Lifetime Achievement Award: Jeffrey Brown At Gies College Of Business

Gies College of Business Former Dean Jeffrey R. Brown is being awarded Poets&Quants’ Lifetime Achievement Award for a transformative nine-year deanship

Before leaving the dean’s office for the last time in August, Jeffrey Brown left a handwritten note on the desk for his successor. After serving as the dean of the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois for nine years, Brown wanted to offer some inspiring and encouraging words to the person–Executive Associate Dean W. Brooke Elliott–who he most wanted to replace him.

“I reminded her to cherish this role,” he says, “that it is a wonderful opportunity to make a big difference on stuff that matters. You have an amazing team around you so listen to them and create an environment where they will give you honest feedback even when it is hard to hear.”

He placed the letter on her keyboard, his last official act as dean. Brown’s words reflect his own profoundly held belief that serving as dean of the university’s business college had been the greatest honor of his 56 years of life. Brown, however, did not merely serve as dean of a business school. No mere custodian or steward, Brown has been a revolutionary leader. While he may not look the part of a radical, his ideas and his results have been revolutionary.

A REINVENTION OF A BUSINESS SCHOOL LIKE NONE OTHER

His reinvention of the Gies College of Business into a world leader in digital education will be studied for decades. Named Dean of the Year by Poets&Quants in 2021, he raised more than $350 million, bringing in the largest single gift in the history of the University of Illinois – a $150 million naming gift from alumnus Larry Gies and his wife, Beth, in 2017. In late 2022, Brown also hauled in a $25 million pledge to help finance a new academic building from Steven Wymer, a Gies alum and the long-time investment portfolio manager at Fidelity.

He hired more than 60 new faculty, a more than 40% increase, doubled the number of enrolled students, revamped the undergraduate and graduate curriculums at the school, launched a highly successful branding campaign to give the school national and international prominence, and broke ground on a new building that will ultimately allow Gies to increase enrollment in its popular undergraduate business program.

No less important, however, Brown courageously closed down five programs, including a residential full-time MBA and an Executive MBA program, to focus more squarely on the online market. In doing so, he made good on his promise to democratize education, aggressively building out the online iMBA program at a disruptively priced $24,000 that became the fastest-growing MBA in the world. It also won recognition from Poets&Quants as the MBA Program of the Year in 2022. From a standing start in 2016 with an initial cohort of 263 students, iMBA enrollment exploded to nearly 4,200 students from every state and from all over the world. Today, more than 5,000 graduate students are enrolled in the school’s online degree programs.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR LEADERSHIP

For his exemplary and courageous leadership, Poets&Quants is awarding Brown its first Lifetime Achievement Award for a business school dean. He accomplished what few higher education leaders can ever claim: an astonishing transformation of an important institution of higher learning.

Senior leaders at the school give him kudos for picking the right people and then giving them the freedom to do their jobs. “He created a really strong leadership team around him and he let that group lead,” says Jan Slater, chief marketing officer at Gies. “We were all involved in these discussions but part of the learning is that we were all knowledgable about what was going on and how we would message those decisions so it wasn’t a surprise. He got a lot of buy-in from faculty and staff.”

The letter Brown left his successor, before going off on a hiking adventure and the start of a year-long sabbatical, was written with a sigh of relief. Brooke, the former chair of the school’s widely praised accounting department, was among the first members of his senior leadership team. She skillfully led the school’s ambitious online initiative, making its iMBA the world’s fastest-growing MBA program of the past decade.

‘I HAD TO BE THE SECOND MOST EXCITED PERSON ABOUT THE NEWS’

When Elliott first called him to say she was chosen to be his successor, Brown says he could not have been more pleased. “I told her that I genuinely believed that I had to be the second most excited person about that news besides her,” recalls Brown. “Knowing that Brooke would be the one stepping in, I feel great about it. If I had stepped away and someone who came in was new to the college, I think there would have been a lot of concern weighing on me. Knowing that it was Brooke, it was a luxury. Being the dean of Gies was the best job I ever had. But I know I like being the former dean, knowing Brooke is the dean and I can go hiking.”

Now, nearly three months removed from the job, Brown is introspective about the meaningful difference he has made. “When you get away from it, you get clarity on the big things that will matter over the long run,” he says. “All the day-to-day details float into the background. With the benefit of hindsight, you think of all the frustrations and accomplishments and at the end of the day, it’s not important. If you get the big things right, all the stuff will fall into place. That reinforces the importance of any leader having a clear vision and a clear set of top priorities that are going to matter. You can’t ignore the small stuff but you probably shouldn’t spend more mental energy on that stuff than you have to.”

Asked what he is most proud of accomplishing, he ticks off several achievements. “The naming of the college, the change in the culture, creating the leadership position in online education. Those things will impact this college for generations.”