The History of the Deans at The Crummer School

Craig M. McAllaster
2000 to the present

Craig McAllaster was appointed dean of the Crummer School in July 2000. Previously, he served for six years as assistant dean and director of the school’s executive and professional MBA programs. From 1995 to 1999, he also served as director of Crummer’s global business consulting practicum program. During that time he taught courses at Crummer and the Hamilton Holt School on leadership, consulting skills, and management policy. He twice won the Outstanding Professor Award for teaching the leadership course in the EMBA program.

Dean McAllaster’s background spans industry and academia. He spent over a decade in the consumer services and electronics industry in management positions responsible for organizational and executive development as well as general management. He has served on the faculty at the ILR School at Cornell University and the at University of Central Florida. While at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, he taught in executive development programs and was the Director of Executive Education. At the University of Central Florida, Dean McAllaster was Director of the Executive Education program and was instrumental in establishing, directing and teaching in the initial EMBA program.

Dean McAllaster earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona and his master’s degree from Alfred University, where his thesis focused on the performance of companies after acquisition. He earned his second master's and doctoral degree at Columbia University, where his dissertation concentrated on assessing the value of management programs in changing a company's environment and culture.

A frequent visiting faculty member and guest speaker in many university and corporate executive programs worldwide, he has spoken and published often in the areas of influence, leadership, consulting skills, and changing organizational culture. Dean McAllaster serves on numerous boards of companies, professional, and service organizations.

Edward A. Moses
1994 - 2000

During a decade of tremendous change in the business world and at Rollins itself, Ed Moses led the Crummer School into the 21st century with innovative policies and programs. Dean Moses was a professor of finance for 22 years at several universities, Associate Dean of the College of Business at the University of Central Florida, and Dean of the College of Business Administration at the University of North Florida before coming to Rollins in 1990.

As both professor and administrator, Dean Moses forged a reputation as a talented scholar and teacher with great rapport with people from all walks of life. He became Director of Crummer’s Executive MBA program in 1992, and in 1994 became the first holder of Crummer’s first corporately endowed chair, the Barnett Bank Professor of Finance, now the Bank of America Professor of Finance. He also has co-authored five textbooks, mostly in the field of investing and corporate finance.

As Dean, Moses built upon Dean Certo’s “internationalization” of the curriculum, expanding the “Global Business Practicum.” He established the Center for Enterprise Management, the Early Advantage MBA (EAMBA) program for recent BS or BA degree graduates, and the Accelerated MBA (AMBA) program. Also in that year, U.S. News & World Report recognized the Crummer Professional MBA program as one of the nation’s top 25 part-time MBA programs. In 1998, the National Business Practicum was established, enabling students to work on extended projects with American companies.

In that year, grants from the Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation provided funding for the Social Entrepreneur Internship Program. This program provides ten internships annually. In 1999, Crummer introduced the Executive Education Curriculum for Healthcare Management, the first in a series of five executive education programs (known as CERC, Crummer Executive Education at Rollins College) to be taught at the newly constructed Bush Executive Center. Beginning in 2000, a concentration in e-commerce has been established.

The growing quality and recognition of Crummer brought additional corporate support. Donations enabled the establishment of the Steinmetz Chair in Healthcare Management, the Harward Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, and the SunTrust Portfolio Management course. Finally, under Dean Moses’ leadership, Crummer realized a long-held dream: Forbes Magazine recognized the school as one of the Top 25 Regional Graduate Business Schools in the United States.

Samuel Certo
1991 - 1993

Building upon and extending the achievements of his predecessor, Sam Certo aimed to launch the Crummer School among the nation’s top 25 business schools. An accomplished management professor and author of more than 20 textbooks, Dean Certo reflected the Crummer School’s academic emphasis and growing spirit of innovation. He started efforts to internationalize the curriculum, adding foreign language options, and international internship programs that gave students the opportunity to work overseas on management projects.

After 15 years as a professor of business and management at Ohio University and Indiana State University, Dean Certo joined the Crummer School faculty in 1986. He has authored two major textbooks, Principles of Modern Management and Business and Strategic Management: Concepts and Applications, and has served as associate editor of the journal Simulation and Games and as a member of the Review Board of the Academy of Management Review. He has also served as consulting editor for Allyn & Bacon Publishing Company and as a consultant to major corporations such as CBS and AT&T.

