Richard Locke PhD ’89, a distinguished scholar and educational administrator with a variety of management expertise, has been named the brand new dean of the MIT Sloan College of Administration. The appointment is efficient July 1.
In changing into the varsity’s tenth dean, Locke is rejoining the Institute, the place he beforehand served in a number of roles from 1988 to 2013, as a school member, a division head, and a deputy dean of MIT Sloan. After leaving MIT, Locke was a senior chief at Brown College, together with seven and a half years as Brown’s provost. Since early 2023, he has been dean of Apple College, an academic unit inside Apple Inc. targeted on educating the corporate’s staff on management, administration, and the corporate’s tradition and group.
“I’m thrilled to be returning to MIT Sloan,” says Locke, whose formal title would be the John C Head III Dean at MIT Sloan. “It’s a particular place, with its world-class school, revolutionary analysis and academic packages, and close-knit neighborhood, all inside the MIT ecosystem.”
He provides: “All of those property give MIT Sloan a possibility to chart the longer term — to form how new applied sciences will reconfigure industries and careers, how new enterprises might be created and run, how people will work and dwell, and the way nationwide economies will develop and adapt. It will likely be thrilling and enjoyable to work with nice colleagues and to assist lead the varsity to its subsequent section of worldwide prominence and influence.”
As dean at MIT Sloan, Locke follows David C. Schmittlein, who stepped down in February 2024 after an almost 17-year tenure. Georgia Perakis, the William F. Kilos Professor of Operations Analysis and Statistics and Operations Administration at MIT Sloan, has been serving because the interim John C Head III Dean since then and can proceed within the position till Locke begins.
Institute leaders welcomed Locke again, citing his need to assist MIT Sloan handle vital international challenges, together with local weather change, the position of synthetic intelligence in society, and new well being care options, whereas refining finest practices for companies and workplaces.
“MIT Sloan has been very lucky in its leaders. Each Dave Schmittlein and Georgia Perakis set a excessive bar, and we proceed that custom with the number of Rick Locke,” says MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth. “Past his wide-ranging expertise and accomplishments and very good educational credentials, I’ve come to know Rick as an excellent chief, each from the years after we have been each provosts and thru his considerate service on the MIT Company. Rick has all the time impressed me along with his mental breadth, private grace, and contemporary concepts. We’re delighted that he might be rejoining our campus neighborhood.”
In a letter to the MIT neighborhood, MIT Provost Cynthia Barnhart praised Locke’s “transformative profession” and famous how she and the search committee agree “that Rick’s depth of expertise makes him a once-in-a-generation chief who will ‘hit the bottom sprinting’” as MIT Sloan’s subsequent dean.
Barnhart added: “The committee and I have been impressed by his imaginative and prescient for eradicating frictions that sluggish analysis efforts, his distinctive observe report of elevating substantial funds to help educational communities, and his sturdy grasp of and attentiveness to the pursuits and wishes of MIT Sloan’s constituencies.”
A political scientist by coaching, Locke has carried out high-profile analysis on labor practices in international provide chains, amongst different matters. His profession has additionally included efforts to carry collectively stakeholders, from multinational companies to supply-chain employees, in an effort to improve finest practices in enterprise.
Locke is extensively recognized for a vigorous work ethic, a humane method round co-workers, and a management outlook that blends idealism about civic engagement with realism about international challenges.
His wide-ranging work and pursuits make Locke well-suited to MIT Sloan. The college has about 115 tenure-track school and 1,600 college students unfold over eight diploma packages, with wide-ranging initiatives and educational teams connecting core administration matters with extra specialised matters referring to the innovation financial system and entrepreneurship, the social influence of enterprise and know-how, coverage growth, and far more.
MIT carried out an intensive search course of for the place, evaluating inner and exterior candidates over the past a number of months. The search committee’s co-chairs have been Kate Kellogg, the David J. McGrath jr (1959) Professor of Administration and Innovation at MIT Sloan; and Andrew W. Lo, the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at MIT Sloan.
The committee solicited and acquired in depth suggestions concerning the place and the varsity from stakeholders together with school, college students, employees, and alumni, whereas participating with MIT management concerning the position.
“MIT Sloan occupies a uncommon place on this planet as a administration college related to one of many nice engineering and scientific universities,” Kellogg says.
She provides: “Rick has a powerful observe report of bringing school from completely different domains collectively, and we predict he’s going to be nice at connecting Sloan even additional to the remainder of MIT, round grand challenges similar to local weather, AI, and well being care.”
