Message to USC Marshall School of Business Faculty, Staff, and Students
From: Michael W. Quick, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
June 11, 2019
On behalf of President Wanda Austin and President-elect Carol L. Folt, I am extremely pleased to announce that Dr. Geoffrey Garrett will serve as the next dean of the USC Marshall School of Business.
Dr. Garrett will come to us from the University of Pennsylvania, where he is dean of the Wharton School of Business. He will begin his new role at USC Marshall on July 1, 2020.
Dr. Garrett is a political economist and a deeply-engaged analyst on international business, economics, and politics. He is a strong leader who has been guiding Wharton since 2014 as it has expanded its global presence in data analytics, entrepreneurship, behavioral economics and other areas, and he is a highly-cited academic.
At Wharton, he serves as Reliance Professor of Management and Private Enterprise, Professor of Management, and Professor of Political Science. He was previously dean of the business schools at the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales in his native Australia. He earned his BA with honors from the Australian National University, and his MA and PhD from Duke University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.
Dr. Garrett has served as President of the Pacific Council on International Policy here in Los Angeles and dean of the UCLA International Institute. He was the founding CEO of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, has been a professor at Oxford, Stanford, and Yale, and comes back to us as a returning Trojan, having taught here from 2001-2005. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences, and sits on the Advisory Boards of the Indian School of Business and the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management.
We thank the Marshall Faculty Advisory Search Committee for their work during the search process and for providing Dr. Garrett with a comprehensive understanding of the Marshall School during his interview. We also thank Alison Marshall, members of the USC Board of Trustees, members of the Marshall Board of Leaders, and others who were involved in the search. And we are grateful to the faculty, staff, students, and alumni who provided input into the process – as well as for their dedication to the Marshall School, a global leader in academic and entrepreneurial excellence.
We are also pleased to announce that Dr. Gareth M. James has agreed to serve as interim dean during this transition year – and Marshall’s centennial year. Dr. James is director of the Institute for Outlier Research in Business, the E. Morgan Stanley Chair in Business Administration, and Professor of Data Sciences and Operations at Marshall. He is an expert in statistical methodology in the areas of functional data analysis and high dimensional statistics, with particular application to marketing problems. He has published extensively and is co-author of one of the leading books on statistical learning methods.
Originally from New Zealand, Dr. James earned his Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Commerce degrees at the University of Auckland, and then earned his PhD in Statistics from Stanford University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a life member of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Dr. James has been with USC Marshall for over 20 years and previously served for four years as the Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs. He is the epitome of academic excellence and dedication to Marshall. We sincerely appreciate this service.
We wish to thank Dean Jim Ellis for his strong dedication to USC Marshall. Under his leadership, the School made great academic strides and gained international recognition.
We look forward to Dr. Garrett further fueling your passion, and for the Marshall community to take advantage of – and create – extraordinary opportunities in the ever-changing business climate of the 21st century. Under his leadership, along with Dr. James and, with your support, the USC Marshall School of Business will continue to be an engine for innovation and a model of global economic leadership.
Please join us in thanking Dr. James for taking on this vital role, and welcoming back Dr. Garrett to the Trojan Family.
Cc: Wanda Austin
Carol L. Folt
Academic Senate
Academic Deans
President’s Cabinet
Provost’s Cabinet