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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Rise of the Dean Blogger: Sloan’s David Schmittlein

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz blogs. The Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban blogs. Even Whole Foods CEO John Mackey blogs, at least most of the time. So why wouldn’t the deans of the world’s top business schools want to stake out their slice of the blogosphere, too?

Increasingly, deans are doing just that. And in the process, they are giving prospective applicants and current students alike a glimpse of where their schools are going – or at least what the ride will be like.

David Schmittlein this fall traded his post at Wharton for the position of John C. Head III Dean at MIT Sloan. In the opening weeks of the semester, the newly minted dean welcomed the incoming class, shook countless hands, and smiled for more than a few photos. He also launched his own blog.

In his initial post, Schmittlein reveals a love of baseball (especially when the Red Sox are playing) and his two favorite books (Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and John Fowles’ the Magus). To tie these seemingly disparate elements together, he explains how much he learned through re-reading them, literally in the case of the books and more figuratively where the Red Sox are concerned.

Re-reading, Schmittlein explains, sometimes affords insights that can be obscured the first time around by the reader’s need to know how it will “all turn out.” It also helps the reader see him or herself in a new light: With the book as the constant, the changes in the readers’ reactions to it seem more apparent.

Watching this year’s 2007 Red Sox playoffs (his post was written after World Series game 2, when the Red Sox were up 2-0) took Schmittlein back to 1967, when, as a 12-year-old boy, he followed the Red Sox on their exhilarating and ultimately devastating journey toward a World Series loss in game 7. In looking back, he recounts, he finally got to enjoy that season. “From this point the glory seems as much to have been in the pursuit as in the achievement,” he writes. “It’s not so much about the destination as the ride.”

Sloanies seem to appreciate the dean’s efforts. In a late October post on the MIT Sloan Blog entitled “Even our dean blogs,” Scott Ralph writes of Schmittlein’s first post, “Some pretty thoughtful stuff – insightful, personal, genuine, laced with a touch of humor. Oh, and for a math guy, he’s a heck of a writer.”

In his second entry, posted last week, Schmittlein talks about first impressions and how you never get a second chance to improve upon them. He provides an example in the business world – with an anecdote about his first impression of Eos Airlines (overwhelmingly positive). And, he writes, he hopes he’s provided an example in his own actions. He hopes he’s made a good first impression on the Sloan community.

Looking back to the Sloan blog, it seems like he has, at least according to one blogger. In a post entitled “Man of the people,” Tracy Carlson writes, “MIT Sloan expects a lot from a dean, from world-class scholarship and guiding vision to administrative leadership and fundraising process, and that’s just the beginning.”

Schmittlein introduced himself to Sloan with warmth, humor, and humanity, Carlson writes. “We want those things, too,” she says. “Quite frankly, the students expect them.”

The relationship between Schmittlein and his new school will no doubt keep unfolding. Remember that you can look to the dean’s future posts, as well as those of current Sloanies, to see how things are going.

And while Schmittlein may be the newest dean to set up his own blog, he’s certainly not the only one. Check back tomorrow for a discussion of dean bloggers at Darden, Tuck and elsewhere.

# posted by Clear Admit @ 12:48 pm in MBA News, School: MIT / Sloan

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