Administration

Dean
Arthur Kraft

Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo

Arthur Kraft joined Chapman University as dean of the George L. Argyros School of Business and Economics and Robert J. and Carolyn A. Waltos, Jr. Chair in Business and Economics in January 2006. In his role as dean, Dr. Kraft is responsible for the academic and operational affairs of the college. This includes but is not limited to fundraising, operational and strategic planning, academic accreditation and program reviews, faculty development and recruiting, and accreditation activities of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

Dr. Kraft’s involvement with AACSB International includes numerous activities in support of accreditation. He is past chair of the board of directors and served in other leadership positions for AACSB International. He is on the board of the Global Foundation for Management Education. He chairs the nominating committee and the accreditation coordinating committee (ACC). He is a member of the strategic directions committee, the AQ doctoral bridge task force, Committee on Issues in Management Education (CIME) and the executive committee. He served as chair of the pre-accreditation committee (PAC) and as a member of ACC. He has served as the business advisor, pre-candidacy advisor, peer review team member and peer review team chair for several accreditation reviews of academic institutions in the United States and around the world.

A native of Eden, NY, Dr. Kraft served as business school dean at Georgia Institute of Technology, Rutgers University,West Virginia University and DePaul University before he joined Chapman. He began his career in higher education at Ohio University in 1969 and was promoted to full professor of quantitative methods in 1975. He served as professor and associate dean of the College of Business Administration at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 1977-83.

Dr. Kraft served as dean of the College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University from 1983-1987. In 1987, he joined Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey, as business school dean and professor of finance and management, becoming the first dean of the newly established School of Business at Rutgers’ New Brunswick campus. Six years later, Dr. Kraft became dean of the School of Management at Georgia Institute of Technology, a position he held until 1997. He was professor of international and strategic management from 1997-1999, and served as chair of the school’s doctoral program from 1998-1999.

Dr. Kraft, who has experience in both education and government, received his Ph.D. in economics in 1970 and a master’s degree in economics in 1969 from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics magna cum laude from St. Bonaventure University in 1966.

Associate Dean
Lynne Pierson Doti

Ph.D., University of California, Riverside

Lynne Pierson Doti, the David and Sandra Stone Professor of Economics at Chapman University and Associate Dean of the Argyros School of Business and Economics, has taught at Chapman University since 1971. She became interested in the role of entrepreneurs as director of the Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship and Ethics where she met a number of successful business owners in Orange County, California. In 2006, she helped organize Plaza Bank, Irvine and served on its board of directors. Prior to that, she was a member of the board of Eldorado Bank. These experiences prompted a book American Entrepreneur, published in 2010.

Lynne is also the author of Banking in an Unregulated Environment: California 1878 - 1905 and co-author with Larry Schweikart of California Bankers and Banking in the American West. She has also written about 25 articles on banking, using history as a laboratory to test theories of branching, structure and regulation. Her current research links financial structure and the real estate market. She served as the editor of Essays in Economic and Business History, an academic journal, and has been active in the community. She was on budget commissions for the cities of Orange and Anaheim and state boards of two political organizations.

Vita

Selected Publications and Activities

Assistant Dean, MBA Programs
Jon Kaplan

MBA, UCLA

Jon Kaplan is Assistant Dean, MBA Programs for The Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University. Besides managing student services for the graduate student body, Jon is responsible for the recruitment of new students into each program. He also is a part of the strategic planning team for the Argyros School and serves as Faculty Athletics Representative for Chapman University.

Since Jon took over the management of the ASBE graduate programs, he and his staff have been able to consistently increase the quality and quantity of the students in all graduate programs. Jon has helped introduce new student-focused initiatives, including the ‘Dinner for Eight’ program, which gives graduate students the opportunity to interact with and learn from top business people from Orange County and other parts of Southern California, in an informal setting. He also was instrumental in the effort to open up the MBA Career Management Center in August 2006.

Jon is an MBA graduate with honors from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and came to Chapman University after working for 5 years at UCLA Anderson, first as Associate Director of Admissions, and then as Associate Director of the Parker Career Management Center. Prior to getting his MBA, Jon graduated Cum Laude with a B.A. in Economics from UCLA and then spent over a decade as Director of Operations for the UCLA Football Team, where he assisted the coaching staff in leading the team to national prominence. He has experience as a product manager for Agron, Inc., a licensee of adidas, and he helped Disney unveil the “Wide World of Sports” attraction, located at Walt Disney World in Florida. He also spent one winter touring as the public address announcer for The Harlem Globetrotters.

Jon is on the Board of Directors for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Orange County chapter, and he is a co-author of a book entitled “The Early Career MBA”.

Assistant Dean
Kenneth Murphy

Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University

Dr. Kenneth E. Murphy (Ken) is an Associate Professor of Operations Management.  He holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in Operations Research.  Dr. Murphy’s recent research focuses on governance and management of business process redesign initiatives in global organizations.  He has also published in the areas of scheduling and organizational learning.  Dr. Murphy has published in Operations Research, Naval Research Logistics, Communications of the ACM and Information Systems Journal.