Lo credit Schmittlein for “an unbelievable 17-year legacy of extraordinary management,” observing that Schmittlein helped MIT Sloan increase in measurement, consolidate its strengths, and construct new packages. About Perakis, Kellogg notes, “Georgia’s excellent work as dean has constructed on these strengths and sparked essential new improvements and partnerships in areas like AI and entrepreneurship. She’s additionally expanded the varsity’s footprint in Southeast Asia and helped advance key Institute-wide priorities just like the Local weather Mission at MIT and the Generative AI consortium.”
Kellogg and Lo expressed confidence that Locke would assist MIT Sloan proceed to adapt and develop.
“MIT and MIT Sloan are at inflection factors in our capacity to invent the longer term, given the position know-how is enjoying in nearly each facet of our lives,” Lo says. “Rick has the identical imaginative and prescient and ambitions that we do, and the expertise and expertise to assist us understand that imaginative and prescient. We couldn’t be extra excited by this selection.”
Lo provides: “Rick is a first-rate scholar and first-rate educator who actually will get our mission and core values and ethos. Dave was a unprecedented dean, and we count on the identical from Rick. He sees the complete potential of MIT Sloan and easy methods to obtain it.”
Locke acquired his BA from Wesleyan College and an MA in schooling from the College of Chicago. He earned his doctorate in political science at MIT, writing a dissertation about native politics and industrial change in Italy, below the supervision of now-Institute Professor Suzanne Berger.
Locke joined the MIT school as an assistant professor of worldwide administration, was promoted in 1993 to an affiliate professor of administration and political science, and earned tenure in 1996. In 2000, he was named the Alvin J. Siteman Professor of Entrepreneurship, changing into a full professor in 2001.
In 2010, Locke took on a brand new position at MIT, heading the Division of Political Science, a place he held by way of 2013; he was additionally given a brand new endowed professorship, the Class of 1922 Professor of Political Science and Administration. Throughout the identical timeframe, Locke additionally served as deputy dean at MIT Sloan, from 2009 by way of 2010, after which once more from 2012 by way of 2013.
Locke moved to Brown in an effort to take the place of director of the Thomas J. Watson Institute for Worldwide and Public Affairs. In 2015, he was named Brown’s provost, the college’s chief educational officer and price range officer.
Throughout his preliminary chapter at MIT Sloan, Locke co-founded MIT’s World Entrepreneurship Lab (G-Lab) in addition to different motion studying packages, helped the hassle to double the scale of the Sloan Fellows Program, and labored to replace MIT Sloan Government Teaching programs, amongst different initiatives.
Locke has authored or co-authored 5 books and dozens of journal articles and ebook chapters, serving to open up the examine of worldwide labor practices whereas additionally inspecting the political implications of commercial adjustments and labor relations. For his analysis on working circumstances in international provide chains, Locke was given the School Pioneer for Educational Management award by the Aspen Institute’s Enterprise and Society Program, the Progress Medal from the Society of Progress, the Dorothy Day Award for Excellent Labor Analysis from the American Political Society Affiliation, and the Accountable Analysis in Administration Award.
His books embody “Remaking the Italian Economic system” (1995); “Employment Relations in a Altering World Economic system” (co-edited with Thomas Kochan, and Michael Piore, 1995); “Working in America” (co-authored with Paul Osterman, Thomas Kochan, Michael Piore, 2001); “The Promise and Limits of Non-public Energy Selling Labor Requirements in a World Economic system” (2013); and “Manufacturing within the Innovation Economic system (co-edited with Rachel Wellhausen, 2014).
A dedicated educator, Locke has gained quite a few awards for instructing in his profession together with the Graduate Administration Society Instructing Award, in 1990; the Excellence in Instructing Award from MIT Sloan, in 2003; the Class of 1960 Innovation in Instructing Award, from MIT in 2007; and the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Instructing, from MIT, in 2008.
Over the course of his profession, Locke has been a visiting professor or scholar at a number of universities, together with Bocconi College in Milan; the Harvard Kennedy College; the Saïd Enterprise College of the College of Oxford; the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the Universita’ Ca Foscari of Venice, Italy; the Universita Degli Studi di Milano, Italy; Georg-August Universität, in Göttingen, Germany; and the Universita’ Federico II in Naples, Italy.
Locke has remained related to MIT even over the latest decade of his profession, together with his service as a member of the MIT Company.
“I cherished my time at MIT Sloan due to its great mixture of ambition, power, and drive for excellence, but in addition humility,” Locke says. “We knew that we didn’t all the time have all of the solutions, however have been curious to study extra, and desirous to do the work to seek out options to among the world’s nice challenges. Now as dean, I stay up for as soon as once more being a part of this glorious neighborhood.”
