Drucker School Dean to Depart at the End of Spring Semester

Jenny Darroch will join Miami University’s Farmer School of Business as its new dean.

AS A GRAD STUDENT IN NEW ZEALAND, Jenny Darroch knew Peter Drucker’s philosophy well—she came across his aphoristic quotes everywhere in her marketing textbooks.

But that was the closest she ever expected to get to him—she never dreamed she’d actually get to know the father of modern management.

That changed in 2003 when she visited Claremont to interview for a teaching job at the university.

Right before Drucker held one of his last public (and legendary) lectures, Darroch was ushered into the auditorium to meet him. There he was: The father of modern management sat on stage in a large leather chair, eating a donut, waiting for the attendees to come in.

“Apparently, it was a bit of a ritual for him to do that,” she said. “I sat in awe just like the rest of the audience and listened to him tell a wide range of stories that seemed disparate at first, and then bring all of them together at the end. That was his style.”

Encountering Drucker is one of the memories Darroch will take with her when she leaves the university at the end of the spring semester. Darroch is heading to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she will take on the role of dean of the Farmer School of Business.

Darroch’s 16-year career at the Drucker School comes to a close with the current academic year. It may be bittersweet, she says, “but it is time.”

Darroch’s departure was announced in a recent campus-wide message sent by Provost Patricia Easton.

“Her commitment and enthusiasm to best support the students, faculty, and staff of the Drucker School of Management will be missed,” Easton said in the announcement.

The author of the highly regarded books Why Marketing to Women Doesn’t Work and Marketing Through Turbulent Times, Darroch most recently served as the university’s Drucker School of Management dean for nearly four years.

During her tenure, the school launched the Global Family Business Institute, expanded membership of its advisory board, boosted student enrollment, and made substantive changes to the MBA program, including the creation of the Drucker Signature Platform.

“I am so proud of the team we have created and the results we have achieved,” she said.

While her two sons live and work in New Zealand, Darroch said she and her husband Andrew will relocate to the University of Miami, where she is eager to immerse herself in the community and find “ways to balance continuity and change just as Drucker taught us to do.”

“I want to thank the thousands of people who have contributed to my success at the Drucker School: colleagues, students, alumni, friends, and family,” she said. “Moving from a place that has been my home for 16 years is bittersweet. But it is time.”