Last modified: Thursday, January 24, 2008
Kelley School's executive education programs being transformed to meet needs of corporate partners
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan. 24, 2008
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, which has offered executive education programs since the 1950s, has turned to a new leader to transform them into an educational model for leaders in the 21st century.
The school today (Jan. 24) publicly announced that John F. Cady, previously a managing director of Duke Corporate Education, the executive education practice at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, is the new executive director of Kelley Executive Partners (KEP).
"Kelley and the majority of major business schools have historically taken a traditional approach to executive education," said Cady, who also is a clinical professor of marketing. "There's been a conscious decision on the part of the Kelley School's senior leadership to change Kelley Executive Partners from being a very good, very traditional executive education offering and making it something exceptional.
"The future success of corporations is dependent on the development of leaders at all levels in the organization and on creating leadership bench strength," he added. "Kelley Executive Partners, working with faculty resources across the university, will partner with corporations globally to help them identify and develop the organizational capabilities required to win. Education is the engine for corporate transformation and change."
Historically, the Kelley School has been an internationally recognized provider of executive education programs. Two years ago, the Financial Times reported that KEP's customized offerings for corporations were among its Top 20 worldwide. But the school would like to provide companies with more opportunities to benefit from its resources and knowledge.
"The No. 1 goal of our executive education program is to have another way to have Kelley faculty use their expertise, their ideas and their research to have an impact on corporate practice," said Frank Acito, Kelley's associate dean for academic programs. "John brings a wealth of experience in executive education, having partnered with executives in the U.S. and internationally to use executive education as a driver for leadership development."
Cady also has been associate dean for executive education at Duke and was a founder and managing partner of the Center for Executive Development in Cambridge, Mass. He was on the faculty for 11 years at the Harvard Business School, where he taught in the MBA and executive education programs.
Kelley plans to align the mission of its executive education program even more closely with those of the school and university, both within the United States and abroad.
"The school has a vision of executive education as a complement to our outstanding B.S. and MBA programs," said Dan Smith, dean of the Kelley School. "Whereas our degree programs prepare individuals for their initial careers, executive education develops organizational and leadership capabilities necessary for success at subsequent career stages."
"The demands on organizations to succeed globally are, and will continue to be, one of the great challenges facing corporate leaders," he added. "The Kelley School has accelerated the development of partnerships with leading universities and corporations globally to help meet this challenge. We will meet the executive educational needs of our corporate partners when they need it and where they need it."
Cady said KEP will be seen as a catalyst for trying new things at IU, including involving faculty from other disciplines at the university.
"Kelley Executive Partners is not just a Kelley School resource. It's one that has the ability to reach across the campus and act as a catalyst for a corporation to tap into the tremendous resources of the university," he said. "One of the things that I have learned in my experience is that executive education, because it is not quite so bound by all of the requirements of academic programs and degree granting status, has the ability of being a beta site, where we can try things out and see how they work and then bring the best of what works into the school and into the university."
Lastly, he said he wants to reinforce the school's reputation as it expands its global footprint among corporate audiences. "I would like to see the Kelley School faculty, its research and its centers more broadly known and appreciated by corporate America, especially by companies with which we have already developed partnerships," Cady said. "We would like to create deeper relationships with the companies that hire our students by providing them with the ongoing executive education support they require for superior performance."
For more information about Kelley Executive Partners, call 812-855-0229 or 866-537-5236 or go online to https://kelley.iu.edu/kep/.
