Very good news.....
U of Sac hires its first business school dean
$1.5M gift helps pave way for startup university's program
Sacramento Business Journal - September 21, 2007
by Kelly Johnson - Staff writer
University of Sacramento has hired a dean to launch and lead its new business program and has announced a $1.5 million gift that will pay for the post.
Declan Murphy, who has long led entrepreneurial startups and has an impressive résumé in executive and higher education, started at the new Sacramento Catholic university last month, becoming only the second full-time faculty member at the private school. Murphy will hold the Mary S. Carey endowed chair for the College of Business Administration. The college launches in fall 2008 with a global leadership master's of business administration program.
University of Sacramento is scheduled to announce Monday the hiring of Murphy and the $1.5 million endowment from J. Christopher Donahue, president and chief executive of Pittsburgh-based Federated Investors Inc., and his wife, Ann Carey Donahue. The chair is in honor of Ann's mother.
The $1.5 million for an endowed chair is a sizable gift for any university, and particularly for a small startup college. It's a "very significant vote of support from the benefactor," said Barry Sugarman, University of Sacramento's executive vice president.
University of Sacramento courted Murphy for the job for nine months. "He's precisely the individual we wanted," Sugarman said.
Murphy helped found a business school in Paris and has worked with leaders of corporations and governments from around the world through his work designing and teaching executive education courses for private- and public-sector clients. Those contacts will be invaluable for the university's global MBA program, Sugarman said.
Murphy also brings professional training melded with a good liberal arts background, said the Rev. Robert Presutti, university president.
Launched in 2005, the university operates downtown with 80 graduate and certificate-program students. In June, landowner and developer Conwy LLC agreed to give the university 200 acres south of Highway 50 in the proposed Cordova Hills development. Now the university, operated as part of a network of higher education and K-12 schools by a congregation of Catholic priests, must raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the campus it plans to open in five years.
The task of building a business department from scratch is "daunting some days," Murphy said, but it also is a challenge that exhilarates him. "This is a chance to build a university from the ground up and do it right," he said.
He hopes to launch the global MBA program in one year with 40 students and with visiting and adjunct professors who later could transition into full-time faculty. The global MBA students will spend their first semester studying business fundamentals in Sacramento, and then the program takes them to study in Mexico, East Asia and Europe. They'll graduate in Paris. Later, the business school will offer undergraduate and executive education programs.
Murphy will propose to the university board that he launch a College of Business and Public Administration -- adding the public administration portion because executives, he said, often shuttle back and forth over their career from the private and public sectors.
One big challenge he'll have with the business school, he said, is helping it develop its own niche or identity that will cause students to choose this university over others. Part of his strategy to make this program appealing is to have a strong job placement network throughout the United States and world. The Legion of Christ's network of 15 universities will help in that. Murphy also expects to hold a series of research conferences at the university, including one examining the role of business schools in society.
Murphy has much to offer the University of Sacramento, including risk-taking, tenacity and a sense of humor, said Benoit Arnaud, business school dean at the Management Institute of Paris.
At that school, Murphy "offered a truly innovative training and development vision for executives," Arnaud said. As associate dean for international programs, Murphy "developed an exciting new approach to MBA education tailored to meet the challenges of today's global business environment. He is very efficient in identifying the needs and knowledge requirements of corporations, with a strong humanistic focus."
Declan Murphy
Title: Dean of University of Sacramento's College of Business Administration
Age: 56
Past experience: Director, Center for Global Leadership within the Federal Executive Institute; visiting professor at and co-founder of Management Institute of Paris; president and CEO, Impresarios Ltd., an executive education and project management outsourcing firm
Education: Doctorate in history, Princeton University; MBA, The Wharton School; Junior research fellow, Harvard University; Danforth fellow, Cambridge University; bachelor's in Slavic languages and literature, Fordham University
Personal: Relocated to midtown Sacramento with his wife, Molly Pyle, from Charlottesville, Va.; has two adult sons; grew up in Manhattan