After an extensive national search, Interim Provost and Co-acting President Margot Vigeant has announced that Michelle Roehm, who served as interim dean of the School of Business at Wake Forest University (2021-22), has also served as the school’s vice dean and is presently the school’s Peter C. Brockway Chair in Strategic Management, will be Bucknell’s next Kenneth W. Freeman Professor and Dean of the Freeman College of Management.
During her 18 months as interim dean, Roehm held full responsibility for a $62 million budget and 160-person School of Business, including the administration of eight degree programs; academic and financial planning; engagement with the Board of Visitors, alumni and parents; and external relations and advancement initiatives. While serving as interim dean, she was also named one of the world’s top academic professionals in the field of data and analytics, according to Chief Data Officer Magazine.
She impressed the Bucknell search committee with her previous interim dean experience, coupled with her background as a professor in all five of the flagship degree programs at the school (undergraduate, MBA, master’s in management, master’s in accounting and master’s in business analytics). She was also recognized as Educator of the Year by her Wake Forest evening MBA students in 2008.
“We are extremely pleased to welcome Michelle Roehm to Bucknell as our new dean of the Freeman College of Management,” Vigeant says. “In a very short time, the college has developed a national reputation for excellence in undergraduate management education and Michelle has the ideal background to ensure that momentum continues. Her dedication and experience as a teacher, scholar and administrator will be a great asset to our campus community.”
A professor at the Wake Forest School of Business since 1997, Roehm served in several leadership roles after joining the school’s senior administrative team in 2008, providing strategic direction to academic centers, pre-experience programs and faculty across academic disciplines. She recently led the school’s strategic visioning process with business school faculty, staff and the school’s Board of Visitors.
“It is a tremendous honor to join the Freeman College of Management as dean,” Roehm says. “I look forward to enthusiastically collaborating with students, faculty, staff and members of the larger Bucknell community to carry forward the rich legacy of learning and discovery at the intersection of management education and the liberal arts.”
While she has been a professor for more than 25 years, and has taught at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (1990-91), Northwestern University (1996-97) and Wake Forest (1997-present), Roehm entered into an administrative trajectory soon after being promoted to full professor. She was named senior associate dean of faculty at Wake Forest in 2009 following the merger of the Calloway School of Business and Accountancy with the Babcock Graduate School of Management and served two terms (2009-11 and 2012-14).
She was then named vice dean of the school and served for the next seven years (2014-21), with responsibility for both faculty affairs and academic programs. Roehm was named interim dean for the 2021-22 academic year, with full responsibility for the direction, operations, budgeting, financial planning, personnel processes and external relations for the School of Business.
She was also named Peter C. Brockway Chair in Strategic Management in 2016 and will continue in that role through the end of the academic year.
Roehm’s teaching and research interests include business communication, branding and consumer behavior. Since joining the Wake Forest faculty, she has published numerous articles and research papers in such journals as the Harvard Business Review, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
She is a member of the American Marketing Association, the Association for Consumer Research and the Society for Consumer Psychology.
Roehm earned both her bachelor’s (1990) and master’s (1991) degrees in communications from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned her Ph.D. in marketing from Northwestern University (1997).
Roehm’s anticipated start date is July 1. Interim Dean of the Freeman College of Management Cindy Guthrie will continue in the role until then.
