Meet the New Dean

If you ask new Farmer School dean Jenny Darroch why she chose to accept the role, she’ll explain, “I was looking for a place that had a point of difference in a very competitive and crowded market - experiential learning, high-touch faculty, academic rigor - and that’s what I see at Miami.” And she couldn’t wait to experience it all in person. “I think Zoom and WebEx were fantastic, because I was able to work from California when I started on July 1, but there’s a lot that you don’t quite get with video conferencing. So I’m really happy to be here, in the building, meeting with students, and really getting that rich feel of the place.”

And Jenny hit the ground running! Since arriving in Oxford, she has been meeting with faculty, staff, alumni and members of the school’s Business Advisory Council and Board of Visitors, getting a feel for what is working and what can be improved. “We absolutely, without question, have to pay attention to the salaries that the students are earning when they leave the Farmer School. We need to continue to focus on diversity and inclusion,” she remarked. “I think we’ve got a service

obligation to other disciplines across the university. So I would like to find a pathway to collaborate even more with other divisions and departments.”

One of the challenges Jenny faced immediately was how to ensure that the hallmarks of the Farmer School educational experience – personalized attention, close faculty-student relationships, multiple opportunities for experiential learning, international study and leadership skills – could continue with COVID-19 restrictions. It was a challenge she, our faculty and staff met head on. “In my role, I often talk to industry leaders who believe that a blend of face to face and remote interaction represents the future of work in a post COVID-19 world. What this means is that we are helping our students better prepare for their future, by requiring them to move between face to face and remote modalities, learn how to log into a video conference and how to log in on time, how to participate in an online discussion, how to give presentations online, how to contribute as a virtual intern, and how to interview and secure a job without necessarily meeting anyone face to face.

“I do not want to trivialize the catastrophic impact COVID-19 has had on individuals, families, communities or the economy but I do believe COVID-19 brings with it many life lessons - e.g., how our actions impact others, how to live in the present, how to work with ambiguity, the importance of evidence-based decision-making, and how to be more resilient. So rather than fight the constraints COVID-19 has imposed, why not celebrate the changes we are all forced to make?”

“Most of our faculty say that the courses they are delivering now are better than any course they have delivered prior because they have been forced to challenge everything they do in order to create a positive learning environment. I also hear faculty comment that the technology enables them to do things they couldn’t do before – e.g., have speakers participate via video conference from anywhere around the world, or get better student participation by using break out rooms (a feature of some video conferencing platforms).”

“Now that I’m here, I’m really looking forward to putting the shine on the school because I think there’s just so many assets to leverage and I truly believe this is a tremendous opportunity for the school, and for me as an incoming dean.”

“What I want us to do as a school is to be the best undergraduate business school in the country, and put a fire under ourselves a little bit. Our challenge is to push boldly to be the best undergraduate business school in the country, with selected graduate programs that support our core mission. And that’s what we’re going to drive toward.”

But how will the Farmer School get to that goal? Jenny has some ideas about that.

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“We can’t assume our greatness. None of this can be taken for granted. So the challenge that I’m going to lay out on everything we do is that every time we look at a part of our business, we should be scanning the environment, looking at our top competitors, seeing what makes them best in class, understand what that means, and figuring out how to outmaneuver them,” she noted. “What do we consider to be best practices, how we measure up against it, and how do we make sure we’re meeting and exceeding that on the key things that are important to our brand?”

“Our core mission is to work with our students so that they are beyond ready leaders who are ready to launch their

careers. What we have to do to get there is make sure we understand what employers want. We’ve got some incredible insights and initiatives, but it’s sort of a moving target,” she explained. “We just need to be really tuned in and challenge ourselves all the time to make sure that our students are always beyond ready.”

Employers will say that they seek out Miami graduates because there’s something special about a Miami graduate. They want to get first dibs on our graduates because there’s something special about them that they can’t quite put their finger on beyond putting it down to the fouryear fully immersive experiences our students have.”

While there is always room for improvement, she said, the Farmer School already offers great opportunities to its students. “I think what we offer is an incredible opportunity to grow up intellectually, socially, and emotionally. Students make lifelong friends, relationships that endure and they learn about who they are. When people come to Miami, there’s an incredible transformation that goes on.”

GradReports

Prior to joining Miami, Jenny Darroch served as the dean of the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.

She earned her doctorate in marketing from the University of Otago in New Zealand. She has a master of commerce degree in marketing and international business from the University of Auckland, an honors degree in applied economics from Massey University and a bachelor’s degree in marketing and economics from the University of Waikato, all in New Zealand, which is her native country. She moved to the United States in 2004. While at Otago, Jenny was the inaugural Director of Entrepreneurship and launched New Zealand’s first masters program in entrepreneurship.

Jenny has authored three books, including “Why Marketing to Women Doesn’t Work: Using Market Segmentation to Identify Customer Needs” (2014, Palgrave Macmillan), and “Marketing Through Turbulent Times” (2009, Palgrave Macmillan). Jenny has published more than 30 refereed publications.

Her research — focused on looking at innovation strategies from the customers’ point of view — has been cited more than 4,600 times, appearing in marketing, management, innovation and entrepreneurship journals.

Jenny serves on the boards of Redgate Software, Cambridge UK, and Kent Business School, UK. She is the outgoing chair of Women Administrators in Management Education (WAME), an AACSB affinity group (201920), a Fellow of the International Academy of Management and a member of the American Marketing Association. b