Exiting Georgetown Dean On His Five Years

David Thomas announced he will step down after his first term as dean at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business effective Aug. 1, 2016. Photo by James Kegley/McDonough School of Business

Sometimes, big changes and upward trajectory don’t show up in all the ways we wished. A perfect case in point is the five-year deanship of David Thomas at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. By many accounts, the former Harvard Business School professor did everything right. He surpassed a $100 million campaign goal that didn’t involve any funds for actual capital by $30 million. He revamped and implemented an entire full-time MBA curriculum within his first two years on the job. Full-time MBA apps zoomed at a 40% clip in the past five years. And McDonough’s community is more diverse and tight-knit than ever before. But those pesky rankings don’t reflect any of that.

Not yet, says Thomas.

“If I look at the momentum of the school, I would say to the next dean we now have the momentum and are clear about the levers that we need to pull and the investments we need to make to actually move to that next level, much in the way that Yale did,” Thomas, 59, says in an interview with Poets&Quants. When Joel Podolny was dean of Yale’s School of Management, he asked Thomas to join the board of advisers. “I saw the arc of the school and I think we’ve built that launching pad for the next move of punctuated equilibrium and steepening trajectory into the top ten,” continues Thomas, who will be stepping down as the school’s dean on Aug. 1.

During Thomas’ tenure, the school crept up from 23rd in 2011 to 22nd from 2012 to 2014 in Poets&Quants’ composite ranking before sliding to 24th in the most recent set of rankings. Still, McDonough’s full-time MBA program made significant moves in Businessweek’s rankings, climbing from 33rd in 2011 to 26th in 2015. Meantime, the program fell from 35th to 41st in Forbes’ ranking. The volatility likely says more about bogus methodologies than significant programmatic changes. But it’s still an annoyance for a dean leading significant and widely well-regarded changes and improvements.

“There is a frustration there,” Thomas says, “because when I look at some of the schools that rank above us in some of the rankings, I sometimes shake my head because a few of them have essentially shrank their full-time MBA programs in order to get better GMATs and higher job placement.” Thomas is vague about why he turned down the university for a second term, but you get the impression that after recently turning 60, he wasn’t looking forward to spending five more years as the dean of a business school. After one year of sabbatical at Georgetown, Thomas will return to faculty and research at Harvard Business School.

A CAPITAL CAMPAIGN WITHOUT A CAPITAL PROJECT

To be sure, rankings are hardly a sufficient measurement of a dean’s performance. As Thomas reflects on the last five years, he points to the more than 100 notes of encouragement he says he’s received in the past few weeks, following his announcement that he would step down as dean. “The most rewarding thing,” Thomas begins, “is the ways in which people describe us having changed the culture of the business school in a way that really points us towards excellence, that points us toward a shared and common vision for what we can be.”

A large part of the cultural change and closer community stems from an energized group of constituents, Thomas says. To meet the $100 million capital campaign goal, creating a sense of pride and community — especially within the alumni, parent, and corporate partner groups — was essential. “What we were able to do was energize our alumni community and our parent community around the idea of what Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business can be,” Thomas explains. If you have a capital project to sell people on, asking for money gets a lot easier, he points out. “People can imagine the building, you can show them a model or drawing of the building and show them where their name will be on a plaque.”

Unfortunately, Thomas was dealt a disadvantage, stepping into a fundraising role in 2011 when the school had a two-year-old building and a population still recovering from the recession. “What I think we did in this campaign was really move our alumni and parent constituency to believe in the idea of the McDonough School of Business as a preeminent business school,” Thomas says. “And to get them to invest in things that are really about them trusting that vision and our ability do deliver on it.”

Thomas sold stakeholders on moves like hiring new faculty chairs, going into bidding wars for more diverse and accomplished faculty members, gaining the resources to build new initiatives around entrepreneurship and global business, and essentially the ability of himself and his staff to execute. “The business school had not gone through that kind of fundraising in its history,” Thomas says.

THE NEXT DEAN’S TO-DO LIST

Despite his belief that he is leaving the school better off than it was five years ago, Thomas acknowledges some challenges for the incoming dean. Starting August 2, the interim dean will be finance professor and International Business Chair, Rohan Williamson, who has been on McDonough’s faculty for two decades. If Williamson gets the “interim” removed from the front of his new title, Thomas believes his first task will be asking the school’s community to open their wallets again.

“Even though we’ve got this new building that’s only seven years old, we’ve already outgrown it,” Thomas says. “So the next capital campaign will have some capital elements to it, which also requires thinking about what should be the physical presence of the school.”

Thomas also believes the undergraduate program needs at least a curricular evaluation. Finally, he says, the next dean will need to focus on how to implement technologies to further McDonough’s preeminence. In a robust and candid interview, Thomas reveals why he thinks McDonough is poised for a rankings jump, why the full-time MBA program has lost some admitted applicants to competitive schools, and what he plans to do next.

