Harker named as new Wharton dean

More than 200 candidates were considered. Newly appointed Wharton Dean Patrick Harker didn't plan to be a candidate to head the University's prestigious business school. He said he "dreaded" taking the job even on an interim basis last summer, and certainly didn't want the job permanently. But successful stints as the business school's deputy and interim dean convinced Wharton faculty, search committee members -- and finally Harker himself -- to consider him for the position. So yesterday, after an exhaustive international search, University President Judith Rodin and Provost Robert Barchi announced that their choice was one shared by many business school faculty members: Harker, 41, would become the 12th dean of the Wharton School after a 14-month search in which more than 200 candidates were reviewed. "This was a full and far reaching process," Rodin said. "This is a search that truly went to the far ends of the earth. When Rodin charged Fine Arts Dean Gary Hack to head the 12-person search committee in November 1998, the task was to find a strong leader who had an understanding of academia as well as an eye to the business world. That broad category allowed for a broad range of candidates: Wharton faculty, deans of other business schools, senior government officials and top corporate executives. "We were looking at highly qualified people," Hack said. "You couldn't look at just 100 names." More than 200 credentials were reviewed by committee members based on numerous letters and suggestions from Wharton faculty, students and alumni. The committee also relied on two executive search firms -- Spencer Stuart, and later Hendrix and Struggles -- when it decided to review even more prospects. But in the end, Rodin decided upon Harker, a University graduate who has served in multiple leadership positions at Penn, culminating with his appointment last spring as Wharton's deputy dean and then in the summer as interim dean. She said it was Harker's service as Wharton's temporary leader that persuaded her to offer him the job. "It's not often that we get the chance to see someone in a dress rehearsal," Rodin said. "But the faculty got the chance watching Pat over the summer in the interim dean role." Until three months ago, Harker was ineligible for the job since he sat on the search committee seeking to fill the position. But he stepped down from the dean search committee in November, at the prompting, he said, of colleagues on the committee and in Wharton. And shortly after that, his name appeared on a short list of about six finalists presented to Rodin. Though he said as recently as the fall that he was absolutely uninterested in taking on the job permanently, Harker said yesterday that the support he received from the faculty persuaded him to change his mind. Harker is the fourth straight Penn faculty member Rodin has named to a top University post, following the appointments of Engineering Dean Eduardo Glandt, Barchi and School of Arts and Sciences Dean Samuel Preston. But his appointment marks the first time in 18 years that the Wharton deanship will go to one of the business school's faculty members. "We have so much capacity now on our faculty that our inside candidates are competitively edging out outstanding external prospects for these positions," Rodin said. Statistics and Marketing Professor Abba Krieger, a search committee member, said the selection of an internal candidate should reduce the learning curve. "An internal candidate can hit the ground running faster," he said. "Anyone we would have chosen would have had managerial experience but would still need to learn who are the players." According to Rodin, the search took so long -- among the longest in Penn's history -- because of the large numbers of candidates that committee members interviewed. "We had 80 or 90 candidates that we contacted -- most who were interested," she said. The committee was also set back because a number of highly qualified candidates dropped out of the race, Hack said. And while the committee set several deadlines for itself -- first that it would have a dean in place by the time Gerrity stepped down last July, and then that they would have one by the end of the fall semester -- Hack said such projections were more a hope than a reality. The appointment means that the only major administrative vacancy is the Law School deanship, which has remained unfilled since Colin Diver resigned last summer. That search has been going on since November 1998, shortly after Diver announced that he would resign. Officials expect an announcement to come on that position soon, perhaps by next week's University Trustees meeting.