Bernard Joseph White (born April 6, 1947) is president emeritus of the University of Illinois and professor emeritus of business at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is dean emeritus of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business and professor emeritus of business administration at the University of Michigan, where he also served as interim president, and Wilbur K. Pierpont Collegiate Professor of Leadership in Management Education. He is the author of The Nature of Leadership and Boards That Excel: Candid Insights and Practical Advice for Directors. Boards That Excel was named Governance Book of the Year for 2014 by Directors and Boards.
Education
White graduated magna cum laude from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1969. He then earned an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and a doctorate in business administration from the University of Michigan.
Career summary
White began his faculty career at Michigan in 1975. He served from 1981–1987 as an officer of Cummins in Columbus, Indiana, first as vice president for management development and then as vice president for personnel and public affairs. He returned to the University of Michigan in 1987 and was appointed dean of the business school in 1991. He was appointed Wilbur K. Pierpont Collegiate Professor of Leadership in Management Education and served as a dean for a decade. In 2002, he was appointed interim president of the University of Michigan. In 2003, he worked at Fred Alger Management Co., an asset management firm in New York City. He returned to Michigan where he was a faculty member in the Life Sciences Institute. In 2005, he was named president of the University of Illinois and was appointed president emeritus in 2010. He was a faculty member of the College of Business where he was the James F. Towey Professor of Business and Leadership. He was appointed professor emeritus of business in 2020. He serves on the boards of directors of Gordon Food Service, M Financial and the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
White has written, taught and spoken extensively on leadership, management and governance. He is the author of The Nature of Leadership and Boards That Excel: Candid Insights and Practical Advice for Directors. He was honored with the Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award from the Illinois Commission on Diversity and Human Relations in 2007, the Leadership Award from the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus Foundation in 2005 and a Doctor of Humane Letters degree (honorary) from Wabash College in 2003. White is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Beta Gamma Sigma.
Ross School of Business deanship
White served from 1990 to 2001 as dean of the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. During his deanship, the School's MBA, BBA, and executive education programs were highly ranked. The School's endowment rose from $30 million to more than $250 million. Endowed Chairs increased from nine to thirty-nine.
White led a major MBA curriculum overhaul, which aimed to intensify the development of students' professional and practical skills. The reforms re-defined the school's image and fueled a rise in its reputation, including being named one of the two "most innovative" business school's in the nation, according to Business Week magazine's surveys of corporate executives. Michigan became known for both innovation and action learning. The core innovation, called MAP (Multidisciplinary Action Project), puts students into "live cases" inside companies for seven weeks. White likened it to a medical school residency. Michigan was the first to integrate action learning, which is today common in business schools, into the core MBA curriculum as a requirement for all students. In addition, White's curriculum reform included cutting the 14-week semesters in half and adding executive education-style skills development seminars. Other initiatives, such as research on how to supplement the GMAT with a test of "practical intelligence," helped cement the school's reputation for concerning itself as much with the real-world performance of its graduates as their intellectual development.
Among the other highlights of White's curriculum reform was the introduction of an intensive two-day community service and corporate citizenship boot camp as the kickoff of the MBA program—a first among business schools.