Willamette University on May 15. 2020. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)
A labor economist with Oregon roots will be the next dean at Willamette University’s Atkinson Graduate School of Management, the university announced Thursday.
Dr. Örn Bodvarsson will take the job July 1, moving from his current role as dean of the Bill and Vieve Gore School of Business and as a professor of economics at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah, according to a news release.
The Atkinson School is the home of Willamette’s Master of Business Administration program, based in Salem with a satellite campus in Portland.
“Joining the Willamette University community and the Atkinson Graduate School of Management as its new dean is truly a dream come true for me,” Bodvarsson said in a statement. “Having grown up in Oregon, I have always admired the university’s commitment to student success and everything it does to enhance the quality of life for the state, nation and world.”
The most recent external hire for the school’s dean, Seung Ho “Sam” Park, resigned in the fall of 2018 just one month after starting work. Following Park’s resignation, Professor Michael Hand was appointed as interim dean, then selected internally as dean in August 2019, university spokesman Tim Cobb said. Hand will return to the college’s faculty next year. Willamette began a search for a new dean in December, Cobb said.
Bodvarsson previously served as the founding dean of the St. Cloud State University School of Public Affairs and dean of the College of Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies at California State University, Sacramento, the news release said. He has a doctorate in economics from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, and a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Oregon State University.
-Rachel Alexander