Not to be left behind by the electronic revolution, Dean Certo’s newest edition of Modern Management was published in CD-ROM format accompanied by custom videos. The breadth of his knowledge is matched by pedagogical talent: Dean Certo received the Charles A. Welsh Memorial Award for outstanding teaching and won (along with Crummer colleague Donald Plane) an innovative teaching competition sponsored by the deans of the Southern Business Administration Association.

Hired by President Rita Bornstein as Dean, not only for his professional accomplishment, but “because he is a bridge-builder within the campus and community,” Certo made a strong mark as Dean before health and family commitments caused him to step down. He increased the emphasis on technology in teaching and learning, and in recognizing the increasingly international nature of modern business, developed programs that sent Rollins students abroad on practical business projects for major companies. He also established the “Global Summit,” which brought top business students from abroad to talk with Crummer students and study American business practices.

Soon after Dean Certo stepped down as Dean, and while a national search was conducted for a permanent replacement, Alan Nagle became interim dean. The former president of Tupperware International continued the school’s upward progress during his tenure. Nagle did so by conducting extensive strategic planning for Crummer.

Martin Schatz
1979-1991

After two years of being led by acting deans Wayne Hales and Donald Hill, the Crummer School hired Martin Schatz, who had been Dean of Business and Public Management at the State University of New York, to lead the School into the modern era. Schatz was trained as an engineer and spent several years working as a research scientist before receiving his doctorate in management from NYU. His vision of what the Crummer School could become led to lofty goals and was responsible for many of its most important innovations. Under his leadership, the Crummer School gained national ranking and recognition for the first time.

Dean Schatz completely redefined the academic program, separating the Crummer School from the undergraduate program while hiring its first full-time faculty, tightening its admissions standards, and making it exclusively a graduate-degree program. The strategy of the School became the pursuit of excellence in “Teaching, Textbooks and Technology.” Using this strategy to distinguish itself, in 1986 Crummer became the smallest school to become accredited by the AACSB, the International Association for Management Education. At the time, Crummer was one of 216 accredited business schools, and one of only 16 accredited schools that specialized in graduate education.

Under Dean Schatz’s leadership, the Crummer School became recognized as an innovative leader. Five times the School received the prestigious award for innovation by the Southern Business Association. Several of the awards were for using technology in the MBA program, including recognition as the first business school in the country to give laptop computers to all students, and the use of them in the classroom. The Executive MBA (EMBA) was initiated, the Professional MBA (PMBA) was developed, and the full-time MBA was expanded from a one-year program to a two-year program. He also established the noncredit Management Program, the Crummer Board of Overseers, and the Corporate Council. These programs served to build ties with the local and national business communities.

Winning credibility in the local and national business community was perhaps the greatest of Dean Schatz’s challenges. In his first four years, more than 100 companies supported the school. By the time Dean Schatz stepped down, followed swiftly by his appointment as Dean Emeritus, he had put the Crummer School on the national map.

Charles Welsh
1958 – 1977

Appointed Dean of the graduate program in Business Administration by President Hugh McKean in 1958, Charles Welsh oversaw both graduate studies and the construction of the Roy E. Crummer Hall during his 20-year tenure. He joined the Rollins faculty in 1955 as Associate Professor of Business Administration. In 1966, he was appointed Dean of the Roy E. Crummer School of Finance and Business Administration, a program instituted largely through his efforts and foresight. When the Crummer School began, only two other universities in the Southeast offered studies in finance and administration at the master’s level.

Dean Welsh had wide-ranging interests and career experience. He was not only a professor but, before joining Rollins, he served as economics chief in the Library of Congress, and as a research consultant for the Association of American Railroads and the Allegheny Corporation. In addition, he was a consulting economist to the Department of Justice for several years. He was a member of the American Institute of Industrial Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and authored Prospects of the Cross-Florida Barge Canal (1959—a highly controversial topic at the time), Reports on Small Business (1947), and Competition in the Automobile Industry (1948).

As Dean of the Crummer School, Welsh created the basic structure of the graduate program and tried to “provide professional training for management at the highest obtainable level, based upon the solid ground of liberal education,” as he told a Rollins audience in 1960. Rollins undergraduates entered the program at the end of their junior year, completed the bachelor’s degree at the end of their senior year and the master’s at the end of their fifth year. Anticipating many of the features of today’s business education, Dean Welsh saw the need for effective use of technology, “scientific decision-making,” and mastery of information and communications theory. He set up seminars for Crummer graduate students in Europe and internships with American companies, and a program for Crummer students to take part in intercollegiate business competitions. The Crummer School also offered evening degree programs for Central Florida businessmen and engineers. In sum, Dean Welsh provided a firm foundation that could be developed further by later deans.