Last modified: Thursday, May 27, 2004
Guidant chief executive Ronald Dollens joins Kelley School of Business faculty as Poling Chair
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Ronald W. Dollens, outgoing president and chief executive officer of Guidant Corp., has been selected as the fifth Harold A. "Red" Poling Chair of Business and Government in Indiana University's Kelley School of Business.
Dollens, who has led the Indianapolis-based medical device leader for 10 years, will return to Bloomington as a visiting professor to teach in the same place where he earned a master of business administration degree in marketing in 1972. He also will interact frequently with students and faculty at the Kelley School in Indianapolis. He will retire from Guidant at the end of this year.
"The performance of Guidant under the leadership of Mr. Dollens as its CEO and chairperson is the stuff of legend," said Dan R. Dalton, dean of the Kelley School. "Ron and Guidant have been great friends and partners, and now he has agreed to directly share his experiences in our undergraduate and graduate classrooms, with our academies and our student groups. For a business school, it simply does not get any better than that."
The Poling Chair of Business and Government was established in 1993 by Poling, a Kelley School alumnus and Ford Motor Co. chairman and CEO from 1985 to 1994. Recipients are given the charge to foster understanding of the critical interactions between private business and government in matters of public policy, enterprise competitiveness and economic growth.
Previous Poling Chairs have included Samuel K. Skinner, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation and chief of staff to former President George H.W. Bush; Sen. Evan Bayh, who taught prior to his election to the U.S. Senate; Randall L. Tobias, chairman emeritus of Eli Lilly and Co. and former vice chairman of AT&T Corp.; and Frank Popoff, former CEO and chairman of Dow Chemical Co.
Dollens leads Guidant Corp., a $3.7 billion company traded on the New York and Pacific Stock Exchanges. Prior to the formation of Guidant, Dollens served as president of Eli Lilly and Co.'s Medical Devices and Diagnostics Division (MDD). In 1985, he was named senior vice president, sales, marketing and product development for Advanced Cardiovascular Systems Inc. (ACS), a MDD company headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. In 1988, he became president and CEO of ACS. He assumed his current post as president and CEO of Guidant when the company was formed in 1994.
The Danville, Ind., native also has a bachelor of science degree in pharmacy from Purdue University. Dollens is a member of the boards of Advanced Medical Technology Association, Alliance for Aging Research, Indiana Health Industry Forum, Kinetic Concepts Inc. and Beckman Coulter Corp. He was campaign chairman of the 2003 United Way of Central Indiana and was elected in 2003 to serve a two-year term as chairman of the Healthcare Leadership Council.
Active in civic affairs, he also serves on the boards of Butler University, the Eiteljorg Museum and the St. Vincent Hospital Foundation. He recently served on the Advisory Committee on Regulatory Reform, a group appointed by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson.
