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May 29, 1997

SUNY Buffalo business dean appointed to head Katz, CBA

Frederick W. Winter, dean of the School of Management at the State University of New York (SUNY) Buffalo, has been named dean of Pitt's Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration effective July 1.

Winter will succeed Andrew Blair, who has been serving as interim dean of the Katz school since the retirement of H. J. Zoffer last summer. Blair will remain as a professor in the Katz school and director of Pitt's International Business Center.

Provost James Maher praised Winter's administrative achievements and record of scholarship at SUNY Buffalo. Among those achievements, Maher noted, have been the reformulation of the school's Master of Business Administration program, implementation of an international executive Master of Business Administration program, and improvements in external contacts with alumni, donors and the business community.

"His [Winter's] administrative efforts have been coupled throughout his professional career with a steady stream of exceptional scholarship that has been published in such journals as Management Science and the Journal of Marketing Research," Maher said. "I firmly believe," Maher continued, "that Dr. Winter is ideally qualified to lead the development of the Katz Graduate School of Business and the College of Business Administration as they define the future and build upon past successes." Winter said he wanted to come to Pittsburgh because the business environment is similar to that of Buffalo and he would like to test his ideas about building external connections on a larger scale. He said he wants to strengthen Katz's connections to its students, faculty, the corporate community, other academic units on campus, the provost and the chancellor.

"Creating a strategy and a plan that ties together the needs of all those customers is what I like to do," Winter said. "And we developed, I think, a very creative strategic plan here and I would like to get one going at Pitt." Because it will take a year or more for him to get to know the "customers" of the Katz school, Winter declined to comment on any specific plans for the school. He would say, however, that he expects to work with the Katz faculty to develop a course of action.

Generally, Winter added, in the short term he will undertake some simple operational things, such as meetings, to link up with the corporate community. In the long term, his overall strategy includes the development of new programs and the pruning of old programs to fit the needs of the school's customers.

As far as the College of Business Administration is concerned, Winter said he does not know enough about that undergraduate program to comment on possible changes. SUNY Buffalo has an undergraduate business program that graduates about 500 students a year, though, so he does have some thoughts on how such a program might be run, but he would not be specific.

"I find that every time you try to tell people what you are going to do exactly, it's sort of a view from five miles out through binoculars," Winter noted. "While a fresh set of eyes can help, sometimes the view from far out is different than close up. I'd like to look close at hand and see if I can understand the motivation and the promise of the undergraduate program. But I think it is a good program in the business school portfolio. Undergraduate education is something that makes a lot of sense in the business arena." Born in Evanston, Ill., in 1945, Winter earned a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering from Lehigh University in 1966, a Master of Science in Industrial Administration from Purdue University in 1967 and a Ph. D. from Purdue in 1972.

Winter has served as dean of SUNY Buffalo's School of Management since 1994. Prior to going to SUNY Buffalo, he was a faculty member at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for 23 years, the last eight years as chair of the Department of Business Administration.

While on the Illinois faculty, Winter also served as a visiting professor in INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France, and at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., and as a visiting research associate at Cornell University.

A specialist in marketing strategy, market research and market segmentation, Winter currently serves on the boards of directors of Rand Capital, Bell Sports and the Alkon Corporation.

–Mike Sajna


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