2008 Woodie Awards
Dean makes way in male's world
Jessica Slosberg
Issue date: 2/8/05 Section: News
Karen Newman brings years of academia back to her native city to take over as the first female dean of the Daniels College of Business.
Newman, originally from the Denver area, has spent the years since graduating from high school living and working in the midwest and along the east coast.
She graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. in economics. She then went on to get her MBA and Ph.D in organizational behavior at the University of Chicago.
She has worked as a professor at Bucknell University, Case Western Reserve and Georgetown University. She is currently the dean of the business school at the University of Richmond.
During most of her graduate academic life and her career in academia she has been the only woman.
"I was one of 29 women in a class of 900 in my MBA program," said Newman.
She was the only female faculty member in business at Bucknell and Case Western.
She said that there had been woman faculty before her but they had only lasted a year. She was the third female business faculty at Georgetown. Women comprmised about 10 percent of faculty and by the time she left, women made up 20-30 percent of the faculty.
She was the first female academic dean at University of Richmond and she will be the first female dean at the Daniel's College of Business.
"Having said this, the only time that gender was an issue was in the MBA program. Not that I was discriminated against but that it was overwhelmingly male," said Newman.
Originally, Newman had planned to make a career in the business world. And the one thing she absolutely did not want to be was a teacher. However, when she was in the MBA program she came to a realization that maybe she did not want to be a business woman after all.
"I realized that I could play the game with the men and win. But it would be hard to be a woman and have a life," said Newman.
At this point she sat down with a pad of paper and made lists of pros and cons of each scenario.
Newman, originally from the Denver area, has spent the years since graduating from high school living and working in the midwest and along the east coast.
She graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. in economics. She then went on to get her MBA and Ph.D in organizational behavior at the University of Chicago.
She has worked as a professor at Bucknell University, Case Western Reserve and Georgetown University. She is currently the dean of the business school at the University of Richmond.
During most of her graduate academic life and her career in academia she has been the only woman.
"I was one of 29 women in a class of 900 in my MBA program," said Newman.
She was the only female faculty member in business at Bucknell and Case Western.
She said that there had been woman faculty before her but they had only lasted a year. She was the third female business faculty at Georgetown. Women comprmised about 10 percent of faculty and by the time she left, women made up 20-30 percent of the faculty.
She was the first female academic dean at University of Richmond and she will be the first female dean at the Daniel's College of Business.
"Having said this, the only time that gender was an issue was in the MBA program. Not that I was discriminated against but that it was overwhelmingly male," said Newman.
Originally, Newman had planned to make a career in the business world. And the one thing she absolutely did not want to be was a teacher. However, when she was in the MBA program she came to a realization that maybe she did not want to be a business woman after all.
"I realized that I could play the game with the men and win. But it would be hard to be a woman and have a life," said Newman.
At this point she sat down with a pad of paper and made lists of pros and cons of each scenario.