UC Berkeley dean is in the business of developing business leaders

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Aug 31, 2008 | by David Morrill

BERKELEY

Richard Lyons hardly seems like the new dean of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

Dean ... yes. New ... no.

Lyons has officially been at the top position for fewer than two months, but he speaks about his vision as if he has been there for years.

In many ways, he has.

He graduated from UC Berkeley's business program as an undergraduate in 1982, taught at the school for more than 10 years, and served as an acting dean for a year starting in 2004.

Lyons is now the 14th dean of the school, officially succeeding Tom Campbell on July 7. The fall term began Thursday.

"I have so much history with this place, that it's great to be back here," Lyons, 47, said. "I've always known how connected I feel to this school that if the opportunity ever came up again, I'd throw my hat into the ring."

At his most recent stint as chief learning officer at Goldman Sachs, Lyons was in charge of developing leadership skills among the investment firm's directors. He hopes to do the same among the 2,200 students in six degree programs at Haas.

"My job is to really find ways to improve the experiences and skills our students build here," Lyons said.

For Lyons, the world of business was introduced to him at a young age. While most children were exposed to Disney through its cartoon characters and amusement parks, his father made him pay attention to the company itself.

"My father gave me Disney shares so we could learn about business and the markets with a company he figured would interest us," he said.

Where his path diverged from that of his parents was when a professor saw one of his papers and encouraged him to seek a profession in academia.

He did, and he fell in love with educating. As a teacher at the school, Lyons was widely popular. Six times he was awarded the Haas School's Teacher-of-the-Year Award, and in 1998 he received the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest teaching honor on campus.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who announced the selection, believes Lyons fits in well with the school.

"I am extraordinarily pleased that we were able to recruit Rich Lyons back from Wall Street to lead the Haas Business School," Birgeneau said. "Rich is a charismatic leader with impressive energy, imagination and verve."

One of the struggles past deans have faced is trying to seek financial freedom so the school could earn money on its own, and not just rely on the state.

Now that the school is finally able to corral some money, Lyons can try to bring the school to a higher level. This freedom to pay the faculty with their own money will allow them to compete with the rest of the country.

"Before we were losing some of the top faculty to other institutions, which was making it tough to compete," he said. "Now that we can reach out and get some of that talent "... the school here (will be) that much better."

And where they're ranked is important, because Lyons wants to try to attract the best business prospects possible, he said.

"We are in the business of producing business leaders," he said.

Currently, the school is ranked high, but Lyons thinks it can do better.

"Right now we are in the second five tier of schools by most standards," he said. "That's fine by most, but that's not the Berkeley standard."

Not only does Lyons hope to make improvements from the dean's office, such as developing a plan for a new building and build the endowment, but he wants to get a perspective from the ground level, as well.

When the students went through orientation, he went through the process with them. Now that classes started, he wants to constantly stay attuned to the curriculum being taught and seek ways to improve it.

"I might have to go around incognito, with full nose, mustache and glasses," he said.

Also, Lyons wants to put an emphasis on the application process and making sure the roughly 10 percent the school accepts are the right ones.

"The question we need to ask is, 'Does this person really want to do this, or is this someone who is just looking to get their ticket punched so they can get a better job?'" he said. "If we don't have the right people in it for the right reasons, it takes a lot away from the program."

For those who do make it, Lyons says they can expect experiences geared toward building skills that they will need once they graduate.

"The culture we are trying to build here among our students is one of confidence without attitude that I expect the firms to deeply appreciate about our students," Lyons said. "We want this to be one of the big things that differentiates us among other top schools."

Not only will this culture come from the classes themselves, but also experiences outside the classroom. For example, to build public speaking skills, students might be videotaped and then critiqued by a professional television broadcaster.

"Unlike the other schools at Berkeley where the quality is measured by the research done, success at a business school is often calculated long after a student graduates," he said. "We need to take everything up a level so that we can assure that the students are going to leave here with world class professional polish."