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Business school dean resigning at year’s end

Daily Planet services
Tuesday August 14, 2001

The University of California, Berkeley business school dean who once served as President Clinton’s National Economic Adviser is leaving to head the London Business School. 

Laura Tyson, dean of the Haas School of Business, announced plans Monday to resign by Dec. 31. She was appointed dean in 1998 and is the only woman currently leading a major business school in the United States. 

“Laura Tyson has shown wonderful leadership as dean of the Haas School. She has led the school to new levels of prominence and fostered an innovative learning environment that will continue to greatly benefit today’s business students. We wish her the best in her new position and I am delighted that she sees a return to Berkeley in her future plans,” said Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl. 

Berdahl announced that professor Benjamin Hermalin, who has been serving as associate dean for academic affairs and chair of the faculty at the Haas School since 1999, has been appointed interim dean. Hermalin, 39, is the Willis H. Booth Professor of Banking and Finance and has been with the Haas School since 1988. He has a joint appointment with the Department of Economics and is a co-founder and director of the private online academic publishing company Bepress. 

The campus will undertake a national search for the permanent deanship, said the chancellor. 

Tyson, 54, will be on leave from her faculty position at UC Berkeley and said she plans to return to the campus at some point in the future. She has been a professor at the Haas School since 1990 and at the campus since 1977. 

“I have been offered the possibility of fulfilling a long-held dream of spending a few years in London and doing so in a way that I believe will enhance my skills as a professor and university administrator,” Tyson said in her communications with her Haas School faculty colleagues. 

Tyson said the London appointment will provide her with a perfect vantage point from which to study the globalization of business.  

She became known for her research in international economics, including her widely acclaimed book, “Who’s Bashing Whom - Trade Conflict in High Technology Industries.” 

Before becoming dean of the Haas School, Tyson served from January 1993 through December 1996 in the Clinton Administration, where she was a key architect of the President’s domestic and international economic policy agenda during his first term in office.  

Between February 1995 and December 1996, she served as the President’s National Economic Adviser and was the highest ranking woman in the Clinton White House.  

During her tenure as Haas School dean, Tyson successfully negotiated an agreement with the university administration to grant the Haas School greater financial and operational autonomy.