Staff Report

Provost Warwick Arden announced Monday that Annette L. Ranft, senior associate dean of academic affairs and the Reagan Professor of Business at the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business, will take over as the Stephen P. Zelnak Jr. Dean of the Poole College of Management, effective July 1.

Ira Weiss, who has served as dean since 2004, announced last year his plans to step down and join the college’s faculty. 

Ranft was named to The Wall Street Journal’s list of top female business school administrators in 2012. She earned her doctorate in business administration from UNC-Chapel Hill and her bachelor’s in mathematics from Appalachian State University. 

“As an eighth-generation North Carolinian and the first in my family to attend college, I am deeply indebted to the North Carolina system of higher education and the access to education that was afforded to me in the state,” Ranft said. “I was particularly drawn to this position as it provided an opportunity to contribute back to the state and to the system that was core to my own education and personal and professional development.”

Ranft’s research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Management, Organization Science and the Journal of International Business Studies.