UCI to Seek New Business School Dean

With the Graduate School of Management’s ranking falling and faculty complaining about management and fund-raising, UC Irvine has decided not to renew the contract of its dean of four years, David Blake.

Ten of the school’s 20 full professors signed a letter to the administration expressing their dissatisfaction with Blake’s leadership.

In an e-mail to faculty last month announcing the administration’s decision, Blake acknowledged the role professors played in his ouster.

“My understanding is that some senior faculty expressed significant concern about our school’s goals and strategies for achieving growth and critical mass.... It was felt that these concerns warranted seeking a different dean.”

Blake, 61, remains a tenured professor and said he looks forward to a return to the classroom.

He also said he has received an offer from private industry to help foster technology-generated companies. He declined to provide details.

An interim dean will take over this summer. The search for a replacement could take a year.

Blake came to UCI in 1997 after serving seven years as dean of the business school at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. An expert in international business, he also has been a dean and administrator at Rutgers, Northeastern and the University of Pittsburgh.

UCI deans are appointed for five-year terms. Toward the end of that time, they are reviewed by a committee of faculty and administrators, which makes a recommendation to the chancellor.

Chancellor Ralph J. Cicerone was traveling and could not be reached for comment Wednesday. In a recent letter to management school supporters, Cicerone tried to reassure them about Blake’s stewardship and the future.

“During this five-year period, GSM has grown substantially in its faculty, enrollment, student quality and stature as a business school. As we approach the process of recruiting a new dean, I want to assure you of UCI’s ongoing priority to build GSM into a top-tier business school.”

Professors blamed Blake for a fall in the increasingly important rankings a number of publications put out. The Financial Times, for instance, dropped the school of management from 22nd to 38th to 64th in the last three years.

“We need a dean to create value for the school,” said finance professor Neal Stoughton, one of those who signed the letter, “and [Blake] really didn’t fulfill those requirements.”

Associate professor Peter Navarro said Blake did a poor job of marketing, leading to fewer applicants and lower board scores, which lowered the school’s ranking.

Navarro remained optimistic about the graduate school’s future. “The school’s in good shape because we have this core of faculty that have been around for a long time,” he said. “We just don’t have a good administrator.”

Blake said the school of management has 250 to 300 more students than when he took over.

He said that like other business schools, UCI has had to make its way through the dot-com boom--when applicants figured they could get rich on stock options and didn’t need an MBA--to the dot-com bust and the recession, which has pushed up applications by 35%.