When The Anderson School at UCLA’s Dean Bruce Willison
talks about running one of the top business schools in the country,
he sounds more like Karl Dorrell than an academic administrator and
long-time banker.
A former chief operating officer of the 37,000-employee Home
Savings of America, Willison equates managing employees and leading
an organization to coaching a sports team.
“The great thing about being in business is it is a
game,” he said. “You have the opportunity to manage
people and strategies and resources, and try to beat the
competition … and that’s just fun.”
The analogies to Dorrell do not end there.
Dorrell, a former wide receiver coach for the Denver Broncos,
was hired as UCLA’s head football coach last year. He
immediately focused on building a staff of assistant coaches who
could guide him in his new job. Willison approached his first
academic post ““ the deanship of Anderson ““ with the
same attitude.
“I’ve learned that one of the most important things
you can do is hire people who are better and smarter than you are.
Oversee them, but allow them to do what they are good at,”
said Willison, who recently announced he will be leaving The
Anderson School when his contract expires in June after five years
of service.
Willison’s faculty recognize his humility as the factor
that permitted him to quickly adapt to academia.
“He came from the business world, and yet, because of his
ability to listen to various viewpoints, he could absorb what an
academic institution is about,” said Rakesh Sarin, senior
associate dean, faculty chair and one of Willison’s top
advisers.
Willison stands out to many of his colleagues because he is just
and cares about people and The Anderson School.
“He is a very, very gracious, dignified gentlemen with a
great deal of sincerity and integrity,” said George Geis,
associate dean for the Executive Masters of Business Administration
program.
Being dean has not been second nature to Willison, who spent 26
years as a distinguished banker before joining The Anderson School.
But going into academia was not so much a change in profession as
it was a change in industries, he said.
And he approached this job with the same perspective he had as a
banker: Present a vision people will buy while stressing each
member’s important role in the community.
“He’s a team player,” Sarin said.
Willison’s role, as he understood it, was to personally
reach out to the business community and get it to “buy
into” The Anderson School, expand and improve faculty
research, and above all else, establish a relationship with the
student body.
When Willison talks about what motivates him, it is apparent he
cares about more than power, prestige or even performance.
“It is a belief in wanting to do things for people,”
he said. “That has kind of shaped my management
approach.”
It has also shaped his approach to being dean.
Many students know Willison and said they will remember him
because of the attention he has shown them.
When Anthony Mirau, a second-year MBA student, ran into the dean
in an Anderson hallway last spring, he stopped Willison to talk to
him about possible summer internships.
Willison, who has formed a large network of business connections
through his career as a banker, has consistently helped students
find jobs.
Mirau said after talking to him about career goals, he handed
Willison his resume and the dean told Mirau he would prepare a list
of people to contact about a possible internship.
But when Mirau showed up at school the next week, Willison had
already submitted his resume and a letter of recommendation to the
chief executive officers of eight companies, including Health Net
and City National Bank.
“He really came through and went well beyond what I
expected,” Mirau said.
In the end, Mirau took a position at Roll International, and
even though the decision was unrelated to Willison, he remains
appreciative.
Other students are shocked by Willison’s welcoming spirit.
On Oct. 12, the dean hosted eight Anderson students at his Santa
Monica home. After dinner and cocktails, he openly responded to
questions about his professional and personal life.
“I think all of us at the dinner … could tell it is not
just a job for him; it’s not just a salary. He has a real
passion for the school,” said Jill Witty, a first-year MBA
student and the dinner coordinator.
Such words would not sound much different from Willison’s
mouth.
“(Students) are going to become our alumni, and if we
don’t help them become successful, it is going to come back
to the school,” he said.
Willison is finishing his tenure, but he does not intend to
separate ties with The Anderson School, and he hopes it will
continue to attract quality faculty and students and do more to
become involved in the Los Angeles business community.
Hired during prosperous financial times, Willison recently had
to endure waves of budget difficulties from decreased state
funding. He believes his banking background helped him balance the
school’s budget.
Willison said if he had accepted a second five-year term, he
would have focused on raising more private funding.
He talked about modeling the school’s finances to those of
University of Michigan Business School and University of
Virginia’s Darden School of Business.
While those universities are publically supported, their
business schools receive no public funds. Instead, they are
supported by private donations, executive workshops that are
offered to non-students, and student fees.
Because they are not state supported, the schools are able to
charge market rate tuition ““ over $5,000 more than they
otherwise would.
“That proved to be very timely this year when state
funding to higher education was cut,” said Darden spokesman
Phil Giaramita.
It is no surprise a former banker would look to make his school
more financially stable. Being financially independent would also
allow future deans to bypass “bureaucratic hurdles”
that Willison said makes operating a public institution
difficult.
But in the end, Willison sees more than dollar signs when he
looks at The Anderson School.
“The most important things that all of us need to remember
are the things our parents told us that are satisfying about life
““ and they aren’t the things that come from being an
Anderson MBA necessarily,” he said. “It’s family,
friends and self-fulfillment and doing right.”