ON MAY 29, Caryn L. Beck-Dudley
became the new president and CEO
of AACSB International. Beck-Dudley
served as the 2018–19 board chair of
AACSB’s Board of Directors, and she
also completed two previous terms on
the board. She most recently was dean
of the Leavey School of Business at
Santa Clara University in California; prior to that, she had been dean at the
College of Business at Florida State
University and at the Jon M. Huntsman
School of Business at Utah State
University. Before her academic career,
she was an attorney in commercial and
corporate law with VanCott, Bagley,
Cornwall & McCarthy.
Beck-Dudley was confirmed as president
and CEO after an extensive global
recruitment process that began in October.
Tom Robinson, who served as president
and CEO for five years, supported
Beck-Dudley during her transition and
officially retired June 30.
Earlier this year, Beck-Dudley
received the Patricia M. Flynn Distinguished
Woman in Business Education
Award from the association’s Women
in Management Education (WAME)
affinity group. The award recognizes female
thought leaders whose leadership,
research, and educational initiatives
have made a difference for women in
the industry.
As Beck-Dudley takes on her new
role, one of her first tasks will be to guide
the association through the COVID-19 crisis. “How AACSB supports and
helps our member schools through the
global pandemic and beyond is our most
important task,” she says in a Q&A that
appeared in May on the AACSB website.
While the pandemic will bring massive
disruption to business schools, she
says, it also offers great opportunities to
institutions that build strong relationships,
embrace change, and learn from
failure. “If business schools use these as
guideposts, they will be different than in
the past but they will also thrive in the
future environment.”
Beck-Dudley identifies two longer-term challenges that the industry
will need to address in coming years: the
relevancy of the business curriculum and
the impact of business school research.
She notes that AACSB’s Business Accreditation
Task Force has spent the last year
working on both issues and adds, “I look
forward to continuing the discussions
about what a relevant business education
includes in a rapidly evolving world.”