(The transcript has been edited for length and readability.)

Undergraduate students at the Real Estate Laboratory at Georgetown McDonough’s Steers Center For Global Real Estate. The establishment of the center was one of many notable accomplishments under Thomas’ leadership. Photo by Gary Landsman

It’s been almost a month since the announcement that you would step down as dean at Georgetown McDonough. After having some time to reflect, how do you feel about your decision?

It’s a mix of emotions, quite frankly. We’ve done some really great work at the McDonough School of Business. I love the school and the people there. In some ways, it’s hard to think about the fact I won’t be there leading that school and those individuals in the future. At the same time, I’m excited about the possibilities for the future. Decisions like this often have a developmental quality to them. And for me that developmental quality included the fact that I’ll turn 60 in September. There was a question of, “What do I want to do the next decade?” A decade in commitment of opening up the aperture to see what might be in sight. And that’s exciting.

It’s a mix and I think one of the things that allows me to leave the role at Georgetown was also that in five years, we’ve accomplished a tremendous amount and in many ways we’ve exceeded my expectations, which I think anyone who works for me will tell you I’m not one who lacks for high expectations. I’m leaving the school in a place that will keep it moving forward. We weren’t at a fragile state in terms of the progress we’ve made, and my exit would somehow jeopardize that. So I don’t feel guilty. But it is a mix of emotions.

From the outside it really seems like you were a well-liked dean and clearly the president of the university wanted you to come back. What were some of those conversations like on the inside with the president and other colleagues as you were wrestling through the decision?

In some ways they were conversations that were quite humbling, with people making clear that they thought we’d made a tremendous amount of progress under my leadership. Even more humbling is that many of the people who worked directly for me expressed that they actually liked working for me (laughing). I even had one faculty member in a leadership role say, “I never really thought of myself as having a boss but I’ve got to say, you are the best boss I’ve ever had.” So I guess the bottom line is, there was this combination of acknowledging how much progress we had made, hopping that I would stay, and at the same time understanding for why I was thinking about making the choice that I ultimately made.

We know you dig big, hairy, audacious goals (BHAGs) — what are your proudest accomplishments over your five-year tenure?

It’s interesting because the thing I’m most proud of is not mentioned or written in any article, but I’ve received over a hundred notes from people about my leaving, including many faculty. The most rewarding thing is the ways in which people describe us having changed the culture of the business school in a way that really points us towards excellence, that points us toward a shared and common vision for what we can be. That also speaks to the sense of community that we’ve created at the business school that joins the different constituencies of the school — faculty, staff, alumni, students, our corporate community — and actually, that’s the most rewarding thing.

There are particular accomplishments that I’m proud of, like the redesign of our MBA curriculum, which we did in my first year and implemented in my second year, which if you know much about curriculum reform in higher education, that’s pretty much lightspeed. And to see, with that, a 40% increase in applications to our full-time MBA program and to have our evening program be ranked number four because they basically have the same curriculum as the full-time program. And very much creating a culture where the students, in particular our student leadership, act as partners or have access throughout my five years — but in particular the last four years — as partners trying to make the school better. Which is to say, it’s not that students show up in my office like they do every dean in the country and give me chapter and verse about the things we need to improve, but they also come with solutions. They come in a way that doesn’t create a culture of complaint but really a culture of continual improvement and excellence.

You can’t be a dean for very long and hold respect of your internal constituency — your students and faculty — if you don’t raise money. Again, there our story is gratifying. When I arrived, our goal was $100 million. We were just coming out of the recession in 2011, many people didn’t think we could even make the $100 million because we had just finished the fundraising to put up the new building and we didn’t have any capital projects in this capital campaign. And we set our stretch goal publicly to be $125 million. At last count, we were at $130 million.

What I think that speaks to is, back to this idea of creating community. What we were able to do was energize our alumni community and our parent community around the idea of what Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business can be. Because the way I think about fundraising, if you have a capital project, people can imagine the building, you can show them a model or drawing of the building and show them where their name will be on a plaque. But what I think we did in this campaign was really to move our alumni and parent constituency to believe in the idea of the McDonough School of Business as a preeminent business school. And to get them to invest in things that are really about them trusting that vision and our ability do deliver on it. Because unlike a building, where you either build a building or you don’t, we can see the model, we can see if we like it before it’s actually up … getting people to invest in things like faculty chairs, our new Steers Global Real Estate Center, our entrepreneurship initiative, our global business initiative — these are all things that we’re saying, “Invest in these things and these will help take us to preeminence in terms of our ability to execute, and provide a distinguishing and transformational educational experience.” The business school had not gone through that kind of fundraising in its history. There were some people who thought the $100 million was a stretch, why say $125 million? And we went right past that. So that’s a major accomplishment, not just because of the number but because it represents our constituents and their feelings towards the school.

