Sharon M. Oster Named Dean of the Yale School of Management

Sharon M. Oster, the Frederic D. Wolfe Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, became dean of the Yale School of Management on November 1, 2008. A long-time member of the Yale SOM faculty, she succeeds Joel M. Podolny, who stepped down after three and a half years as dean to take a newly-created position at Apple as vice president and dean of Apple University.

Oster is a distinguished scholar and an expert in competitive strategy, microeconomic theory, industrial organization, the economics of regulation and antitrust, and nonprofit strategy. She has authored important textbooks in competitive strategy (Modern Competitive Analysis) and nonprofit management (Strategic Management for Nonprofit Organizations), and recently joined fellow economists and educators Karl E. Case and Ray C. Fair as a co-author of the widely used introductory economics texts Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Economics. She was the first woman to receive tenure at Yale SOM, and now the school’s first female dean. Oster was the first recipient of the SOM teaching award in 1988, and received the award again in 2008 (Read her online faculty profile).

Oster was one of the key faculty designers of the Yale integrated MBA curriculum. She created and taught the Integrated Leadership Perspective course, which serves as the capstone of the core curriculum, pulling together insights and lessons from the Organizational Perspectives courses students take earlier in the year (Read more about the course online). Oster has pledged to work with all of SOM’s faculty to continue to refine and improve the integrated curriculum going forward.

In a message to the Yale SOM community, Oster wrote: “In my new role as Dean, I plan to turn enthusiastically to the practice of management, working with the faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends of the school to focus and advance the many new initiatives of the last several years. I am excited about this new role, and grateful to [Yale University] President Levin for his confidence in selecting me and his continued support for our School.”