. He said he is proud of the increased sense of community that has grown in the VCU School of Business since moving into its new home, Snead Hall, and of the school’s continued commitment to providing opportunity to students from underrepresented areas. He also points to the important research being developed at the school.

“With a significant number of new faculty hires over the past several years and increased resources being devoted to the school’s research mission, the research culture of the school has strengthened substantially,” Sesnowitz said.

Urban, who serves as the chair of the Department of Marketing, has taught at VCU since 1989. Urban has won eight national and international awards for teaching excellence and received the Outstanding Faculty Award in 2001 from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the highest honor for faculty at Virginia’s colleges and universities.

Urban formerly held a joint appointment as director of the Survey and Evaluation Research Laboratory in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs. He is quoted frequently in local and national media on marketing and retailing topics, including past interviews with the Associated Press, Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post and USA Today. (To see Urban discussing retailing in the current recession, visit http://www.news.vcu.edu/OnTopic/.)

A national search is under way for a dean of the School of Business.