Three decades ago, David Schmittlein '77 spent his days on College Hill reading on the Main Green, working in two of Providence's costume jewelry factories and fishing for bluefish off the coast. Just last month, Schmittlein returned to New England as the dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management - the first dean Sloan has hired from outside the school.
Gabriel Bitran, a professor of management at Sloan and co-chair of the faculty committee in selecting the new dean, told The Herald the school is starting to focus on establishing the connection between Sloan and the outside world, and it wanted its new dean to lead this initiative.
"We looked for a person with a lot of experience in that domain, and (who) has outstanding academic values and recognition," Bitran said. "David was the one who fit the recipe." Bitran said he hopes Schmittlein's experience in academia will benefit Sloan.
"I think he will bring much greater recognition and visibility to the Sloan School, because he has a clear perspective of the stage in which business schools find themselves," Bitran said.
Bitran said Schmittlein's academic background made him stand out on the shortlist of possible appointees.
"His coming from Brown certainly means he's smart," Bitran said. "There are few schools that turn out people who learn how to adapt in the situations they face."
Prior to his appointment at Sloan, Schmittlein was a professor of marketing and vice dean of global initiatives and brand development at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the Wharton faculty in 1980 and has taught there for the past 27 years.
"My background at Wharton helped me gain an appreciation for how the world at large sees business schools," Schmittlein said, explaining that he thinks people expect business schools to do more than provide degrees in management to further their careers. "They expect schools to be able to reach out to the world with the knowledge they create, provide insights on timely business issues and opportunities."
Schmittlein also said people look to business schools to provide fair and open forums and that leading schools like Sloan need to rise to these challenges both in creating knowledge and reaching out to the world.
A math concentrator at Brown, Schmittlein said he has vivid memories of his years in Providence. "It gave me both freedom to explore but also an incredible depth of knowledge that you had access to in various areas."
Besides math and engineering, Schmittlein dabbled in poetry, literature and other fields. "(It's) stuff that Brown students tend to put together as a broad and thoughtful exploration," he said.
Off-campus, Schmittlein remembers jogging through the East Side and fishing on the weekends. "I lived off campus in the Portuguese neighborhood, which introduced me to Portuguese sweet bread," he said. "It's not the same anywhere else." But Schmittlein stressed that he valued the people most, saying the relationships he formed were the "things that were important and the things that stay with you longer," he said.
"I've also had great experience with Brown alums through my years at Wharton," Schmittlein said. "Each year I would typically have one to three Brown students, and they would always mention their association with the school."
Though his deanship will not begin for another month, Brown alums have already reached out to him. "The day after I was named dean of MIT Sloan, I got an e-mail from about 20 students at MIT Sloan who were all Brown alums," he said. "It was so great that they collectively decided to get in touch with me."
Barrett Hazeltine, professor emeritus of engineering and one of Schmittlein's favorite Brown professors, remembers him as a very serious and well-directed student. "He was curious in a nice way. He wanted to understand how things worked instead of just doing the work and running off," Hazeltine said.
Hazeltine, who has taught at Brown since 1959, said Schmittlein gave valuable input when the Brown Entrepreneurship Program was created. "It was very important that we had advice and support outside the University, and Dave gave credibility when it was needed," Hazeltine said. "He knew how to deal with students and was helpful without being dominating."
"MIT is stereotyped as being a quantitative school," Hazeltine said. "It's brave of them to go for someone like Dave whose focus is more on marketing."
Schmittlein said he sees a slight parallel between Brown's academic freedom and the path he would like business schools to follow, but he said most business schools have rigid curricula for first-year students - MIT's was recently redesigned to provide more flexibility.
"A willingness to just get out of the classroom that has a chalkboard - that certainly is part of the way the schools of management are changing," Schmittlein said.
"For me, that kind of experience - learning by dialogue, or peer-to-peer, started with the Modes of Thought classes at Brown," Schmittlein said.
"One of the interesting things about Brown is that you have a sense that you're throwing a pebble in a pond, and it's hard to predict where the waves will go," Schmittlein said.
"I feel Brown is a school that makes it less about jumping through particular hoops and more about challenging you to find things that are most meaningful to you," he said. "That had a specific effect on me, and I hope (Brown) doesn't change in that way."
Hazeltine said Schmittlein's appointment at MIT demonstrates that a Brown education can lead to responsible positions in business - an encouragement to students studying business at Brown. "It also shows that a concentration in mathematics doesn't mean the only thing you can do is become a professional mathematician, which I think a lot of people think," he said.
"It also reflects an age where marketing as a field has become a field science," Hazeltine said. "Dave could have done all sorts of management but recognizes the importance of marketing."
While scrolling through Internet profiles of Schmittlein, Hazeltine came across a photo of him and laughed. "That's him!" he said. "The same smile and all that. Someone who doesn't take himself too seriously."
