Wharton begins the search for its next dean

Tom Robertson is to step down as dean of the Wharton school in June 2014, almost seven years after he was appointed to the top job in 2007.

Prof Robertson’s return to the marketing faculty at Wharton, one of the world’s top business schools, will mark the end of his 14-year run as a business school dean - prior to joining Wharton he was dean of the Goizueta school at Emory University. He was previously deputy dean at London Business School.

In a memo to faculty, Prof Robertson said that under his tenure the school had strengthened its academic departments by increasing faculty and raising support for both research centres and programmes. “We weathered the financial crisis, exceeded our campaign fund-raising goals [and} regained our executive education momentum,” said the dean. In addition the school raised funds to extend its premises in Philadelphia and “move to a signature new campus in San Francisco”.

Wharton is not the only top business school looking for its next dean. An international search is also underway at Wharton’s partner school Insead, where Dipak Jain stepped down earlier this year. The front-runner for that position is Peter Zemsky, one of the two interim deans at the school. In Canada the Rotman school at the University of Toronto is also on the dean hunt.

Last week the business school at Imperial College in London announced that it had appointed Anand Anandalingam, the dean of the Smith School at the University of Maryland, as its next dean.

www.wharton.upenn.edu