Dear Members of the Atkinson Community,
It’s hard to believe we’re past the halfway point this semester. Time flies when you’re busy and busy we’ve been in the Dean’s Office. Some important things to update you on:
- New leadership of the Executive Development Center (EDC). I am delighted to report that Kennedy Hawkins will oversee operations of the EDC and work with the Dean’s Office on strategy, visioning, and a long-term business plan for the center. Kennedy recently retired as Founder and CEO of PT Northwest, a very successful for-profit physical rehabilitation firm in Salem. He now runs his own consulting firm, Kennedy Hawkins Consulting, which provides management consulting services primarily to health care organizations. He is a JD/MBA alum from Willamette and previously served on the Atkinson School’s external advisory board. Kennedy will take EDC on as a client for 30 hours a week over the next year and also lead the AGSM/College of Law task force charged with designing a micro-credential certificate in Health Care Leadership, which will be provided through the EDC. The EDC is a business – it needs to be financially self-sustaining from generating revenues from the delivery of continuing/executive education instructional services to working professionals. The center is at crucial point in its history and needs a leader with business skills and savvy. Kennedy is the right person at the right time to take on this responsibility and I know he will do excellent work to move EDC up to the next level.
- AACSB Continuous Improvement Report (CIR) Preparation Team starts its work. Under the leadership of Tim Johnson, Grace and Elmer Goudy Professor of Public Management & Policy Analysis, this 13-person team had its first meeting last week to lay the gangplanks for preparation of the report, due next Fall, which requires us to demonstrate that our work since mid-2020 has been successfully aligned with the 9 AACSB standards, and which is the main task for us to complete to secure AACSB re-accreditation in mid-2025. We have a top-notch team and I’m very confident that this project will go quite smoothly under Tim’s leadership. I’m especially excited about the work the team will do on Standard 9, the brand new standard on social impact.
- Task force to address enrollment challenges in the Portland MBA-P starts it work. Ashley Nixon, Professor of Human Resources and Organizational Behavior, is leading this task force, which comprises the 7 full-time faculty who teach at our Portland center. I’ve asked the task force to look under the hood of the program and provide short- and long-term recommendations on how it can be recalibrated, especially in the areas of curriculum and instructional delivery. This is an excellent program, but it’s not “catching” with the market the way it should. As with any program, it’s always valuable to take it apart and put it back together again with an eye on making it even better. I look forward to the task force’s recommendations, which are due at the end of this semester.
This has been a busy month for me with work-related travel. I travelled to Indianapolis for the annual AACSB Americas Accreditation conference. I’ve been going to that conference since I joined the world of business/management deans 6 years ago and have always benefitted from it. It was especially helpful because of our ongoing work to prepare our CIR. I then traveled to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania to join my Dean Colleague Matt Meyers from Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business to do an AACSB Peer Review Team visit to the Freeman College of Management at Bucknell University. This is my second PRT visit this year (the first one was to the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University back in February). It’s a great learning experience to also be on the reviewing side of a re-accreditation application, particularly in the context of our school’s re-accreditation efforts. You learn a lot about what matters the most to Peer Review Teams when they look a business or management school over. I was scheduled to attend the annual conference of the Western Association of Collegiate Schools of Business (WACSB) conference in Boise, but most unfortunately had to cancel the day before because I came down with COVID. I traveled no further than my mailbox at home for 5 days!
As I’ve been saying since our all-school retreat in August, this is a pivotal and exciting year for our school. We have our challenges, but those challenges present great opportunities. It’s that in spirit that the Dean’s Office continues its work this semester and I look forward to reporting our progress in the next issue. In the meantime, enjoy the gorgeous Oregon Fall, stay well., and I look forward to seeing many of you at the Dean’s Football game on November 10!
Örn B. Bodvarsson, Ph.D,
Dean, Atkinson Graduate School of Management