VCU Business Professor John Sutherland dies

By Tom Gresham

John Sutherland, Ph.D., a professor of information systems who taught at VCU for 28 years, died on Dec. 26.

“We were all saddened by the passing of John Sutherland,” said Michael Sesnowitz, Ph.D., dean of the VCU School of Business. “He was a scholar with a keen mind and broad-based interests. He will be missed by his colleagues and students alike.”

Sutherland’s longtime colleague, Rich Redmond, D.B.A., associate professor and chair of the Department of Information Systems, called Sutherland “a renaissance man, a deep thinker, who knew so much about subjects well outside of our discipline.”

Redmond said Sutherland was an ideal fit for higher education.

“He genuinely had a passion for the success of other people,” Redmond said. “He was interested in making sure that both students and faculty reached their full potential.”

Redmond said Sutherland took a philosophical approach to the study of information systems and particularly thrived teaching at the graduate level. Sutherland served as the department’s lead Ph.D. adviser for several years in the 1980s and 1990s.

Peter Aiken, Ph.D., associate professor of information systems at VCU, said Sutherland urged him in 1985 to quit a rewarding job in order to pursue his Ph.D. Aiken took the advice, enrolling at George Mason, and has not regretted it.

“He was truly an educator and a person who made differences in people’s lives,” Aiken said. “John is the reason that I have my Ph.D. and understand anything about research. I have had such a special advantage to have returned to VCU and to have worked with him as a colleague, where he continued to teach me. I regret that I cannot continue to recommend his classes to students.”

Redmond said Sutherland was the chief reason he chose to join the VCU faculty in 1982, based on their interaction during the interview process.

“He really seemed to understand a faculty member’s place in academia,” Redmond said. “He knew that a passion for the discipline is what should motivate our behavior – that it’s not just a matter of putting in the hours.”

Sutherland earned his Ph.D. from UCLA and taught at several universities before arriving at VCU in 1980. He served as dean of the Stillman Graduate School of Business at Seton Hall University and as chairman of the Department of Administrative Science at Southern Illinois University. He wrote six books dealing with management, information and decision sciences and published dozens of papers in top international academic journals. He also served as technical consultant to multiple governments, including several branches of the U.S. government, and many commercial firms.

Sutherland is survived by Susan, his wife; three children, John, Brenda and Karen; and two grandchildren, Leyton and Olivia.