Old Dominion University Names Kenneth B. Kahn Dean of the Strome College of Business
August 11, 2022
Old Dominion University has announced the appointment of Kenneth B. Kahn as dean for the Strome College of Business, effective Sept. 1. He succeeds Dr. Jeff Tanner, who served as the dean of the college for eight years.
Kahn is currently dean and professor at Cleveland State University's Monte Ahuja College of Business. In this role, he oversaw all administrative and operational activities and enhanced the college's reputation as a beacon institution of business education, scholarship and research. Examples of his leadership include:
- Directing the team of faculty and staff that successfully renewed the college's AACSB accreditation for five years.
- Working with faculty to launch three majors (Property Management, Sport Entertainment Management and Business Studies).
- Instituting a faculty-led research lunch and learn once a semester to facilitate interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration across departments.
- Securing a gift from Redwood Living to bolster data analytics within the curriculum.
- Establishing the first Executive MBA scholarship - The Jennifer Buck Memorial Scholarship.
Before joining Cleveland State, Dr. Kahn served as senior associate dean of the School of Business at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and a professor of marketing. He also served as the inaugural executive director of the VCU da Vinci Center, a unique collegiate model advancing innovation and entrepreneurship through cross-disciplinary collaboration. Prior to VCU, he held leadership and faculty positions at Purdue University, The University of Tennessee and Georgia Tech.
Kahn's teaching and research interests include product innovation, product management and demand forecasting of current and new products. He has published more than 50 articles in prestigious journals, authored three books on product planning and forecasting, and edited the PDMA Handbook on New Product Development. Dr. Kahn is broadly recognized as one of the world's leading researchers in the field of innovation management. In Spring 2021, he was named to Stanford University's list of the Top 2% Most Cited Researchers in the World.
His industrial experience includes serving as an industrial engineer and project engineer for Weyerhaeuser Co. and a manufacturing engineer for Respironics Inc. He has extensive contacts in the private sector through his corporate consulting and training endeavors.
Kahn earned a Ph.D. in marketing and a Master of Science in industrial engineering from Virginia Tech and a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Austin Agho expressed his gratitude to all who participated in the search and screening process. He gave special thanks to the search committee: Dean Gail Dodge, Vice President Alonzo Brandon, Professor Samuel Brown, Associate Vice President Nancy Grden, Financial Manager Stephanie Hawthorne, Founder & CEO of Atlantic Bay Mortgage Brian Holland, Lecturer Jennifer Klinger, Professor Yuping Liu-Thompkins, Professor Erika Marsillac, Professor Robert McNab, Professor Anil Nair, student Anja Nilsson, Professor Licheng Sun, Executive Director David White, Program Manager Shanna Wood, Dragas Center Chief Administrative Officer Barbara Blake Gonzalez and the search firm representatives, Tom Fitch and Amanda Bennett of Storbeck Search. He extended warm gratitude to Tarsha Turner for her tireless efforts in staffing the search.
"Please join me in thanking Dean Jeff Tanner for his outstanding service and extending our best wishes on his retirement and welcoming Dean Kenneth Kahn to ODU," Agho said.
