UNLV is pleased to announce Wm. Gerard (Gerry) Sanders, Ph.D., as the new dean for Lee Business School following a national search. He is currently dean and Bodenstedt chair of the College of Business at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), and takes his post at UNLV on Jan. 1, 2021.
During his tenure at the University of Texas at San Antonio – where 70 percent of the student body identifies as minority and 50 percent as first-generation – Sanders improved the business school’s four-year graduate rate 126 percent and the six-year graduation rate 42 percent. He expanded tutoring, internship opportunities and professional development activities. He also raised more than $13.4 million for the school, increasing its total philanthropic support by 34 percent.
Sanders said UNLV’s standing as the only research university in one of the country’s great cities appealed to him, in addition to the diversity and excellence of Lee Business School.
“Lee Business School is an engine of socio-economic development that transforms not only the lives of its students, but the region as well,” he said. “Based on the great momentum of the past decade, Lee Business School is now in a position to make quantum leaps in student success and brand reputation. It has the students that industry wants, the faculty who are committed to their success, and a community eager to engage and support the school.”
Lee Business School is one of the largest schools at UNLV with about 3,500 undergraduate students, 500 graduate students, 21,000 alumni. The school is among just 5 percent of business colleges and schools worldwide to hold international dual accreditation in business and accounting by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the premier accrediting body for business and management education.
At UNLV, Sanders said his priorities will align with the university’s core mission of student achievement.
“We will be working hard to remove barriers to timely graduation,” he said. “We will continue to advance faculty research and faculty diversity. We will also work with alumni, friends of the college, and the corporate community of Las Vegas to secure the funds for a new building, and significantly increase the number of student scholarships.”
Prior to joining UTSA in 2013, Sanders had been a professor of strategic management at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business since 2008. Previously he led the Department of Organizational Leadership and Strategy at the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University.
Sanders’ research focuses on corporate governance and executive leadership and their effects on strategic decision making and company performance. He has published studies on the effects of CEO stock option pay on firm risk taking; the role of top management work experiences on firm strategy; and the nature of what firms learn from their board members’ experiences. Sanders is a member of the Academy of Management and the Strategic Management Society.
His research has been published in leading management journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal and the Journal of Management. His work on stock option pay has also been featured in The New York Times, The Economist and Bloomberg Businessweek.
Prior to entering academia Sanders spent more than a decade working in institutional commercial real estate investment with Equitec Financial Group, The Koll Company and Bechtel Investments.
Sanders received his Ph.D. in management from The University of Texas at Austin and holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Brigham Young University.
