Douglas J. Skinner, the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting and deputy dean for faculty, will serve as the interim dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, effective Aug. 15.
“Doug’s appointment will help sustain the momentum that has been built to further establish Chicago Booth as one of the world’s preeminent business schools while the search for the next dean is conducted,” said President Robert J. Zimmer.
A UChicago faculty member since 2005, Skinner is a leading expert in corporate disclosure practices, corporate financial reporting and corporate finance, with a focus on payout policy. His teaching topics include financial accounting, financial statement analysis, corporate finance and empirical methods in accounting research.
Prior to his appointment at Chicago Booth, Skinner was the KPMG Professor of Accounting at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
“It is a great privilege to be a member of the Booth faculty, and even more so to serve in the dean’s office for the last 16 months. I am now honored to have the opportunity to serve Booth and the University in this even more important role,” Skinner said. “Our faculty, staff, alumni and students continue to make Booth one of the world’s best business schools, and I look forward to working with all of our constituents to continue our success while preserving the school’s long-held values. I am confident that Chicago Booth will continue to flourish during this transition.”
Appointed Booth’s deputy dean for faculty in 2015, Skinner oversees the finance, operations, macroeconomics, organization and markets, and entrepreneurship faculty groups, as well as the Initiative on Global Markets, the Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance, the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the Social Enterprise Initiative, and the Harry L. Davis Leadership Center.
The formal process for selecting the next dean of Booth will begin soon with the election of a faculty committee to advise the president and provost.
Skinner succeeds Sunil Kumar, the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Operations Management, who will become provost of Johns Hopkins University on Sept. 1, after serving as Booth’s dean since 2011.
—Prof. Kunle Odunsi
