Beginning July 1st, Bradley Staats will serve as dean of the University of Texas (UT) Austin McCombs School of Business. Staats is a UT alumnus with nearly 30 years of industry and academic leadership experience. He was selected after a national search that began last fall.
Professional History
Staats will be joining McCombs from his current role as the Ellison Distinguished Professor of Operations and senior associate dean for strategy and academics at the UNC Kenan-Flagler. There, Staats oversees academic strategy and program excellence across undergraduate business, Master of Accounting in two formats, Master of Science in Management, and MBA degree programs in five formats. Prior to his current role, he was associate dean of MBA programs. He founded and is the faculty director of the Center for the Business of Health at UNC Kenan-Flagler. He is also the author of the award-winning book “Never Stop Learning: Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself, and Thrive” by Harvard Business Review Press. Before academia, he worked for Goldman Sachs and a venture capital firm. He earned a B.S. in electrical engineering and B.A. in Plan II and Spanish from UT Austin, and later obtained an MBA and a doctorate in technology and operations management from Harvard Business School.
“Returning to UT and to Austin, where I grew up, is deeply meaningful and inspiring to me,” Staats said. “McCombs is already one of the world’s outstanding business schools, thanks in no small part to Dean Mills’ leadership. This is a unique moment to build on that extraordinary foundation, and I am honored by the opportunity to help McCombs expand its impact across Texas and beyond.”
The Role of Dean
At McCombs, Staats will head the ship of 700 faculty and staff members, and 7,000 students. As dean, his responsibilities entail cultivating a rigorous curriculum across all of UT’s colleges and schools as well as supporting innovative research and expanding faculty-industry partnerships. Improving student experiential learning as well as fundraising and talent pipelines will also be under his purview.
“At a pivotal time for UT, Dr. Staats returns to the Forty Acres with deep expertise and a distinguished record of leadership across industry and healthcare,” said William Inboden, executive vice president and provost. “I look forward to partnering with him to ensure McCombs continues to cultivate exceptional students and faculty, strengthen industry relationships, and prepare the next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders in our great state and nation.”
Staats will succeed Lillian Mills, who has served as dean since 2020 and will return to the Jonathan K. Shulkin Department of Accounting as a distinguished faculty member.
