The new home of Lehigh University’s College of Business, the Business Innovation Building, opened last spring. Courtesy Photo
Lehigh University’s College of Business named Manoj K. Malhotra as its new dean this week following a nationwide search. Malhotra will replace Georgette Chapman Phillips who is retiring this summer after leading Lehigh Business through a decade of growth.
Malhotra will begin his deanship on July 1. He is currently the John R. Mannix Medical Mutual of Ohio Professor of Operations Management at Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. He previously served a five-year term as dean of Weatherhead before stepping down in August 2022. Under his tenure, Weatherhead saw a significant expansion of its undergraduate enrollment, launched an online MBA program focused on healthcare management, and secured its highest annual fundraising total in more than two decades.
“I was attracted to the dean’s position at Lehigh Business because of its impressive growth trajectory in academic programs and faculty, its student focused curriculum, and several centers of excellence in diverse functional areas of business,” Malhotra says in a statement.
Manoj K. Malhotra
30 YEARS IN OPERATIONS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Lehigh conducted a nationwide search for Phillips replacement.
“Manoj is the ideal person to lead Lehigh’s College of Business in its efforts to become a national leader in business education and research with a focus on the intersection of business and technology,” says Nathan Urban, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.
“Manoj is an outstanding scholar whose highly quantitative research focuses on areas such as the effective deployment of resources in manufacturing and service firms, supply chain strategy and the interface between operations management and other functional areas of business.”
Malhotra previously built a three-decade career at the top of the operations and supply chain fields.
Before joining Weatherhead, Malhotra spent 27 years as a professor and department chair at University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business. There, he established the Center for Global Supply and Process Management and elicited industry support and partnerships from companies such as BMW, Coca Cola Bottling, Delta Air Lines, Ingersoll Rand, Johnson & Johnson, Michelin, Siemens, and Walmart. He helped lead the management science department to national prominence and propelled the school’s supply chain programs into Gartner’s top 10 rankings.
He has also taught at University of Georgia’s Terry School of Business, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien in Austria, and the Graduate School of Management at Macquarie University in Australia.
Malhotra has served as program chair for two major international conferences and as the President of the global Production and Operations Management Society in 2017. He is a Fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI) and the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS). He is a co-author of a leading textbook in operations and supply chain management, and has published widely in leading journals.
“I am impressed by the university’s leadership that is driven by an innovative and collaborative mindset,” he says.
“I look forward to building further on the impressive momentum that the college has created over the past decade, and leading Lehigh College of Business to continue its upward ascent of being recognized as a highly regarded comprehensive center of business education and research with international prestige and stature.”
A DECADE OF GROWTH AT LEHIGH
Phillips, Lehigh Business’ first African American and first women dean, retires June 30 after 10 years at the helm. She is leaving a transformed business school, elevated in both public perception and academic offerings.
Georgette Chapman Phillips
Phillips launched a disruptive one-year full-time MBA modeled after leading European programs just two years into her deanship. She created a leading Flex MBA, a joint MBA/MPH with Lehigh’s College of Health, and master’s programs in management and business analytics. Faculty grew 23% during her leadership, from 79 to 97, buoyed by enhanced pathways to tenure and a focus on retention.
At the undergraduate level, she led an overhaul of the curriculum while adding a business analytics major and minors and in fintech and international business. She launched the Vistex Institute for Executive Education, Lehigh Business’ first foray in exec ed, with a robust mix of custom and open programs. And she led the college through the conception, fundraising, and opening of the new 74,000-square-foot Lehigh Business Innovation Building.
Today, the College of Business enrolls about 1,300 business undergrads, 400 business and engineering undergrads, and 300 graduate students. In 2024, P&Q named Lehigh Business one of our 10 undergraduate business school to watch.
DON’T MISS: THE P&Q INTERVIEW: LEHIGH DEAN GEORGETTE CHAPMAN PHILLIPS AND 10 UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS SCHOOL TO WATCH FOR 2024
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