Veteran Boston University Professor to Be Interim Dean of BU’s Business School
Marcel Rindisbacher brings to his new role as Questrom School of Business interim dean 18-plus years on the business school’s faculty and formidable experience and international reputation as a researcher. Photo via Questrom School of Business
Veteran Boston University Professor to Be Interim Dean of BU’s Business School
Marcel Rindisbacher will lead Questrom School of Business during national search for permanent dean
Marcel Rindisbacher, an 18-plus-year veteran of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business faculty, has been appointed interim dean of the school while it conducts a national search for a permanent leader. He assumes his new role helming Questrom July 1.
An internationally known scholar of financial economics, Rindisbacher is Questrom’s inaugural Ravi K. Mehrotra Professor of Business, Finance and director of its Ravi K. Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets & Society. The institute advances research, education, and public discourse on the institutional foundations of market capitalism—how firms are governed, markets kept competitive, innovation scaled, and business impacts measured and enforced—to shape how business and markets create durable prosperity, sustain economic dynamism, and solve pressing global societal challenges.
“It is a meaningful honor to be entrusted with this role at an important moment for business education,” Rindisbacher says of his new appointment. “Business schools, like universities more broadly, are at a critical juncture. Their role in advancing knowledge, opportunity, responsible leadership, innovation, and economic progress is too often misunderstood or misrepresented.”
It is a meaningful honor to be entrusted with this role at an important moment for business education.
As interim dean, he says, he will focus on preparing Questrom to be “a strong and engaged partner in BU’s broader strategic vision, while also improving research and program outcomes. Questrom has distinctive strengths in business education, professional and online learning, and research on business, markets, organizations, and leadership. One of our greatest opportunities is to build deeper, more reciprocal partnerships with selected areas of excellence across BU—particularly where business intersects with technology, health, law, economics, and public policy.
“These collaborations can help extend the societal impact of work across the University while strengthening Questrom’s contributions to research, education, and practice.”
In this academic year, Questrom began the rollout of its first significant curriculum overhaul in decades, redefining and advancing to earlier in students’ education classes and real-world experiences that businesses expect from interns and employees. That reform and others were led by Susan Fournier, Questrom’s current dean and Allen Questrom Professor, who will step down June 30 after leading the school for eight years. Fournier, who before her deanship was a world-leading marketing and management expert at Questrom, will retire in December from BU.
Rindisbacher’s research—into asset pricing, financial theory, financial econometrics, mathematical finance, and computational finance—has won multiple awards and wide publication in leading journals, wrote Gloria Waters, University provost and chief academic officer in a letter announcing his appointment as interim dean. “Dr. Rindisbacher also brings extensive experience engaging with broader academic and professional communities,” she wrote, as a contributor to international conferences, an applied research partner with financial institutions, and an editor for the journal Mathematical Finance.
“His global perspective, innovative approach, and longstanding commitment to excellence in research and teaching within the business community position him well to lead Questrom during this transition,” Waters noted, adding that she is “confident the school will remain in excellent hands.”
Besides leading the Mehrotra Institute, Rindisbacher has served as Questrom’s senior associate dean for faculty and research, faculty director of the mathematical finance programs, and chair of the finance department. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Bern, a master’s in econometrics and mathematical economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a PhD in economics from the Université de Montréal.
A national search has been established to select a permanent dean of Questrom, and that appointment is expected to be announced in the coming academic year.