Roosevelt University’s Board of Trustees has unanimously elected Ali R. Malekzadeh, dean of the College of Business Administration at Kansas State University, as the sixth president of Roosevelt, effective July 1.
He will succeed Charles R. Middleton, who is retiring June 30 after a distinguished 50-year career in higher education, including 13 years as Roosevelt’s president.
An expert on strategic management and an accomplished fundraiser, Dr. Malekzadeh, a 59-year-old Iranian-American, has been a business dean at private and public universities for 17 years. In addition to working at Kansas State since 2011, he also was dean of business at Xavier University in Cincinnati for eight years and dean of business at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minn., for five years.
“Dr. Malekzadeh is a visionary academic leader whose values, business experiences, fundraising accomplishments and commitment to student success make him the ideal person to lead Roosevelt to the next level of achievement,” said James J. Mitchell III, chairman of Roosevelt’s Board of Trustees. “The Board of Trustees is delighted that Dr. Malekzadeh has accepted our invitation to join Roosevelt and we look forward to working with him.”
“I am honored to be selected president of one of the nation’s most important and historic universities,” Dr. Malekzadeh said. “When Roosevelt was founded in 1945, it made the dream of higher education available to every qualified student. The University’s mission was unique at the time and changed higher education in the United States forever. As Roosevelt’s president, I want to work collaboratively with my colleagues to continue making the American Dream of higher education a reality for all students.”
“Dr. Malekzadeh’s management expertise and successful record of achievement resonated strongly with the Search Committee,” said Patricia Harris, chair of Roosevelt’s Presidential Search Committee. “During his conversations with the committee and with constituencies across the University, it became clear that his collegial disposition, strategic insights and natural affinity for the Roosevelt community identified him as the resounding choice to serve as Roosevelt’s next president.”
At Kansas State where Dr. Malekzadeh is the Edgerley Family Dean of the College of Business Administration, he spends over half of his time raising funds for the college. His efforts have been very effective as fundraising for the College of Business Administration increased from an average of $2 million per year to more than $40 million in 2014. Since joining Kansas State, Dr. Malekzadeh has led the college in raising $58 million from private sources and attaining 100 percent of the funding for a new advanced business education building that broke ground in November.
Among many other accomplishments at Kansas State, Dr. Malekzadeh helped start an executive mentoring program for undergraduate students and more than 560 students now have executive mentors. He also started a four-year professional development program. Thousands of students participated in events led by over 130 companies in 2014. These programs helped improve retention and graduation rates and the College of Business Administration now has a 96 percent placement rate.
“We congratulate Roosevelt University on hiring Ali Malekzadeh as president,” said Kirk Schulz, president of Kansas State University. “Dean Malekzadeh was a driving force in creating a vision for our College of Business Administration that has inspired our students, alumni and donors. We appreciate the dynamic progress made during his time at K-State and wish him success in the future.”
Dr. Malekzadeh’s personal story is one of achieving the American Dream through higher education and serves as an inspiration for the role of higher education in our society. Both Dr. Malekzadeh and his wife, Dr. Afsaneh Nahavandi, chair of the Department of Leadership Studies at the University of San Diego, were born in Iran and came to the United States to study at the University of Denver. In 1979 shortly after they received degrees from Denver, the Iranian Revolution took place and they were unable to return home. They were granted asylum by the United States and later became U.S. citizens.
“We are living examples of the American Dream,” Dr. Malekzadeh said. “We lost our country and our possessions. Our education was all we had going for us. It is the one thing no one can take away from you.”
During his eight years as dean of the Williams College of Business at Xavier University, Dr. Malekzadeh was instrumental in raising the college’s national profile. The undergraduate entrepreneurship program, for example, was ranked eleventh out of 2,300 colleges surveyed when he left. He also helped create 14 advisory boards with more than 300 executives and 500 executive mentors.
At St. Cloud State University, where he was dean of the G.R. Herberger College of Business from 1998 until 2003, Dr. Malekzadeh served for one year as interim vice president for academic affairs, managing the school’s $90-million academic budget and leading the campus during the absence of the president. As dean, he secured the named gift from the Herberger family.
From 1987 until 1997, he helped build the new campus of Arizona State University West in Phoenix and served as associate vice provost for graduate studies as well as president of its academic senate. Prior to that, he was an assistant professor of strategic management at Northeastern University in Boston.
Dr. Malekzadeh received a doctorate in business administration with an emphasis on strategic management in 1982 from the University of Utah’s College of Business Administration. He earned a bachelor of management in 1977 and MBA in 1978 from the College of Business Administration at the University of Denver.
He is the co-author, with Dr. Nahavandi, of two books, Organizational Behavior: The Person-Organization Fit and Organizational Culture in the Management of Mergers. In addition, he has written 24 business-related articles and book chapters.
Ali Malekzadeh and Afsaneh Nahavandi have been married for 37 years and have two grown daughters, Parisa and Arianne, and one granddaughter.
