January 23, 2014
WASHINGTON: Harvard University announced on Wednesday that Rakesh Khurana, the Indian-origin scholar who is currently a Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business School (HBS) and professor of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), will be the new Dean starting July of the Harvard College, which was established in 1636 when Shah Jahan ruled India.
January 23, 2014
WASHINGTON: Harvard University announced on Wednesday that Rakesh Khurana, the Indian-origin scholar who is currently a Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business School (HBS) and professor of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), will be the new Dean starting July of the Harvard College, which was established in 1636 when Shah Jahan ruled India.
Harvard University, having been formed in 1636 by British colonialists, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the US.
A Harvard insider who has studied, taught, and administered in the famed school, Khurana will be the third dean of Indian-origin in the Harvard system after Venky Narayanmurthi headed the Harvard College of Engineering and Applied Sciences nearly a decade back, and Nitin Nohria was named Dean of the prestigious Harvard Business School in 2010.
The prestige associated with Harvard College lies in the fact that it is the precursor to Harvard University, having been formed in 1636 by British colonialists, thus making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Harvard is now the world's wealthiest educational institution, with an endowment of nearly $32 billion, larger than the GDP of many countries.
Harvard President Drew Faust, in making the announcement, described Khurana as "a faculty leader who embodies the interconnectedness of Harvard," and said his experiences as a graduate student, an award-winning teacher at HBS, and the master of an undergraduate House "give him a unique perspective on the university, and his deep respect for the liberal-arts model and the residential education will serve him well as he guides Harvard College."
His Indian-American colleague Nitin Nohria also hailed the appointment, saying "Rakesh's selection is a testament first and foremost to his skill and vision as a teacher and scholar, and a demonstration, too, of the ways Drew Faust's vision for one university can create exciting new opportunities."
Khurana earned his BS from Cornell University. He began graduate studies at Harvard in 1993, earning his PhD in 1998. He was appointed to the HBS faculty in 2000 and became co-master of Cabot in 2010. He taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 1998 and 2000. Prior to graduate school, he worked as a founding member of Cambridge Technology Partners.
According to Harvard Gazette, Khurana's research uses a sociological perspective to focus on the processes by which elites and leaders are selected and developed. He has written extensively about the CEO labor market and business education. He has also co-authored "Handbook for Leadership Theory and Practice" (2010) and "The Handbook for Teaching Leadership" (2012), seminal texts on leadership theory and pedagogical practice.
Khurana joins scores of Indian-origin academics who now head business and engineering schools across the US, although reaching the top in humanities, much less in an elite, Ivy League school, is a less frequent occurrence.
Courtesy: TNN
