Professor Lei Lei appointed Dean of Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick

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Nov 11, 2014, 11:07 ET

NEWARK, N.J., Nov. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Rutgers University has announced the appointment of Dr. Lei Lei as dean of Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick (RBS) effective January 1, 2015. Lei follows Glenn Shafer who has led RBS as dean since 2011.

Rutgers appoints international scholar in supply chain management as new dean of Rutgers Business School. Professor Lei Lei's many contributions to Rutgers University include becoming the founding director of the Rutgers Center for Supply Chain Management in 2001 and establishing the Department of Supply Chain Management and Marketing Sciences in 2008 as founding chair. She has helped bring Rutgers Supply Chain Management academic programs to national and international prominence.

A combination of Dr. Lei's accomplishments as an academic leader, her acuity as a scholar and teacher, deeply engaged with business challenges facing communities locally and globally, were among the key qualities that led to her selection, according to a statement from Nancy Cantor, Rutgers University–Newark chancellor; Richard Edwards, executive vice president for academic affairs and Rutgers University–New Brunswick chancellor; and Todd Clear, Rutgers University–Newark provost.

"Lei highly values our faculty of top-notch researchers and practitioners, dedicated staff, and many strong programs initiated and cultivated by previous leaders of RBS. She is very proud of our breathtakingly diverse, high-quality, and vibrant students, supportive alumni, and strong partnerships with the business community," said the statement from Cantor, Edwards and Clear.

Lei's many contributions to the university include becoming the founding director of the Rutgers Center for Supply Chain Management in 2001 and establishing the Department of Supply Chain Management and Marketing Sciences in 2008 as founding chair.

She is recognized internationally as an expert in operations scheduling, project resource allocation models, logistics performance optimization, and distribution network design. She also is a deeply respected teacher, having received multiple best professor awards at RBS and having been nominated for the 2010 U.S. Professor of the Year Award.

Lei has been a faculty member at Rutgers since receiving her Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1989. She served as an associate editor for academic journals such as IIE Transactions, Naval Research Logistics, Journal of Supply Chain Management, was a co-guest editor for Annals of Operations Research three times, and received the Meritorious Service Award from the Editorial Board of Operations Research in 1997.

Together with a team of faculty colleagues, staff members and more than 100 industry sponsors, Lei helped bring Rutgers Supply Chain Management academic programs to national and international prominence.

Cantor, Edwards and Clear also praised the work of Shafer and thanked him for his dedication, "The tremendous potential of this moment would not have materialized without Dean Glenn Shafer's vision, astuteness, and courage at a time of multi-faceted transition for Rutgers," they said in their statement.

About Rutgers Business School

Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick is an integral part of one of the nation's oldest, largest, and most distinguished institutions of higher learning: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, founded 1766. Today, Rutgers Business School is educating more than 6,500 undergraduate and graduate students at two main campuses in New Jersey as well as satellite locations in Jersey City, Madison, and Singapore. Rutgers has been recognized as providing one of the best return-on-investments in the country for undergraduate students in both Newark (Washington Monthly) and New Brunswick (The Economist). Rutgers MBA program is ranked #7 for the employment rate of its graduates three months after graduation and it was ranked the #39 Part-Time MBA program nationwide according to U.S. News & World Report. The Rutgers Executive MBA program is also highly ranked globally by the Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek and Wall Street Journal. Established in 1929 and accredited continuously since 1941 by AACSB International, Rutgers Business School is supported by a network of more than 40,000 alumni.