As one of the top executives at Johnson & Johnson, Christine A. Poon managed the company’s pharmaceutical businesses and served on its board of directors and executive committee. Along with such luminaries as Angela Merkel and Oprah Winfrey, she was regularly found on the Forbes magazine list of 100 Most Powerful Women.

As Poon wound up a highly successful 30-year career in industry, Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee came calling, wooing her to head OSU’s business school. Gee proved persuasive, and in April 2009 Poon joined OSU as dean of its Max M. Fisher College of Business. Dean Poon recently shared some thoughts in an interview with Deans Digest. 

Q: Where do you see graduate management education heading in the short term, and what general trends do you see?

A: One trend that I see is that of students being much more thoughtful about trading off and thinking about the return on investment [from their] degrees. We’ve often thought the graduate education was a little price inelastic, but I think given the economy and the fact that it is a big investment of a person’s time and certainly finances, there is much more thought around the return on investment.

Companies that are sponsoring students to get their degrees, and students themselves are looking to pursue graduate degrees that are more specific. Although we still have great demand for the MBA, we also see more demand brewing for specialized master’s—such as in finance, accounting, marketing, or operations.

Another trend is around globalization and internationalization.

Q: What are the one or two greatest challenges facing graduate management education today?

A: I don’t know if you had interviewed someone 30 years ago if they would have said the same thing, but I do think that it is all about relevance. In a professional college like business, given the strengths that we have developed over the years in terms of our faculty, reputation, and research, [we need to] find ways to continue to be relevant in preparing students for their careers or fulfilling the ambitions and yet find the freedom for faculty to pursue what’s of interest to them.

Students are facing a highly competitive [job market]. There are forecasts that fewer students will be choosing business as their career choice as the years go on. Whether those forecasts are true, I don’t know. I think the reputation of business people has been tarnished over the last 10 years. So there are real challenges for a college to continue to find its relevance and to continue to address real issues that are ongoing in business. How do we balance and truly protect the ivory tower and yet not make the ivory tower something that becomes a weakness vs. a strength.