Vice Dean of Wharton Undergraduates: Barbara Kahn

Dr. Patrick Harker, Wharton dean, has announced the appointment of Dr. Barbara Kahn as the next vice dean of the Wharton School's Undergraduate Division. Dr. Kahn will succeed Vice Dean Thomas Dunfee when his term ends June 30, 2003.

"Vice Dean Dunfee has been a wonderful leader for the Undergraduate Division," said Dr. Harker. "Under his leadership the undergraduate team has continued to deliver outstanding advising and support services to our students." During his three-year term, the Undergraduate Division has continued to be recognized as the top undergraduate business program; expanded the study abroad programs into a more coherent set; strengthened the initiatives to provide opportunities for students to do research; created a meaningful relationship with the College House System in shared goals to best support students; yielded and welcomed three freshman classes with outstanding academic and leadership qualities; and supported the continued commitment to building a sense of community through co-curricular and leadership programs.

"We are very pleased to welcome Professor Kahn to her new role on July 1, 2003," said Dr. Harker. "She will bring a deep commitment to undergraduate education."

Dr. Kahn is the Dorothy Silberberg Professor of Marketing. She joined the Wharton faculty in 1990 after serving on the faculty at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. She is a senior fellow of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center and the Leonard Davis Institute and a faculty member of the Graduate Group in the Psychology Department of SAS. She received a B.A. in English literature at the University of Rochester. She also earned an M.B.A. in marketing and statistics, a M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in marketing from Columbia University.

Dr. Kahn teaches Introduction to Marketing to between 400 and 500 undergraduates each semester it is offered, as well as Marketing Research and Consumer Behavior. In 1999, she received the David W. Hauck Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Undergraduate Division. She has served on Penn's Committee on Undergraduate Strategic Planning (2001-02) and as a member of the Wharton Undergraduate Curriculum Committee from 1993 to 1996, chairing the committee during academic year 1995-96.

Also an outstanding research scholar, she has written more than 30 articles published in major journals in marketing, consumer research, retailing and statistics. She is co-author of the book, Grocery Revolution: New Focus on the Consumer. Dr. Kahn's research has been funded by the NSF and the Marketing Science Institute.

Dr. Kahn also was the Hakuhodo Advertising Agency Visiting Scholar at University of Tokyo during the summer of 1993, and a visiting academic at the University of Sydney, Australia, from July to December 1996. She currently is on or has been on the editorial boards of Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Research, and Marketing Letters, and on the policy board of Journal of Consumer Research. She is an area editor of Marketing Science. She also is on the advisory board of the Institute for Operations Research (INFORMS) and the Management Science and is an academic trustee of the Marketing Science Institute.