Poets&Quants™ Names H. Rao Unnava Dean of the Year in Annual Honors

Poets&Quants names the 14th dean of the year

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Oct. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Poets&Quants unveiled its Dean of the Year for 2024. This year's honor was awarded to H.Rao Unnava, the current dean at the University of California, Davis Graduate School of Management.

Named for his ambitious change agenda and decisive unpresuming leadership, the 65-year-old marketing professor is the 14th dean to earn this honor, joining a stellar cast of academic talent over the years that has included the leaders of Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Yale School of Management, Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management to name a few.

Unnava joined the Graduate School of Management in June of 2016 following 32 years at The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business, where he earned his Ph.D. and most recently served as the W. Arthur Cullman professor of marketing. At the Fisher College of Business, Unnava also served as the associate dean of undergraduate programs, associate dean of executive education, and director of doctoral programs in business.

"Since becoming dean of UC Davis Graduate School of Management in June of 2026, H. Rao Unnava has led a revolution in innovation," said John A. Byrne, editor-in-chief at Poets&Quants, "From new partnerships with other schools and departments to new degrees. Nearly 70% of this year's 441 incoming graduate students are in programs created under his watch"

"The hardest thing is moving things forward through a bureaucracy, and the easiest thing is whatever you do, you do it for the institution and not for yourself," said Unnava, "I came here to do my best for the Graduate School of Management."

Under Unnava's leadership, the school became the first University of California business school to launch an online MBA as well as a Master's in Management, the first to create credit-bearing stackable credentials that can be applied toward a degree program, the first to make all of its online content available to alumni for free, the first to launch a deferred tuition plan for online MBA candidates, and the first UC Davis dean to accomplish what many believed to be impossible, launching an undergraduate business major in partnership with to partner with two other Davis colleges.

Read the full story here.

Poets&Quants, a part of Times Higher Education, is the leading resource for complete coverage of graduate business education. We feature multiple tools and authoritative content, including consolidated business school rankings, news and in-depth features, videos, podcasts, two searchable directories, and events, empowering our community with information needed to make decisions along their journey from pre- to post-MBA.

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SOURCE Poets&Quants