President Richard L. McCormick has announced the appointment of Michael R. Cooper as dean of Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick. The appointment is effective June 1, 2007. Rosa Oppenheim, who has served as acting dean since July 2006, will resume her position as associate dean for faculty and research and professor of management science and information systems.

“Michael Cooper will be an outstanding dean,” said Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick. “His leadership will help us to capitalize on the enormous potential of the Rutgers Business School to reach new heights of academic excellence and to play a leading role in promoting the continued economic vitality of New Jersey.”

Cooper, a Princeton resident, has 25 years of leadership experience in senior executive positions in international market research, marketing services, management consulting and technology companies.

Since 1999 Cooper has been chair and managing partner of Cooper Interests LLC, which he founded to provide private equity investments and business strategy counsel in selective early and mid-stage companies. From 1989 to 1999, he served as chair, president and chief executive officer of Opinion Research Corporation (ORC), which he took public on the NASDAQ. Prior to ORC, he was president of Hay Research for Management for 10 years and senior partner of The Hay Group. 

In academia, Cooper served from 2002 to 2004 as founding dean of the Executive Leadership Institute and associate dean of the Howe School of Technology Management at the Stevens Institute of Technology.  Much earlier in his career he taught at Suffolk University Graduate School of Business.

 He completed executive education at Harvard Business School and received his doctorate in industrial and organizational psychology from The Ohio State University in 1972, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Hofstra University.

Cooper is chair of the board of directors of Patient Passport, and a member of the board of directors of Xlibris, New York Private Placement Network and BN. He previously served as a board member of a number of nonprofit organizations, including Chapman University and Calvary Hospital.  He is the author of numerous articles, special reports and book chapters on organizational psychology; management; business strategy; market research and marketing services; employee values; cultural change; and other topics.

“The appointment of Michael Cooper as dean of Rutgers Business School is a very significant development,” said Newark Provost Steven J. Diner.  “We are confident that his strong record of leadership, exemplified by his successes in the business world in growing and differentiating his global companies, will enable a new era of growth and progress for Rutgers Business School.”

Founded in 1929, Rutgers Business School offers extensive undergraduate and graduate business programs on Rutgers’ Newark and New Brunswick campuses. The school is home to numerous outreach and academic research centers, including the Blanche and Irwin Lerner Center for Pharmaceutical Management Studies, the Prudential Business Ethics Center and the Rutgers Center for Supply Chain Management.