Courtesy of the School of Management
Even before Edward Snyder took on the School of Management deanship in 2011, he had a vision for what the school could be like.
“I knew that business schools were good at essential competencies related to cooperation and competition,” Snyder told the News. “But I had recognized that business schools should be positioned differently given the changes in the overall landscape of business and society. Yale was the perfect place to work on further integrating SOM with other academic units and making it distinctively global.”
Snyder announced last year that he will step down from his position as SOM dean in July 2019 and will return to full-time teaching and research at the school. His successor is yet to be named.
As Snyder nears the middle of his final year as SOM dean, he and other administrators are reflecting on his lasting influence on the school.
Snyder said that he sees his legacy at the school as bringing it to be “stronger and strategically positioned.” In an interview with the News, Snyder highlighted his accomplishments in several areas, including facilitating alumni engagement, better connecting the school with the wider Yale community, improving global network programming and expanding the entrepreneurship curriculum, Masters-level programs and non-degree programs.
Snyder also said that in the past few years, the SOM’s faculty recruitment and retention have been “excellent” and that the applicant pool for the school’s degree programs has been “deep.” He noted that he is glad to see that the school’s mission — “to educate leaders for business and society” — has been reflected in SOM’s daily operations.
“Our day-to-day commitment to the mission to develop leaders for business and society is palpable,” Snyder said. “I’m pleased to be part of it.”
SOM Deputy Dean for Academic Programs David Bach credited Snyder with strengthening the school by building connections with the wider University community and by fostering international connections. He highlighted the dramatic increase of non-SOM Yale students in SOM courses in the past seven years, and the building and maintenance of the Global Network for Advanced Management, which Bach called Snyder’s “brainchild.” The Network is a collaboration among 30 business schools throughout the world that seeks to “drive innovation and create value by connecting leading global business schools, their resources and their stakeholders,” according to its website.
SOM Deputy Dean for Academic Programs Anjani Jain, who served as the acting dean during Snyder’s sabbatical last academic year, said that his temporary role brought him close to SOM stakeholders. He said that he found it “remarkable” to see how much Snyder’s strategies as the dean “had resonated with the stakeholders outside the campus.”
Jain added that the bonds Snyder built with these actors was “an affirmation of the intrinsic virtue of [Snyder’s] strategy” and of its effectiveness in improving the school’s reputation.
“What he did very masterfully was reconnect the school with its founding mission while also modernizing it and globalizing the mission,” Jain said.
Jain noted that Snyder has developed better relations not only with SOM alumni but also with graduates of Yale at large. He said that SOM’s new building, which was inaugurated in January 2014, was a “testament of generosity of many Yale alums.”
University President Peter Salovey told the News that Snyder’s work has positively affected both SOM and the University as a whole.
“He has greatly improved SOM’s reputation and positioned it well for the future,” Salovey said. “In the current year, … Snyder will lay the groundwork for the leadership transition that is on the horizon. I look forward to celebrating his extraordinary contributions to business education and scholarship and to building on his vision for SOM.”
Snyder received a doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1984.
Serena Cho contributed reporting.
Asha Prihar | asha.prihar@yale.edu