The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/college-of-business/)
The Sun questioned Interim President Michael Kotlikoff on protester repercussions, institutional neutrality, the Class of 2028 demographic data and financial aid.
On October 2, ILR Dean Kevin Hallock shocked the ILR community by sending out a mass e-mail announcing that he had sought and received an appointment as the Dean of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, an apparent promotion over his position at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. As Dean Hallock goes on to what he and Cornell’s senior administration believe to be bigger and better things, he leaves behind an ILR school at an important crossroads. Will the ILR school be reduced to a niche business school and a stepping stone for promising business leaders or will it fulfill its potential to be the world’s leading institution for the study of work, workers and employment? The ILR school was founded in 1945 during an era of massive change in the American labor market. Enabled by New Deal legislation and fueled by a wave of post-depression left-wing militancy workers across the United States were joining unions by the millions and organizing bold and confrontational strikes to demand a bigger share of the economic fruits of their labor.
Habemus decanum! Kevin Hallock, the current dean of the ILR school, has been announced as the next dean of the SC Johnson College of Business. While we — along with what often seems like a vast majority of students, and indeed, faculty — are still slightly confused as to what the College of Business actually is, we see reason to be hopeful of Hallock’s appointment. The College of Business is comprised of three rather disparate elements — the Johnson Graduate School of Management, the hotel school and the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management — and much of the controversy surrounding the business college’s creation dealt with each constituent school’s frustration at being subsumed into an amorphous, indistinct body. That frustration is certainly merited; each individual school prides itself on its unique flavor of education and expertise, and it certainly would be a shame if those flavors were overpowered by the bureaucracy of an umbrella college.
Prof. Kevin Hallock, dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, will be the next dean of the SC Johnson College of Business, taking over the fast-growing college that placed three schools under one umbrella in 2016.
The chief diversity officer of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Prof. David Wooten, marketing, confirmed with The Sun that he has resigned, concluding his short one-year tenure at the business college. He is succeeded by Prof. Todd Schmit M.S. ’94, Ph.D. ’03, applied economics and management.
President Martha Pollack said she wanted “to calm some nerves” regarding the business college dean’s abrupt and unexplained resignation.
Even the business college’s own top administrators were kept in the dark.
Soumitra Dutta, who abruptly resigned from leading the College of Business this week, will stay at Cornell as a professor.
Dutta may stay on as a faculty member following his unexpected and unexplained resignation from dean of the business college.
“The secrecy shows that definitely something is happening … the question is, just how bad is it?”