Raj Echambadi will become president of the Illinois Institute of Technology in August
Northeastern University's D'Amore-McKim School of Business is losing its dean.
A month into his four-year stint at Northeastern, “Raj” Echambadi joins Illinois Tech as its 10th president, succeeding outgoing president Alan W. Cramb on Aug. 16.
The new job will bring him back to Illinois where he was a professor and innovator at the University of Illinois Gies College of Business. As senior associate dean of strategic innovation at Gies, Echambadi led the development and launch of the highly successful and disruptive iMBA, a $22,000 online MBA program.
“DAD WE ARE ULTIMATE MIDWESTERN KIDS”
His return to Illinois was welcome news to his two teenage daughters. After receiving the offer to become president of Illinois Tech, “They said to me, 'Dad, we're Midwestern kids after all.'
Echambadi was selected after what the university called “an extensive nationwide search.” The immediate appeal of the work, he says, goes back to the school's original vision outlined in an 1890 sermon by Chicago minister Frank Wakely Gunsaulus. At that time, higher education was more often reserved for the elite of society. From the pulpit of his South Side church, near the site now occupied by the Illinois Institute of Technology, Gunsaulus said that with $1 million, he could build a school where students of all backgrounds could prepare for important roles in a changing industrial society. It quickly became known as the “million dollar sermon.”
The minister finally found a donor with a million and the rest became history. When the Armor Institute opened in 1893, it offered professional courses in engineering, chemistry, architecture, and library science. Illinois Tech was created in 1940 by the merger of the Armor Institute and the Lewis Institute, which began in 1895 and offered liberal arts as well as science and engineering courses.
“THE MISSION OF THE SCHOOL IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER”
“I felt that the mission of the school is more important than ever,” Echabadi says. “We need to provide more accessible education to students from a wide variety of backgrounds. Combine that with what happened in the last year and it was important for us to do this to build a just world. “
In an interview with Poets & Quants, Echambadi noted the institute's “strong strengths in architecture, engineering and design to name a few. Given my experience in promoting entrepreneurial thinking, these are advantages we can build on. So that's the first thing. You have tremendous faculty and staff who are deeply aligned with the cause, who are really there because they want to prove accessible education for all. And Illinois Tech has a good reputation, as evidenced by the talent from around the world who come to study there. A significant portion of the students come from countries outside the US. When you have incredible social and cultural capital combined with passionate friends of the university, I think it's ripe for mission relevance again.”
“Illinois technology is already doing a lot of cool things. They are already beginning to imagine the next generation of computational thinking. My job is to facilitate collaborations that are not only student-based but also research-based. One of the opportunities that appealed to me about Illinois Tech is that it's Bronzeville, Chicago, and there are incredible opportunities to work with the community so we can grow a strong university. That was an attractive piece.”
“THERE ARE INTERESTING MODELS WE NEED TO START EXPERIMENTING WITH”
Chicago was also a draw. “Chicago is one of the great big cities, with a diverse population. It is a talent magnet and full of technological promise. Chicago has the numbers and the capital and the opportunities to be a market leader, and Illinois Tech is the only tech institution in Chicago.”
Prior to joining Northeastern, Echambadi served as professor and senior associate dean of strategic innovation at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As the driving force behind the school's online MBA, Echambadi has been instrumental in providing increased access to an innovative education to students around the world. The iMBA program has been hailed as a breakthrough in graduate education and one of the best disruptive innovations of the last decade.
“Illinois Tech already has online programming at this point,” Echambadi notes. “It's pretty well established. But what I bring to the table I think is my experience with the iMBA that provided a quality program that was affordable with broad access. There are interesting models to start experimenting with. There is a solid foundation of online learning at Illinois Tech, but there are also interesting models to begin experimenting with. How do we co-create and co-design with our corporate partners to deliver technology education to bring new talent into the technology fields?”
“THE FUTURE OF ILLINOIS TECH IS IN VERY CAPABLE HANDS”
At Northeastern, Echambadi's big idea was to reimagine the MBA as an experience that would provide students with the fundamentals of business, but also tap into the skills and talents of other departments in the larger university (see D'Amore-McKim Dean Raj Echambadi On The Latest MBA Twist: MBAx). He created a new curriculum called MBAx that put interdisciplinary learning front and center. D'Amore-McKim collaborates on the program with other professional colleges at Northeastern, including the Khoury College of Computer Sciences, the College of Arts, Media and Design (CAMD) and the College of Science. In computer science, for example, a business school student can now take a deep dive into topics like cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, data science, or software development.
A leading academic research expert in organizational strategic innovation, Echambadi has developed new and long-term academic programs designed to empower student success in a dynamic marketplace. The majority of his academic research has focused on strategic innovation within organizations and how companies must balance current and future opportunities. He received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration from Anna University in India and a PhD in Marketing from the University of Houston. His research on employee entrepreneurship gained prestige Academy of Management Journal Best Paper Award.
In a statement, Michael P. Galvin, chairman of the Illinois Tech Board of Trustees, praised the selection. “Raj's experience in attracting strong researchers, corporate and philanthropic partners, and most importantly diverse students and faculty is unquestionable,” said Galvin. “Throughout his career, he has delivered outstanding innovation with broad impact and demonstrated a deep commitment to higher education as a mechanism for creating access and economic mobility. Raj's authentic connection to Illinois Tech's founding mission of empowering students of all backgrounds and viewpoints to lead a more just and sustainable world through technology made him the perfect candidate to be Illinois Tech's next president.”
“As Illinois Tech continues to advance its reputation as a vital driver of innovation and economic impact in Chicago and beyond, I know Raj's ability to inspire an entrepreneurial mindset in all of our students will help further elevate Illinois Tech as Chicago's premier technology-focused university,” added Illinois Tech President Alan W. Cramb, who is retiring. “While I am proud of the progress we have made toward fulfilling our mission to create a more vibrant and inclusive tech ecosystem, I know that under Raj's leadership, the future of Illinois Tech is in very capable hands.”
DON'T MISS: RAJ ECHAMBADI ON THE LATEST MBA TWIST: MBAx
