Shu Schiller, a faculty member and administrator at Wright State University, has been named the next dean of UMSL’s College of Business Administration and will assume her new position on April 1. (Photo courtesy of Wright State University)
The University of Missouri–St. Louis has chosen Shu Schiller, a faculty member and administrator at Wright State University, to serve as the new dean of the College of Business Administration.
Schiller, selected after a nationwide search, will assume her new position on April 1 with Professor Michael Elliott continuing to serve as interim dean until then.
“I’m very pleased to welcome Shu Schiller to the UMSL community,” said Steven J. Berberich, UMSL’s provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. “Shu will bring to UMSL a strong academic and administrative background to help guide the business college.”
Schiller, who joined the faculty at Wright State in 2006, has served as interim dean of its College of Graduate Programs and Honors Studies since November 2022 and before that spent nearly four years as associate dean in the university’s Raj Soin College of Business.
Under her leadership, the College of Graduate Programs and Honors Studies realized a 3.8% enrollment growth in new domestic students last fall. The college counts more than 2,200 graduate students spread among 150 doctoral, graduate, and certificate programs as well as more than 900 students in the University Honors Program.
Schiller recognizes the important role UMSL plays as the only public research university in the St. Louis region and as a key driver of workforce development – one that serves students from every socioeconomic background.
“UMSL’s mission of transforming lives is so widely shared and powerful,” Schiller said. “I am attracted to its passion and commitment to providing access and excellence through a transformative educational experience.”
That was a focus of Schiller’s work at Wright State. As associate dean, she recognized the struggles first-year students often faced and collaborated with the dean’s student advisory board to create a student mentoring program that helped build connections and fostered a sense of belonging among new students on campus. She also managed the college’s degree completion program, which helped remove financial barriers for nontraditional students, many of them first-generation, so that they could finish their business degrees. Those efforts paid off in increased credit completion and persistence rates among Wright State students.
She hopes to help build upon the strong reputation of the College of Business Administration throughout the St. Louis region, including strengthening partnerships with the local business community.
“The College of Business Administration has nationally renowned faculty and dedicated staff who care deeply about student success and work hard to help them achieve their dreams,” Schiller said. “Many programs are highly ranked, drawing a wide range of learners from the region, the nation and the world.
“More importantly, the college is passionately engaged with the business community. It is truly phenomenal at producing impactful, cutting-edge research to solve real-world problems and linking applied research with teaching, creating unmatched talent for the workforce.”
Before becoming associate dean, Schiller served more than four years as chair of the Department of Information Systems and Supply Chain Management.
She is a professor of information systems and earned her PhD in management information systems from the Fox School of Business at Temple University in 2007. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in management engineering and a master’s degree in management science from the Beijing Institute of Technology.
Her research has explored ways to improve and advance communication and collaboration in the highly networked world. She has also worked extensively in data analytics and led the design and construction of Wright State’s Data Analytics and Visualization Environment lab in 2015.
