To the Clark Community,

We write to share with you a change in leadership at the School of Management (SOM).

Alan Eisner will be stepping down as dean and returning to his faculty role effective August 14, timed with the beginning of the 2023–24 academic year. After a fall sabbatical to continue work on the 12th edition of his book, “Strategic Management: Text and Cases,” Alan will resume his teaching in management and global studies. David A. Jordan, a long-time member of SOM’s adjunct faculty and a Clark alumnus, will serve as interim dean pending a national search for a permanent replacement to begin sometime after the current academic year.

Appointed dean in 2020, Alan led SOM through a challenging time at the peak of the COVID pandemic, while continuing to help grow and strengthen the school’s programs and international partnerships and earning AACSB accreditation under its new standards. During his deanship, SOM renewed and engaged in new partnerships with international business schools, including IIM Shillong in India and EDHEC Business School of France, and launched new undergraduate majors in marketing and finance. At the graduate level, SOM expanded its MBA program, adding a talent management and human resources concentration and the STEM designation for its finance and business analytics concentration, along with a master’s in finance program with a new financial analytics concentration. Alan has been passionate about the School of Management’s positioning as a premier business school for social innovation, and he inspired SOM’s spring Social Innovation Conference, which attracted national leaders and attendees from around the world. Significantly, Alan’s efforts to expand the recognition of the School of Management resulted in its first top 125 MBA ranking with U.S. News in 2023 and a top 75 ranking of its MBA program with the global media organization, Fortune, in 2022.

Alan will continue to serve on MDI Gurgaon business school’s international advisory board and will return as an SOM faculty member for the spring 2024 semester.

As Alan steps down, we are very fortunate that David Jordan has agreed to serve as interim dean. David’s management skills, strategic thinking, and innovative spirit are well known to SOM, Clark University, and the broader Worcester community. For the past 20 years, he has been an adjunct faculty member in SOM, the School of Professional Studies, and the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program. From 1995 until his retirement this past spring, David served as president and CEO of Seven Hills Foundation & Affiliates, a group of 16 companies that form an integrated health and human service network operating over 250 clinics, schools, and other facilities in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and eight developing countries. He is now president emeritus of the foundation, which is headquartered here in Worcester. In 2007, the Worcester Business Journal named David one of the “Top 15 Entrepreneurs in Central Massachusetts,” the only nonprofit leader to receive the honor.

David’s research and teaching have focused on strategic management, public policy and administration, health care administration, strategic marketing, and social entrepreneurship. In 2007, President John Bassett named David Clark University’s first “Social Entrepreneur-in-Residence.” He is an avid proponent of advancing global citizenship education and recently added to his coursework an international field experience for students interested in social change and social entrepreneurship on a global scale. In addition, David has led research and experiential learning/global citizenship trips to Ghana, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kenya, Jamaica, Brazil, Haiti, and elsewhere.

David holds a bachelor of science in business administration from the University of Rhode Island, a master of arts in special education from Salve Regina University (Newport, R.I.), and a master of public administration from Clark University. He received his doctorate in health administration from the Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston, S.C.) His doctoral research involved the study of an emergent leadership theory termed “Transcending Leadership.”

Please join us in thanking Dean Eisner for his service and welcoming Dr. Jordan to the University leadership team. We are grateful to them both.

Sincerely,

David Fithian ’87
President

Sebastián Royo
Provost