Tuck School of Business Dean Paul Danos stated yesterday that he would not seek reappointment for a sixth term and will step down at the end of his current term in June 2015. His announcement, which follows 19 years of deanship, was relayed by a campus-wide email from College President Phil Hanlon.
“In Tuck’s 114-year history, few have had a greater impact on the school,” Hanlon said in the email.
Danos, who was appointed to his fifth four-year term in May 2011, is the school’s longest-serving dean. Under his direction, Tuck introduced research-to-practice seminars, which offer students the chance to closely collaborate on faculty projects, spearheaded a newly revised curriculum and increased its full-time faculty size from 36 to 51.
Tuck’s small size, Danos said, allows the school to deliver personalized instruction, which offers students a “different dimension of analyzing problems.”
Tuck senior associate dean Bob Hansen, who headed the search committee that hired Danos, said Danos was originally recognized for his previous work at the University of Michigan.
Hansen said Danos focused on two main themes throughout his time at Tuck: technology and globalization.
During his tenure, Tuck established the master’s in health care delivery science program, which combines residential and online instruction. Danos also pushed for faculty members to integrate technology in their courses.
The “Tuck Global Consultancy” elective course began in 1997, allowing second-year Tuck students a chance to conduct international research to help clients who faced time and financial limitations.
In 2011, Tuck partnered with international business schools to form the Council on Business and Society, which aims to study global business-related issues like health care and sustainable development. Tuck also launched the Center on Business and Society in 2012, which focuses on providing community engagement opportunities to students.
“The next wave is going to be to have a requirement that every student do something outside of the United States,” Danos said.
Several of Danos’s colleagues highlighted his supportive personality and community-oriented vision as reasons for Tuck’s continued success.
“He’s calm, he’s thoughtful, he’s deliberate and he works like a dog,” Hansen said. “And he’s selfless. He put everything, his whole life into this institution.”
Tuck associate dean for the faculty Matthew Slaughter cited Danos’s commitment to improving the student experience, engaging with alumni and hiring high-quality faculty and effective staff as key factors in building the school’s reputation.
In 2013, The Economist ranked Tuck as the world’s second-best full-time MBA program, behind the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Currently, Tuck faculty receive more citations per author than do their peers at any other school.
“A lot of other business schools have gotten off track, not focusing on the core education mission, and fortunately that never befell Tuck,” Slaughter said.
Slaughter, who began his career at Dartmouth teaching undergraduates in the economics department, said Tuck mirrors the College’s dedication toward outstanding teaching.
Corporate communication professor Paul Argenti said Danos has personally supported his endeavors to make interactions with students and faculty a key part of Tuck curriculum. Danos meets with each faculty member every year, Argenti said.
“He supports you in terms of getting interested in the work that we do and that’s an incredible gift,” Argenti said.
Though he still intends to keep in touch with the Tuck community, Danos, 71, said he is ready to “let the next generation take over.” He added that, after working for 55 years, he looks forward to having more unscheduled time for writing and teaching.
He said his successor should understand the school’s unique nature and the tight-knit nature of its community.
“I think today, and 20 years ago and 50 years ago, people always said Tuck’s experience was one of the best they’ve ever had,” Danos said.
Danos’s colleagues lauded his continued efforts to build connections at Tuck.
“Sometimes this noun gets overused, but there really is a Tuck community that creates a fabulous learning environment,” Slaughter said. “Danos had a clear eye on this.”
A board member at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and General Mills, Danos said he plans to continue serving in both roles.
Hanlon will work with incoming provost Carolyn Dever to form a search committee for the next Tuck dean, he said in the campus-wide email. Tuck plans to announce a new dean in early 2015.
“[Danos] is thoughtful, caring and I could not imagine a better dean,” Hansen said. “It’s going to be a challenge to replace him.”