A Georgetown McDonough classroom. Courtesy photo

I’m also proud of the fact that on almost every dimension we have increased the diversity within the school. Our student diversity, the numbers of women have increased, the number of underrepresented U.S. minorities has increased, we have increased our percentage of international students — but more importantly, we have diversified where our international students come from. So while our percentages may not be up hugely — but they’re up — what’s really important is that now there is much more of the world represented in that international diversity at the school. We’ve increased the number of women faculty. The only place where we’ve not made the progress I would have loved to see us make is the representation of underrepresented minority faculty. In that realm, we made several offers and didn’t win on enough of them to change that number significantly. Although we did make some progress, but not as significant as the other domains.

The other thing I think we’ve done successfully, but the school is not finished yet, is we identified three themes that would guide our educational program and investments. This notion of a transformational educational experience, which really just means a focus on continuous improvement and evolution of our programs, expanding the global content and availability of global experiences for our students. And a focus on business and society, which has two components to it: understanding the intersection of business and society, in particular business and public policy and corporate social responsibility; and then this notion of principle leadership, which is about, what are the obligations that a business leader has, how they need to prepare themselves to effectively execute the service of business and society.

On those, we’ve also really deepened that in the experience we give our students, as well as in the research we’re doing at the school and our commitment to continuous improvement in our curriculum at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels.

One of those big goals you also had was ranking improvement, yet in the P&Q composite rankings there really haven’t been significant improvements. Was that a point of frustration for you?

It wasn’t as much frustrating as it was nerve-wracking. I would hear from Teresa (Mannix, McDonough’s assistant dean for communications) that some set of rankings were coming out tomorrow or next week and here I’ve set this goal of all of our programs being ranked in the top 10 of at least one major ranking, (that) was the way I’d framed it: at least one significant ranking, whether it be Poets&Quants, Businessweek, U.S. News and World Report, Financial Times.

There are different ways to think about it. When I accepted the job in May of 2011, I think we were 33 in Businessweek. I was lucky because the next ranking came out in October — I can’t take credit for it — I think we moved up into the 24 or 25. We’re 19th in the U.S. in the Financial Times. Our undergraduate program was ranked first for finance by Businessweek. Our executive MBA program is sixth in the U.S. for Financial Times. Our global executive MBA is 19th, I don’t think it was even ranked when I began.

Even though, I know for your composite ranking, which I pay a lot of attention to, we’ve floated up to 22 and now we’re 24. So there is a frustration there because when I look at some of the schools that rank above us in some of the rankings, I sometimes shake my head because a few of them have essentially shrank their full-time MBA programs in order to get a better GMAT and higher job placement.

But, if I look at the momentum of the school, I would say to the next dean of the school, we now have the momentum and are clear about the levers that we need to pull and the investments we need to make to actually move to that next level, much in the way that Yale did. I know Yale only because when the dean before Ted Snyder was there, he asked me to join his board of advisers, I saw the arc of the school and I think we’ve built now that launching pad for the next move of punctuated equilibrium and steepening trajectory into the top ten. At the full-time MBA level, the major challenge for us now is MBA scholarships. We find that the biggest reasons students aren’t coming to us now is essentially — at least what they reported — the financial aid. We lose to schools that are in the top five. But when someone tells us they went to NYU or they went to Darden or Dartmouth over us, the reason they most cite is financial aid. And the difference is substantial. Our discount rate is only 11%. And we’ve made that a major focus of our fundraising efforts. We started two years ago and that will continue to be a focus for Prashant Malaviya. In the not-too-distant future we should have an endowment of at least another $10 million just for financial aid scholarships, as well as we’ve begun directing all annual giving by our MBA alums to scholarships. But that’s got to be a major focus.

We think that there are a number of things under way that will also help us with the undergraduate rankings. Because one of the places that we fall down has to do with things that are actually outside the control of the school, which has to do with students’ experiences of various kinds of services and facilities, and Georgetown is rapidly improving those. So I have not given up on the “big, hairy, audacious goal”.

I think one difference between the Georgetown we are today and the Georgetown we were five years ago is that we’re much less internally focused. What being focused on the rankings has helped us to do is, to look outside ourselves and figure out what our place should be in the landscape of business education. And quite frankly, to raise our game and ambitions at all three levels — undergrad, grad, and executive.

What are some of the biggest challenges that should be at the top of the next dean’s to-do list?

There are a couple of things for the incoming dean. One, the incoming dean will almost have to immediately think about the next capital campaign, and what the priorities should be for the next capital campaign. The only one that I am positive about that needs to be part of that list is technology. And the need for us to significantly increase our ability to use technology in innovative ways, not just to expand to online degree programs — and we have one that’s been very successful, our master’s of science in finance —but to really transform and be really impactful in what we have in our brick-and-mortar offerings that are primarily based on campus. To leverage technology in all kinds of ways to create innovative, flexible, customized offerings for our students.

Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business

The other issue in the capital campaign has to do with, even though we’ve got this new building that’s only seven years old, we’ve already outgrown it. So the next capital campaign will have some capital elements to it, which also requires thinking about what should be the physical presence of the school.

Another priority for the next dean needs to be a review of our undergraduate program from a curricular standpoint, to begin to ask the question, “What are the ways in which we want to imprint all of the students who come through the McDonough School of Business, and how do we weave that throughout the program?”

Today I would say at least two things are global and this notion of principle leadership. Part of global is giving our students the opportunity to go abroad and experience other cultures, and we’re doing many things in that domain. But another part of global is what happens in every course. Is every course being designed through the prism of global, so that whether I’m teaching finance, leadership, or strategy, I’m designing it in a way that makes it globally relevant? And I think for us, another theme needs to be the notion of “global at home”. By that I mean, how are we using our location in the most global city in the world, Washington D.C., to actually enhance the global nature of the education we give our students? Not to mention the global diversity that is within our student body.

And then principle leadership and how do we make the idea of service part of the experiential nature of the education that we provide at the school. I don’t know whether that means required-service kinds of projects. But I think we need to deepen that and make sure it’s not just a matter of giving our students an ethics course or a course in corporate social responsibility — but again, that it weaves throughout the curriculum of the school.

The last thing I think the next dean needs to focus on is continuing our success at energizing our alumni, parent, and corporate communities in support of the school. And I think we’ve done that by having them actively engaged in how to shape and define the vision, and also being very conscious in how we connect them to each other so that we really create a community as opposed to a network of donors.

We’ve spoken about the accomplishments and positive things that have happened under your leadership. What are some things you’d do differently or wish you could change?

Georgetown grew up as an undergraduate college. That’s its roots. And then it had a distinguished law school and I think as part of delivering on its mission of service, a med school evolved. And then at the turn of the last century, the School of Foreign Service. Georgetown wasn’t known for business. And I think if I were to look back on it and say what would I do different, I think I would’ve been much more deliberate about creating the Georgetown narrative for the business school at Georgetown, so that our Georgetown community at large becomes increasingly aware of why having a great business school enhances a great university.

We’ve now started to do many more collaborative kinds of things with the other schools at Georgetown, like the law school, the School of Foreign Service. Just in the past two years, we’ve started two new programs jointly with the School of Foreign Service — one at the undergraduate level and one at the graduate level. But the business school has been around for a while. Our 60th birthday will be later this year and this is the first time there’s been a business school-School of Foreign Service joint program. We’re working to design a program with our law school. So I think I would have been much more deliberate and speeded up that work at the university.

There are always personnel decisions you go back and revisit and might have done different, but it’s probably not good to be explicit about those in print, so I think I’ll pass. But of course, if I think about them in hindsight — like if I would have had the relationship with the school I have now and the faculty — there are things I could do that I was probably right not to tackle in my first few years.

I think another is really getting the faculty engaged in answering the question, “Are we organized in the most effective way to deliver the kind of education we need to deliver to our students in the 21st century, and the kind of research and engagement with the world that we need to pursue if we are really going to be one of the preeminent universities in the country?” If you look at our school today — and I think most business schools — we’re all organized by departments. Those departments are basically defined by the courses you teach. So everyone has a finance department. Everybody has a marketing department. And then every school has a department of everything else. When I started to look across our faculty, you see very clearly that strategy is a course that faculty from four of six departments could teach. If I look at it from a research standpoint, behavioral decision theory and behavioral experiment is an intellectual methodology that people in five of our six departments all use. We’re organized around these curriculum-defined departments, and I think it’s not the best way that a business school could be organized that creates alignment with what we need to do from a curricular standpoint.

It’s just this notion of, “Do we need to rethink how business school faculties are organized and thought of,” and redesigning the incentive structures for faculty in a way that recognizes those differences, such that how we reward and incentivize faculty who we deem to be doing more disciplinary-based research is different than what we might expect of our teaching professors and different from our professors of the practice. We need to recognize that all three of those groups can produce intellectual capital for the school. All three of those groups can play a role in the design of our educational experience. All three of those groups can be involved in developing co-curricular types of things. If you look at the McDonough School of Business, all of that is evident, but I don’t think we’ve been explicit about it and done it in a way that has everyone feel equally appreciated. I think we need to re-examine it.

What’s next?

In the immediate future, I will return to teaching and research. I am also open to considering leadership roles — either in academia or in a realm that speaks to some of the areas of particular interest that I’d like to be relevant to, like urban and public education, addressing income inequality, and the promotion of diversity at the highest levels of corporations and governments. There, the question is, can I identify an activity in which my leadership can make a difference and to which I can make a decade-long commitment.

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