Yale School of Management
Edward Snyder will step down from his position as School of Management dean and return to full-time teaching and research starting in July 2019, University President Peter Salovey announced in a University-wide email Wednesday afternoon.
Snyder, who is on sabbatical this academic year, will complete his eighth and final year as dean in 2018–19 while the Yale searches for a permanent replacement. At the end of this academic year, Anjani Jain will finish his one-year tenure as acting dean of the SOM.
“I have come to realize … that it will soon be the right time for someone else to embrace the opportunities ahead and to have the great privilege of being dean of Yale SOM,” Snyder wrote in an email to the SOM community. “Given our mission to educate leaders for business and society and our connectedness to Yale, all sectors, and all regions, I’m confident that the next chapter in the school’s history will be a great one.”
In his email, Snyder highlighted several priorities for his last year as dean, including reinforcing the SOM’s connectedness with the larger University, strengthening the school’s financial position, fostering effective communitywide efforts to represent the SOM, engaging advisory boards and supporting a successful transition to the next dean. In the next few months, Snyder’s email said, Salovey is expected to make announcements about the search process for the next dean.
Under Snyder’s leadership, the SOM has transformed into one of the most “forward thinking” business schools in the country, Salovey wrote in the email. As dean, Snyder strived to make the SOM “distinctively global,” Salovey added. In 2012, he established the Global Network for Advancement Management, a network of 32 business schools throughout the world, and in 2014, he introduced global studies as a requirement for all Master of Business Administration and Master of Advanced Management students.
“In a very short period, SOM went from being perhaps the least international top U.S. business school to the one that is most globally connected,” said David Bach, deputy dean and a professor of management at the SOM.
During his tenure, Bach said, Snyder expanded SOM’s curriculum from an effectively MBA-only program to one with “a high-integrity, mission-focused” portfolio, by launching the Master of Management Studies in Global Business and Society and Master of Advanced Management degree programs, developing a new leadership curriculum for MBA and Master of Advanced Management students and appointing an inaugural director of entrepreneurship programs.
According to Gabriel Rossi, assistant dean of faculty and curriculum at the SOM, one of Snyder’s most significant accomplishments is his commitment to integrating the SOM with its home university.
“Dean Snyder is a builder — building programs, building connections and building relationships to strengthen Yale SOM’s mission and community,” Rossi said. “I very much look forward to continuing this work with Dean Snyder next year and for many years to come.”
But of all his many accomplishments, Snyder said his proudest one as dean of the SOM was being part of “the best-in-class leadership team among business schools.”
The seven SOM administrators, faculty members and students interviewed by the News praised Snyder as a visionary who gave the school direction and focus, elevating its reputation and reach to new heights.
According to Joel Getz, senior associate dean for development and alumni relations at the SOM, SOM alumni donations have reached record levels. At 53 percent, the SOM alumni donation rate not only broke a school record and led Yale’s other schools but was significantly higher than all but one of the SOM’s peer business schools, Getz said. Another highlight of Getz’s time working with Snyder was completing the fundraising for Evans Hall, the school’s new home, completed in late 2013.
“I remember Ted saying to me when he first got here that if good things happened on an academic and strategic level, the support would follow,” Getz said. “From a fundraiser’s perspective, the best thing a dean can do is to have a powerful and creative vision, execute on it and align the community around it. Ted has done that in a spectacular way, and our alumni and friends have rallied around his leadership.”
Jain called Snyder one of the “most inspirational academic leaders” with whom he has worked closely and spoke of his great capacity to mentor and empower leaders within SOM. Though Jain acknowledged that he wishes Snyder would continue as dean for “a little longer,” he noted that when Snyder steps down next year, he will complete a “long and exemplary tenure.”
Students and faculty also expressed hope for how the next dean would pick up the mantle and lead the school toward advancing its mission.
“My hope is that the next dean continues Dean Snyder’s legacy of educating leaders for business and society and finds ways to support our diverse class through prioritizing more diverse faculty, career support, academic offerings and other programming,” said Christine Chen SOM ’18. “It’s important for a dean to listen to the students, hear their feedback and communicate often and clearly what measures are being taken to address the feedback.”
Snyder told the News that after he returns to full-time teaching, he will embrace the opportunity to teach a course on the “big issues” facing business and society, including immigration, gun control, sexual harassment and privacy.
Snyder came to Yale in 2011 after serving as the dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Adelaide Feibel | adelaide.feibel@yale.edu
Saumya Malhotra | saumya.malhotra@yale.edu