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Business dean candidates to make public presentations

April 19, 2010

KALAMAZOO--Two finalists for the position of dean of the Haworth College of Business at Western Michigan University will make public presentations during the coming week.

  • Dr. Angappa Gunasekaran, chairperson of the Department of Decision and Information Sciences and director of the Business Innovation Research Center at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth's Charlton College of Business, will speak from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. Thursday, April 22, in Room 2016 of the Fetzer Center.

  • Dr. Kay M. Palan, associate dean for undergraduate programs at Iowa State University's College of Business, will speak from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. Monday, April 26, in the Putney Auditorium of the Fetzer Center.

Both candidates will discuss "Building on the Haworth College of Business Foundation in the Michigan and Global Economic Climate." A reception at the Fetzer Center will follow each presentation.

Gunasekaran, who is a tenured professor of operations management, has served as chair of the Department of Decision and Information Sciences at U Mass and founding director of the Business Innovation Research Center since 2006. He joined the faculty there in 1998, after teaching at England's Brunel University, Australia's Monash University, the University of Finland and India's University of Madras.

Gunasekaran worked in industry as a research engineer and project assistant in India, after earning his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1980 and his master's degree in industrial engineering at the University of Madras in 1982. He earned a doctoral degree in industrial engineering and operations research at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay in 1987.

Palan, an associate professor of marketing, has been associate business dean at ISU since 2006, and she began serving in that role on an interim basis in 2004. She has been a faculty member at ISU since 1994, and before that, she taught at Texas Tech University. Palan also has an extensive consulting background with a variety of firms and organizations, including many in the health care industry.

She earned a bachelor's degree in nursing at Winona State University in 1976, a Master's of Business Administration degree from Moorhead State University in 1990 and a doctoral degree in business from Texas Tech in 1994.

Each candidate's vita is available online at wmich.edu/provost by clicking "Dean Searches."

Dr. Ajay Samant, interim dean of the Haworth College of Business since July 2009, was also identified earlier in the search process as a candidate for an on-campus interview. He has since withdrawn his candidacy and accepted a position as dean of the business college at the University of North Florida.

The Haworth dean search was launched late last summer to replace Dr. David Shields, who accepted a new deanship at Mercer University in Atlanta.

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Media contact: Cheryl Roland, (269) 387-8400, cheryl.roland@wmich.edu

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