The University of Maine recently announced the finalists for the position of dean of the Undergraduate School of Business. Over the course of the week of Nov. 26-30, the four candidates will come to campus to give presentations.
The four candidates are Dr. Erin Steffes, Dr. Faye Gilbert, Dr. Catherine McCabe and Dr. Michael Johnson-Cramer. All presentations except for Johnson-Cramer’s will take place in the Bangor Room of the Memorial Union, with Johnson-Cramer’s presentation taking place in room 57 of Stodder Hall.
Steffes will be the first to present to the UMaine community on Nov. 27 from 1-1:45 p.m. She is currently the chair of the Department of Marketing and Legal Studies at Towson University in Towson, Maryland. According her profile on Towson University’s website, Steffes’ areas of expertise are internet marketing, “Customer Lifetime Value” and the study of user-generated web content called “Web 2.0.”
After Steffes’ presentation will be Gilbert’s on Nov. 28. Gilbert is the Dean of the College of Business at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM). This would not be Gilbert’s second or even third position as dean of a university business school. Before going to USM, she served as the dean of business schools at Radford University and Georgia College.
On Nov. 29, McCabe, the third finalist, will give her presentation. McCabe is the associate dean and dean of undergraduate programs and teaches marketing at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts. Her areas of focus include consumer behavior, sports and healthcare marketing and “gender issues in marketing,” according to her online profile.
The final presentation of the week will be given on Friday, Nov. 30, in room 57 of Stodder Hall by Johnson-Cramer, an associate professor of management in the Freeman College of Management at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Johnson-Cramer’s teaching interest is focused on “global strategy and ethics,” according to his online profile.
The search for the new dean of the Business School began in September 2017, and has been conducted by a UMaine search committee composed of faculty, staff and administrators, according to the School of Business’ website.
Back in May, the Graduate School of Business named Dr. Michael Weber as the dean. Weber was previously a dean and professor at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.
The current interim dean of the Undergraduate School of Business is Dr. Niclas Erhardt, whose research interests includes “knowledge work,” “virtual teamwork, workplace dynamics, strategic HRM and intra- and inter-firm collaboration,” according to his UMaine profile.
Erhardt oversees the college’s more than 1,300 undergraduate students, according to enrollment statistics provided by UMaine’s Office of Institutional Research.
Interested parties are able to provide feedback on the candidates through a form on the website of the Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost. All comments are due by Dec. 3 at 4:30 p.m.
You can find more information about the candidates and the process for deciding the new dean, as well as links to the finalists’ credentials, at umaine.edu/dean-of-the-undergraduate-school-of-business/.
