Tag: interim dean



Kurt T. Dirks’s term as interim dean begins July 1, 2016. He will serve until November 30, 2016, when Mark P. Taylor takes office. Dirks is the Bank of America Professor of Managerial Leadership. He served as senior associate dean for programs from 2012 to 2016. In that role, he worked to significantly grow and strengthen Olin’s degree programs, including the development and launch of the first Executive MBA degree program offered in India by a US university. Along with Professor Stuart Bunderson, he recently founded the Bauer Leadership Center to advance the science and practice of developing value-centered leaders who have impact with integrity.

Dirks’s research in organizational behavior focuses on trust in workplace relationships, leadership, and teams. As a pioneer in the research of trust in the workplace, Dirks has been widely published in premier academic journals as well as in the mainstream media. He was named a Top Thought Leader in Trust in 2015 by Trust Across America.

Dirks with students in the Defining Moments course he co-teaches with Stuart Bunderson.

Dirks with students in the Defining Moments course he co-teaches with Stuart Bunderson.

Dirks joined the Olin faculty in 2001. He has taught across every program offered by Olin, and he has received the Reid Teaching Award four times. Prior to Olin, he taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at Simon Fraser University.

Dirks received his PhD in organizational behavior from the University of Minnesota in 1997. He earned a BBA in finance and a master’s degree in management from Iowa State University in 1990 and 1993, respectively. He is a member of the Academy of Management, the American Psychological Association, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologists.

Link to Q&A with Kurt Dirks on The Source

Main photo by Jerry Naunheim.