Kathy Lund Dean

Kathy's newest book is Course Design & Assessment (2022) from Edward Elgar Press. Written as part of the Teaching Methods in Business series, it is designed to be a resource for business school educators who want to design, run, and assess learning using engaged methods. Running a course using experiential learning opportunities is not at all the same as one using passive or didactic methods, and educators don't need to punt or guess as to what works and what doesn't!

She is also coauthor of the book The Ethical Professor: A Practical Guide to Research, Teaching, and Professional Life (2018), which offers practical guidelines for learning about potential ethical issues, discussing them in the academic community, and creating solutions to preserve ethical integrity as academic professionals. Among the typical teaching, research, and service mix of academic activities, ethical issues can pop up suddenly. This book is designed to help newer educators anticipate some of these potentially very difficult situations, and offer ideas for avoiding or resolving them.

Kathy grew up in Chicago and has been fortunate to live in many different parts of the United States. After finishing her undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame, she went into banking, eventually forming a small business partnership with one of her commercial clients. After a Masters in Management degree from Aquinas College (Grand Rapids, MI) and a Ph.D. in management and ethics at Saint Louis University, she joined the business school faculty at Idaho State University. Although the decision to leave the Mountain West was a difficult one, after 10 years at ISU she took an endowed position in Minnesota.

Kathy currently holds the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Ethics and is Professor of Management at Gustavus Adolphus College, a liberal arts school south of the Twin Cities. She holds a joint appointment as Adjunct Professor at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand and has twice been a Visiting Erskine Fellow there (2009 and 2015). Kathy is also Honorary Professor at the University of St. Andrews, U.K. She is a Fulbright Specialist (from 2022-2025) helping faculty around the world learn how to navigate publishing systems and norms in situations where they are being required to publish work in mainstream journals but have not received coaching or mentoring by which to be successful.

Her major research streams include very local leadership collaborative behaviors, academic career evolution, and experiential learning scholarship. She was recently ranked 18th worldwide in business education scholarship productivity and quality.

Kathy is founding Co-Editor in Chief of the Management Teaching Review and former Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Management Education, where she has served in an editorial role since 2002. A member of the Management and Organizational Behavior Teaching Society (MOBTS) and multi-term Board member, she has presented at the annual MOBTS Conference since 1997, honing her experiential teaching practice and learning from the best teachers in business education in the world.

Her non-work time is spent cheering at different sporting events, watching Notre Dame football, trying to ski as much as possible, and reading great books.