There's a new dean coming to the College of Business at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. Maling Ebrahimpour, PhD, begins Aug. 1. A brief look at his credentials and areas of expertise suggests he's skilled at building business programs, recruiting students, reaching out to the surrounding business community and telling us more than we want to know about such things as total quality management and business efficiency.

Ebrahimpour succeeds Geralyn Franklin as dean. Franklin was recruited from Texas to run the College of Business and last month returned there to head the business school at the University of Dallas.

Ebrahimpour comes most recently from Rhode Island where he served as dean of the Gabelli School of Business at Roger Williams University and led the school through a three-year process to achieve its initial accreditation. According to USF, he also raised nearly $1 million, launched new BA and BS majors in economics, and strengthened curricula in all majors, most particularly financial services, international business and computer information systems. From 1999-2002 he was associate dean for graduate programs and research at the College of Business Administration at the University of Rhode Island.

He earned the Bachelor of Science degree in cost accounting from the Institute of Advanced Accounting in Tehran, Iran. He earned an MBA in operations research from the University of Nebraska-Kearney, and a PhD in business administration from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

And the topic of his PhD dissertation? "An Empirical Study of Implementation of the Japanese Approach to Quality Management and Its Impact on Product Quality in the U.S. Manufacturing Firms."

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist