Snyder steps down at Chicago Booth

Edward Snyder is to step down from the dean's job at Chicago Booth from June 2010. The surprise move comes just 10 days after Harvard dean Jay Light made a similar announcement, leaving the top jobs at three of America's top business schools vacant – Chicago Booth's neighbour, the Kellogg School at Northwestern University, is also looking for a dean.

Prof Snyder told the Financial Times that once he had made the decision not to seek a third term as dean of Chicago Booth when his second five-year term finished in June 2011, he felt it would make sense to leave next year rather than stay on as a "lame duck" dean for the extra year.

Leaving Chicago at 56, he says, will give him the opportunity to take on another leadership role in education, including potentially a dean's job at another business school. "My guess is, I've got one more big leadership job." Prof Snyder says he is expecting to seek a year's absence from the university next June.

The business school rumour machine will now work overtime to speculate on who will replace Profs Snyder, Light and Dipak Jain from Kellogg. Harvard has always appointed the dean from within the Harvard faculty and the two front-runners will be two of the most outspoken professors there, Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria. Chicago will set up a faculty search committee in the next few weeks, according to university president Robert Zimmer. Meanwhile the dean's search committee at Kellogg is expected to propose candidates to the president and provost early in 2010, with interim dean, Sunil Chopra, the potential frontrunner.

Della Bradshaw
The Financial Times