By Cliff Peale
The Cincinnati Enquirer

XU's next dean at the Williams College of Business, Ali Malekzadeh (center) meets with students (from left): Joe Voors, Lindsay Roessner, Cara Rush, Kristi Zuhlke, Dan Dalic, Jacob Geers and Nancy Klocker. (Jeff Swinger photo) | ZOOM |

Looking outside Xavier University's campus to educate its business-school students is the top priority of Ali Malekzadeh.

The Iranian native, who starts June 1 as dean of XU's Williams College of Business, has immediate plans to bring more local businesses onto XU's campus and send more students out to learn from those companies.

"We cannot educate our students by ourselves any longer," Malekzadeh, 47, said during a visit to campus last week. "They need specific skills that the business community can help them acquire."

It's a task for which the third-degree karate black belt is well-positioned. He has plenty of administrative experience to help navigate the university minefields. And in previous stints at Arizona State University West in Phoenix and St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, he showed creative ways to build partnerships, including creating entire courses taught inside local companies.

His emphasis on outside skills is trumpeted by almost every U.S. business school, including here in the Tristate. At the University of Cincinnati, for example, marketing students help write marketing plans for dozens of local institutions.

They're all looking for real-world experience and also connections that can yield the corporate sponsorships that have become a must.

Malekzadeh

"One thing I've become increasingly convinced about is that the university needs to multiply the linkages between itself and the community around it," Xavier President Father Michael Graham said, "especially where those linkages leverage community needs."

Those linkages will spread throughout the university, Graham said. For example, he has hired University of Memphis professor Mark Frolick to establish a research center in information systems. And XU is talking to local business leaders about a consulting partnership with the Minority Business Accelerator, created to spur growth at local minority-owned companies, Graham said.

Malekzadeh, with an MBA from the University of Denver and a doctoral degree in business strategy from the University of Utah, has attributes he wants every XU business student to acquire. They start with the ethical and liberal-arts skills at the root of the university's Jesuit tradition. They also include communications skills, technology expertise and international work.

"I'm really hoping to convince everybody eventually that in five years, we have enough funding and we've laid the groundwork to require an international experience from every student," said Malekzadeh, a product of a Jesuit education in Iran before attending college in the United States. "That will set that person apart from everybody else in the marketplace."

He has contacted some of the business leaders on XU's board, including from Procter & Gamble Co. and Midland Co.

The Williams school has moved that way under previous dean Mike Webb, establishing executive MBA study in Latin America, for example, and a host of local business executives speaking on XU's campus.

"A lot of this is being done here now, but we're going to do much more," Malekzadeh said. "I'm really hoping to make the Xavier business school a destination for the business community."

He showed those same priorities as the dean at St. Cloud State, about 60 miles from the Twin Cities. He established advisory boards for every department as well as for the entire business school.

And he scheduled entire courses at local corporations. For example, an accounting information-systems class at Bankers Systems Inc. included managers interacting with students.

"It actually led to 10 internships that summer for our students," he said.

E-mail cpeale@enquirer.com