April 12, 2006

Finalists named in business college dean search

by Tom Woolf

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Four finalists have been named in the search for a permanent dean of the College of Business and Administration at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

J. Dennis Cradit, chairman of the marketing department at Florida State University, is visiting the campus today (April 12) and Thursday. His candidate presentation and open forum with the campus community is set for 2:30 p.m. today in Rehn Hall, Room 12. Cradit will discuss "Preparing Tomorrow's Business Leaders: Challenges and Opportunities."

Cradit became chair of the marketing department, the second largest in the college and fourth largest in the university in terms of enrollment and number of bachelor's degrees granted, in 2000. He also holds the Charles A. Bruning Professor of Business Administration designation at Florida State.

He served as the marketing department's doctoral program director from 1984 to 1990.

Cradit also owns Cradit & Associates Consulting in Tallahassee, Fla.

He was an instructor in the College of Business Administration at the University Iowa from 1982 to 1983. From 1983 to 1988, he was an assistant professor of marketing at Florida State. He became an associate professor in 1988, and earned promotion to professor in 1995.

He earned a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1977 from the University of Missouri at Columbia. He earned his master's and doctoral degrees, both in psychology, from the University of Iowa.

P. David Shields, associate dean for graduate and professional programs and professor of accountancy and taxation at the University of Houston's C. T. Bauer College of Business, visited SIUC on Monday and Tuesday.

His academic career spans 26 years. Previous academic positions include associate dean for MBA and executive education at Louisiana State University; interim associate dean for academic programs at LSU; director, James C. and Cherie H. Flores MBA Programs, James C. Flores Endowed Chair of MBA Studies at LSU; professor of business administration at LSU; professor of accounting, Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management; and associate professor of accounting in the University of Houston's College of Business Administration.

Shields earned a bachelor's degree in English and his MBA from Ohio State University. He earned his doctorate, with concentrations in accounting and psychology, from the University of Michigan.

Kenneth R. Evans will visit the campus May 3-4. He is associate dean for graduate studies and research and Pinkney C. Walker Professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Previous positions include associate dean of undergraduate studies and professor and marketing department chair, University of Missouri; assistant professor of marketing and associate professor of marketing, Arizona State University at Tempe; and graduate instructor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and California State University at Sacramento.

Evans earned a bachelor's degree in English and political science from the University of California-Davis and his MBA from California State University-Sacramento. Evans received his doctorate in marketing with a minor in social psychology from the University of Colorado.

Lynne D. Richardson, dean and professor of marketing at Ball State University's Miller College of Business, will visit SIUC May 8-9.

Richardson became dean of the Ball State business college in 2001 after 12 years at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Positions held there included associate dean for undergraduate programs and external relations in the business school, professor of marketing, associate professor of marketing, director of the MBA program in the Graduate School of Management and assistant professor of marketing.

Richardson earned a bachelor of business administration degree from the University of Montevallo and an MBA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Richardson received a doctorate in marketing from the University of Alabama.

The next dean will replace Dan Worrell, who left SIUC last year to become dean at the University of Arkansas' Sam Walton College of Business. Gregory White is interim dean of SIUC's business college.

Providing assertive and deliberative leadership is among the goals of Southern at 150: Building Excellence Through Commitment, the blueprint the University is following as it approaches its 150th anniversary in 2019.