PhD Project Tackles Business School Deanship Diversity: As dean of the Whitman School of Business at Syracuse University, Dr. Melvin Stith does the same job as other top administrators. He recruits talented faculty and graduate students, mentors new professors, seeks partnerships with corporations and foundations, and strengthens relations with alumni. What makes Stith unusual is that he is African-American, a rare minority among administrators at the approximately 1,600 business schools in the U.S.
“We’ve just done an elaborate survey,” says KPMG Foundation President Bernie Milano. “We believe there are five African-American deans, nine Hispanic-American deans and we don’t know of any Native American deans.” Milano also directs The PhD Project, an organization devoted to boosting the number of Black, Hispanic and Native American business school professors. In the 16 years since The PhD Project launched, the number has risen from fewer than 300 out of 26,000 to more than 1,000 today.
