~BREAKING NEWS~
Members of the Yale School of Management (SOM) community learned in an email this morning that Joel Podolny will step down as dean of the school on November 1st to return to California, where he will lead educational initiatives at Apple. Sharon Oster, Yale SOM professor of management and entrepreneurship, will serve as interim dean while the school conducts a search for Podolny’s replacement.
In an email conveying the news, Yale President Richard Levin praised Podolny’s many achievements in his three-and-a-half-year tenure. “Under his creative and energetic leadership, the Yale School of Management has developed a visionary MBA curriculum that has attracted the attention of business schools and employers, both in the United States and around the globe,” he wrote.
Under Podolny’s stewardship, applications to the MBA program have risen by 50 percent, the permanent faculty has grown by 20 percent and the Yale Tomorrow capital campaign has raised $170 million toward its $300 million goal, Levin continued. “As he departs and Sharon takes charge, Joel leaves the Yale School of Management in the strongest position it has enjoyed in its 30-year history,” he added.
Following on the heels of Levin’s email was a second from Podolny himself. “This is not a decision I have taken lightly, and I am sure it comes as a surprise to many of you,” he wrote. He himself expected to be at Yale SOM for some time, he continued.
“I have often told people that I have the best job in management education, and I could not imagine taking a business school deanship or any other administrative position at another academic institution,” Podolny wrote.
Saying that he wished the call had come later in his tenure, he nonetheless could not turn down the opportunity to work for a company that, as he put it, “has had as tremendous personal meaning for me as Apple.”
After November 1st, Podolny will continue in his role as a Yale SOM faculty member, teaching and working with colleagues to further refine the school’s integrated curriculum. He will begin in his new role at Apple in early 2009.
