Donde Plowman named dean of UNL College of Business Administration

Donde Plowman, a professor of business and head of the Department of Management at University of Tennessee in Knoxville, has accepted appointment as the ninth dean of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Business Administration. The appointment, pending approval by the University of Nebraska Board of Regents, was announced today by Ellen Weissinger, UNL's interim senior vice chancellor for academic affairs.

"Donde Plowman is a distinguished researcher, teacher and academic administrator with a proven ability to connect business schools with the business community," Weissinger said. "She is also a person of vision and integrity -- just the combination of talents required to lead our college of business administration."

Plowman will assume the dean's post on July 1 and will be a tenured professor in the department of management.

"I am honored to be named the ninth dean of the College of Business Administration at UNL and thrilled to be joining this great university," Plowman said. "I look forward to working with the outstanding faculty, staff, students and alumni who have made this a college of national prominence."

Plowman has a named professorship at the University of Tennessee: the Ralph and Janet Heath Professor in Business. She previously was a professor of management (2000-07) at University of Texas at San Antonio, as well as associate dean for graduate programs and research and director of the Ph.D. program at the College of Business (2000-03). In that role she was responsible for starting the Ph.D. program in business at UT-San Antonio. From 1994 to 2000, she was an associate professor of management at UT-San Antonio, and was a visiting assistant professor at UT-Austin (1995-96) and an assistant professor of management at UT-San Antonio from 1988-94.

Her Ph.D. is in strategic management from University of Texas at Austin, her M.Ed. in higher education administration from University of North Texas, and her bachelor's in English from Southern Methodist University. In 1995, she was a visiting associate professor of management at Helsinki School of Economics and Business in Finland.

Plowman's teaching experience includes graduate, undergraduate, doctoral and executive education courses in organization theory, strategic management, organizational decision making and organizational behavior. Her research interests are radical change and innovation in complex organizations, leadership and complexity science, organizational decision making and the participation of individuals and groups in strategic decision making, and organizational interpretation and mindfulness. In 2008, she received a highly coveted research award in her field: the Academy of Management Journal Best Paper Award.

Former dean Cynthia Milligan announced her plans to retire on Nov. 12, 2008, and associate dean John Anderson has been interim dean since June 30. Milligan had been dean of CBA since 1998.