Robert Dolan, dean of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, plans to step down next year.

Dolan is expected to relinquish his post in summer 2011 after his second five-year term expires, a U-M spokesman said, confirming a report today by the Financial Times and a story March 31 by the Michigan Daily.

Dolan told colleagues in an e-mail March 31 that joining U-M was "the best move I ever made."

University of Michigan Ross School of Business Dean Robert Dolan (left) celebrates the opening of the business school's new $145 million in 2009. He's pictured with U-M President Mary Sue Coleman and billionaire real estate developer Stephen Ross, who contributed $100 million to the university, most of which helped finance the construction project.

File photo | AnnArbor.com

News of Dolan's departure comes a year after the Ross School of Business opened its $145 million, 275,000-square-foot new facility. It was financed in part by a $100 million gift from real estate mogul and U-M grad Stephen Ross. 

The luminescent, contemporary structure changed the landscape of Tappan Avenue and is likely to be the centerpiece of Dolan's legacy. After the facility opened in 2009, Dolan said it reflected the "heart and soul" of the school.

Dolan also helped lead a gradual expansion of U-M's Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, as well as U-M's Erb Institute, a joint program between the Ross School of Business and the School of Natural Resources and Environment.

Dolan, a former administrator and marketing professor at Harvard Business School, could not be reached for comment this afternoon.

"I am proud of what we have accomplished together since the summer of 2001 and how we have worked together -- through a historic naming gift, an ambitious facilities project, and several economic cycles -- to strengthen the school and maintain its tradition of excellence," Dolan wrote in the e-mail.

Ross School of Business graduates had the best career prospects among the top 301 business schools, according to a Princeton Review survey of students released in October.

In recent days, the Ross School of Business restructured its executive education program, leading to 11 layoffs and two transfers, marking a rare occasion in which U-M chose to lay off employees due to economic forces.

The school also reported a 17 percent drop in undergraduate applications from 2008 to 2009. But that slide was attributable to economic trends largely beyond U-M's control, and first-year enrollment, in fact, increased slightly during that period.

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