UC Davis Dean Rao Unnava To Step Down

Commencement 2024 – Full-Time MBA, MSBA, MPAc and Online MBA. Held at the University Credit Union (UCU) (Pavilion)

After an extraordinary decade leading the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, H. Rao Unnava will step down on June 30 of 2026 and begin a role in the school’s faculty. The university will begin a national search for his successor in September.

If ever the standard cliché about filling one’s shoes applies, this would have to be it. His tenure as dean has been marked by an exceptional period of innovation and growth with limited resources. A soft-spoken, humble leader, he cultivated a culture of comfortable conviviality among faculty and staff. Yet, Unnava has managed to drive change at a dizzying pace in one of the most process-driven and bureaucratic of university systems. His unwavering ability to handle the inevitable frustrations of a deanship with patience and determination characterizes his leadership style. As a leader, Unnava is the ultimate contradiction: A hard-driving change agent who is as calm and clear-minded as a Pujari or Hindu priest. It is also the secret to his success.

The dean launched the first online MBA and part-time Master of Management programs in the University of California system, offering credit-bearing stackable credentials that could be applied toward a degree program, deferring tuition for online MBA candidates, creating a lifelong learning platform for the GSM community, and opening all MBA content to alumni for free. He also pulled off the near impossible, getting a new undergraduate business major approved by the university.

SOME 8,800 APPLICANTS FOR A NEW UNDERGRAD BUSINESS MAJOR: BETTER THAN HARVARD OR YALE

This fall, GSM will welcome its first cohort of undergraduate students to the joint academic program between GSM, the College of Letters and Sciences, and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. The Bachelor of Science in Business is a result of decades of work by faculty and campus leaders. The program has gained substantial interest, attracting 8,800 applications for an inaugural class of 175 students, more than 50 applicants for every available seat. That’s better than Yale (37 applicants per seat), Harvard (32), and Princeton (29).

For all of these achievements, Poets&Quants named Unnava Dean of the Year in 2024 for his innovative and humble leadership, including smartly leveraging the university’s most important strengths in agriculture, biotechnology, and sustainable energy to create new experiential learning options. This year, Poets&Quants named the UC Davis Graduate School of Management among the top 10 business schools to watch in the U.S.

“It is thanks to Dean Unnava’s creativity, enthusiasm, and visionary leadership that UC Davis continues to be recognized as one of the most innovative business schools in the country,” said Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Mary Croughan in a statement. “His focus on increasing access to academic programs and elevating the student experience has boosted enrollment, and his collaborative spirit has been such a benefit to UC Davis. I am very grateful that the campus will continue to benefit from Dean Unnava’s ideas, experience, and passion as an esteemed member of our faculty.”

UNNAVA WILL RETURN TO THE FACULTY IN 2027 AFTER A SABBATICAL

Following his tenure as dean, Unnava plans to take a sabbatical then return to teaching advertising and marketing as a professor in the Graduate School of Management in 2027.

“It has been an honor to work alongside the top-notch faculty and staff at the Graduate School of Management and serve a very special group of students who have consistently shown how much they care about making the world a better place,” Unnava added in a statement. “I am also grateful to the Chancellor and the Provost for their leadership and guidance throughout this period. The support of our Dean’s Advisory Council members, our Alumni Board members, and our generous alumni paved the way for the fruition of many of our initiatives.”

Under Unnava’s leadership, the Graduate School of Management also partnered with UC Davis Athletics to provide student-athletes with a way to continue competing in sports while earning a master’s degree. The collaboration led to an accelerated one-year Master of Management program, and dozens of student-athletes have earned the degree and entered their careers with a solid foundation in business, including accounting, finance, economics, and marketing.

ARRIVED AT UC DAVIS AFTER 32 YEARS WITH OHIO STATE’S FISHER COLLEGE

Unnava has strengthened relationships with alumni and raised philanthropic funds to advance innovation and support student success. Alumni Mike and Renée Child, whose $5.5 million donation in 2011 created the Mike and Renée Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, gifted $5.2 million in 2020 to the Graduate School of Management and the School of Engineering to expand innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities. Joelle and Michael Hurlston – also Aggie alumni – generously gave $8 million to UC Davis in 2022, with a portion of the gift establishing the Michael and Joelle Hurlston Dean, the first endowed deanship on the Davis campus in the Graduate School of Management.

Unnava arrived in the U.S. from India in 1984 with his young wife, Vasu, who he had met in engineering school in Hyderabad. When they came for PhDs at Ohio State University, the pair had to be tutored on American culture and rituals from Halloween and Thanksgiving to Christmas, holidays they had never celebrated. Four years later, armed with his PhD, he chose to stay at Ohio State. He threw himself into his discipline of marketing, moving up the ranks from assistant professor to a full professorship with tenure. After turning down a chance to become a senior associate dean in 2012, a time when he stretched his entrepreneurial muscles by forming Angie’s List, he later reconsidered to take the job two years later.

Responsible for all academic programs offered by Fisher, Unnava soon found himself on search lists for deanships. Leaving Ohio State, where he had spent the past 32 years, could not have been easy. But he and his wife packed up and moved west to begin his extraordinary deanship. The school was then running a deficit with a faculty of just 25 professors. The student body was largely limited to a full-time MBA program with annual intakes of about 45 students, a pair of part-time MBA programs in Sacramento and San Ramon, with a total enrollment of some 270 students, and a master’s of professional accountancy, with an annual intake of fewer than 35 students. Truth be told, the school had just been through a round of staff cutbacks. Forever in the shadow of its higher-ranked UC cousins, Berkeley Haas and UCLA Anderson,  Davis was often underappreciated and overlooked.