Mississippi State University appointed Sharon Oswald as the new College of Business dean.  She will fulfill her role in July.
Oswald is coming from Auburn University where she has been Head of the Department of Management since 1999. She is also a Colonel George Privett Professor and has been employed at Auburn for over 20 years.
Oswald completed her undergraduate education at Auburn and went on to receive her MBA and doctorate degree at the University of Alabama.
Prior to her career in academics, Oswald spent some time in hospital administration, which she said helped her in the role she has now as department head.
“I think the fact that I spent 10 years in management and health care helped me a lot for a role in administration and academia,” Oswald said. “Even though universities are very different from the private sector, it’s still managing people and motivating people.”
Oswald’s current role at Auburn has given her the valuable experience she needs to take on this new position at MSU, she said.
During her 24 years there, she has been a part of many university committees, worked with other colleges and participated in fundraising projects.
Oswald was chosen for this role based on a number of things such as her background, how she answered questions during the interview process and how she fit with the campus, Provost and Executive Vice President Jerome Gilbert said.
“She has a very strong record of leadership at Auburn. She also has a very strong research record which we thought was important for the future of the college,” Gilbert said.
The college’s interim dean Louis Dawkins said, as dean of the College of Business, Oswald will be responsible for all activities that go on within the college.
The responsibilities include but are not limited to planning activities, budgeting and internal allocation of the budget, encouraging and supporting faculty research, recruiting faculty and staff, managing and evaluation system for faculty and staff and leading faculty as they develop academic curriculum.
 ”The dean’s responsibility is widely-defined to place the college in a position to provide the best education possible for students who wish to pursue a career in any of the business disciplines,” Dawkins said.
Although Oswald said she thinks MSU’s College of Business is already doing a great job of working with the community and local businesses, she wants to expand it and integrate the business community into the college even more and vice versa. She said she also wants to help the faculty focus more on research.
Oswald believes this will be a good opportunity to do some of what she is doing now at Auburn but on a larger scale at MSU.
“I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot on a departmental level, but there’s so much more that I would like to do,” Oswald said.
The search for a new dean began in October of 2010, and Oswald said she applied in December 2010. A search committee solicited applications, and some applied without being solicited, Gilbert said. Once the 20 to 30 applicants were narrowed down to four finalists, the candidates visited the campus and met with various groups to begin the interview process.
Oswald said she is very excited to work with the faculty here. She said she was very impressed with everyone she met when she came to visit.
Oswald’s relationships with her friends at Auburn and fellow faculty members at Auburn will be hard to leave behind, but the friends are not going to go away, she said.
Gilbert said he is very excited to have attracted someone like Oswald to MSU. He said she had very strong support among alumni and everyone has great expectations for what she will do as dean.