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Business dean candidates to make presentationsApril 4, 2006 KALAMAZOO--Three candidates for the position of dean of Western Michigan University's Haworth College of Business will visit the campus in the coming weeks to meet with faculty, staff and students and make public presentations. The candidates will make public presentations in Schneider Hall's Brown Auditorium. Dr. P. David Shields, associate dean for graduate and professional programs at the University of Houston's C.T. Bauer College of Business, speaks from 5 to 6 p.m. Thursday, April 13. Dr. Michael J. Keller, dean of the University of South Dakota School of Business, speaks from 4 to 5 p.m. Monday, April 17. Dr. Mitchell W. Fields, executive director of the Centre for Executive Education at the University of Windsor, speaks from 5 to 6 p.m. Thursday, April 20. P. David Shields has been in his position at the University of Houston since 2004. He also is a professor of accountancy and taxation there. Prior to assuming his current role, he was at Louisiana State University, where he had served since 2000 as the director of the James C. and Cherie H. Flores MBA Programs and the James C. Flores Endowed Chair of MBA Studies. During his final two years at LSU, he served as interim associate dean for academic programs and associate dean for MBA and executive education. He also has held faculty positions at the University of Florida, University of Michigan, Rice University, Texas A&M, Houston and Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management. Widely published in professional journals, Shields is an active researcher who has had major funding in the area of environmental accounting. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Ohio State University and his doctoral degree in accounting and psychology from the University of Michigan. Michael J. Keller left a long career in commercial finance to take his current position at the University of South Dakota in 2002. Prior to that, he spent three years as president and co-owner of OddJobs.com, a home repair and maintenance startup he successfully launched with venture capital in 1999. From 1996 to 1999, he was executive vice president of Chicago Title Insurance and chairman of five of that firm's subsidiaries. He also enjoyed a 22-year career with Wells Fargo, leaving that firm as executive vice president and chairman of five of its subsidiary organizations. During his tenure with Wells Fargo, he served in a number of legal, sales, finance and management positions. He spent 17 of his 22 years with Wells Fargo as the leader of a team charged with due diligence for a series of mergers and acquisitions. the largest of which was a $750 million acquisition. Keller earned a bachelor's degree from South Dakota in 1970 and a law degree from the same university in 1974. Mitchell W. Fields has been at the University of Windsor since 1985 and in his current role there since 2001. A professor of business administration, he also has served as head of Windsor's management and labor studies area from 1994 to 1997. His previous faculty positions included posts at Australia's Bond University and Texas A&M University. He also has taught at Wayne State and Oakland universities. He has worked widely as a consultant, delivering executive development workshops and providing expertise in such fields as team building, strategic planning and organizational restructuring, evaluations and performance appraisals. His clients have included Ford Motor Co., Steelcase, International Truck, Michigan Bell, H.J. Heinz Co. of Canada, the city of Windsor and the government of Belize. Widely published in professional journals, Fields also is a reviewer for a number those publications. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland and master's and doctoral degrees in industrial and organizational psychology from Wayne State University. The search for a new dean for the Haworth College of Business is being conducted by a campuswide committee that is led by Dr. Margaret Merrion, dean of WMU's College of Fine Arts. Complete information on all three candidates and their visits to campus is available at www.hcob.wmich.edu. Media contact: Cheryl Roland, (269) 387-8400, cheryl.roland@wmich.edu WMU News |
