Big loss for UH and Bauer. I hope they open the purse and get a top 25 caliber b-school Dean.
University of Miami business school names UH’s Paul Pavlou dean
The University of Houston’s C.T. Bauer College of Business will soon be under new leadership.
Paul Pavlou, Bauer College dean and Cullen distinguished chair professor, will serve as the new dean of the University of Miami’s Pattie and Allan Herbert Business School, effective July 1. Pavlou first joined UH in his current role in July 2019, succeeding Latha Ramchand, who had been with the university for nearly seven years before departing for the University of Missouri.
“It is a tremendously exciting time for both the Miami Herbert Business School and for Miami. Miami is booming, and it is an unprecedented opportunity for Miami Herbert to be a driving force in the growing business ecosystem of Miami and Florida,” Pavlou said in a University of Miami press release. “I am committed to leading Miami Herbert to the next level of excellence, success, and impact.”
An interim dean will be announced soon, according to an email Diane Chase, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, sent to the UH community on April 30. She added that Pavlou has “played a key role in the college’s upward trajectory.”
“We wish him well on this new opportunity and are grateful for his service to both the college and UH,” Chase wrote in the email. “Although Dean Pavlou departs us, I am confident that the college’s faculty, staff and students will keep it moving toward new levels of success and international recognition.”
Pavlou has spearheaded tremendous growth and garnered national recognition for the Bauer College of Business during his five-year tenure in Houston.
The school’s MBA program jumped five spots in Bloomberg Businessweek’s Best B-School rankings for 2023-24 to No. 55 nationally and its online master’s in business programs ranked No. 71 in the U.S. News & World Report 2024 Best Online Program rankings. Additionally, the Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship — which sits within Bauer — ranked No. 1 among undergraduate entrepreneurship programs for the fifth-straight year on the Top Schools for Entrepreneurship Studies lists released by The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine in November 2023.
The Bauer College has undergone a number of developments just within the past year under Pavlou’s leadership. The school partnered with California-based Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) for a new AI entrepreneurship program in early 2023, started offering the Houston area’s first executive doctorate of business in administration in fall 2023 and launched the school’s Healthcare Business Institute in June 2023.
Additionally, enrollment at Bauer College has increased at a much faster rate than the rest of the university during Pavlou’s tenure. Undergraduate, post-baccalaureate and graduate enrollment at the business school increased 16.6% between fall 2019 and fall 2023 to 7,825 students, according to data from UH. Meanwhile, total enrollment at Houston has increased just 1.1% over that same period.
Prior to joining UH, Pavlou served as senior associate dean for faculty, research, doctoral programs and strategic initiatives at Temple University. He also served as the Milton F. Stauffer professor and co-director of Temple’s universitywide Data Science Institute. Pavlou earned a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Rice University and then a master’s in electrical engineering and Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Southern California.
“At a time when Miami has become an increasingly important global tech hub, Paul’s research interests — ranging from information systems to strategy — add value to our interdisciplinary efforts and to South Florida’s blossoming innovation ecosystem,” said University of Miami President Julio Frenk. “We are delighted to welcome him to our community.”
Paul Pavlou named new dean of Miami Herbert Business School
By Michael R. Malone
Paul A. Pavlou, recognized as one the “world’s most influential scientific minds,” a visionary, and an inspirational leader with a reputation for bridging academia and industry together, has been named the new dean of the University of Miami Patti and Allan Herbert Business School.
Pavlou begins his new appointment on July 1.
“It is a tremendously exciting time for both the Miami Herbert Business School and for Miami. Miami is booming, and it is an unprecedented opportunity for Miami Herbert to be a driving force in the growing business ecosystem of Miami and Florida,” Pavlou said. “I am committed to leading Miami Herbert to the next level of excellence, success, and impact.”
A specialist in information technology and artificial intelligence, Pavlou highlights how new transformative technologies—from the internet to blockchain, cybersecurity, and AI—are reshaping the world and fundamentally changing the future of work and the role of higher education.
For the past five years, Pavlou has served as the dean and Cullen Distinguished Chair Professor in the University of Houston C. T. Bauer College of Business.
“At a time when Miami has become an increasingly important global tech hub, Paul’s research interests—ranging from information systems to strategy—add value to our interdisciplinary efforts and to South Florida’s blossoming innovation ecosystem,” said President Julio Frenk. “We are delighted to welcome him to our community.”
Guillermo “Willy” Prado, interim executive vice president for academic affairs and provost, noted that Pavlou is “an accomplished leader and a distinguished academic and researcher who we expect will take the Miami Herbert Business School to great heights. Dean Pavlou’s work in disciplines that include emerging technologies, data science, and artificial intelligence will bring new insights and enhance the school moving forward.”
In Houston and as he has done throughout his career, Pavlou strove to build bridges with companies across multiple industries in the community. He is especially proud that nearly 100 percent of the students at Bauer were successfully placed in high-paying jobs, and he looks forward to continuing this success in Miami.
Previous to his position in Texas, Pavlou served as senior associate dean for faculty, research, doctoral programs, and strategic initiatives at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was also the Milton F. Stauffer Professor and co-director of the universitywide Data Science Institute.
“As a researcher, consultant, and more recently as a dean, for nearly a quarter century, I have always made a very concerted effort to forge meaningful connections with industry.
“I jokingly say that industry is our customer, and students are our product,” he said. “It is a lighthearted analogy, but one rooted in a profound truth. Our job is to equip students with the best possible quality education that caters to what industry seeks so that they are job ready on day one. We are here to transform lives—our students come from diverse backgrounds—and we want to prepare them for well-paying jobs and career success.”
In addition, Pavlou said executive and continuing education that reaches all students, from pre-K to 90-plus, is one of his passions.
“I am a true believer in lifelong learning, and I look forward to seeing the University and the business school in particular have an even more integral role in the business community so we become a destination for all Miami professionals and businesses to upskill and reskill, enhance their leadership skills, and to learn more about emerging technologies, such as AI,” he said.
Pavlou’s research has been cited over 90,000 times by Google Scholar, and he was recognized among the “world’s most influential scientific minds” by Thomson Reuters, according to his curriculum vitae.
Pavlou is an avid advocate for interdisciplinary collaboration.
“Both within the business school, from our undergraduate to our M.B.A. programs, and across the University, I look forward to working more closely together,” Pavlou said. “The world of business has become so interdisciplinary, and business today transcends so many fields, from health care to engineering to the sciences and the arts. We need to develop our students as true business leaders that have a true multidisciplinary perspective.”
Originally from Cyprus, a small island country of about one million people in the Mediterranean Sea, Pavlou first came to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship and studied at Rice University. A basketball star in his home country—he played for the Cyprus men’s national team and competed in the European league—Pavlou dreamed of playing one day in the NBA. He did play for several years in college before making academia his career focus.
He went on to earn a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Rice University in Houston, and then a master’s in electrical engineering and Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Southern California.
“My life has been transformed by higher education. To come from modest means, to be able to be in the U.S. and have all these opportunities—to have worked at five elite institutions and now at the University of Miami, I feel very privileged that I’m living the American dream,” Pavlou said. “I’d like to give this opportunity to as many worthy students as possible.”
Pavlou will be accompanied by his spouse, Angelika Dimoka, who will concurrently assume a faculty position within the Business Technology Department at the Miami Herbert Business School, along with their 11-year-old daughter.