Rebecca Porterfield, currently graduate associate dean of University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Cameron School of Business, has been named dean of the Haile/US Bank College of Business at the Northern Kentucky University, according to an announcement Wednesday by NKU.
The university’s news release stated that Porterfield would begin her new position July 1.
In her tenure at UNCW, Porterfield has held a number of positions. She has been the university’s associate vice chancellor of academic affairs and has also served as the associate dean, department chair and MBA director in the Cameron School, according to her profile on the university’s website. She has also directed the school’s international programs.
Porterfield is the second key leader leaving the business school. On Feb. 27, Louisiana State University Shreveport announced that Cameron School dean Larry Clark would become its next chancellor. Clark will leave UNCW in time to begin his duties at the Louisiana university July 1.
At NKU - located in Highland Heights, Ky., a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio - Porterfield will lead a college of four departments: accounting, finance and business law; construction management; management; and marketing, economics and sports business. The college has an enrollment of 1,900 undergraduate majors and 214 graduate students, and a faculty of 70.
The Haile/US Bank College of Business offers bachelor’s degrees in 10 academic areas, including entrepreneurship, sports business and construction management. Master’s degrees are offered in business administration, accountancy and executive leadership and organizational change, according to the release.
“We look forward to having Rebecca lead our college of business,” Sue Ott Rowlands, NKU provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said in the release. “She brings expertise and leadership that will help us to build upon the strengths of our excellent academic programs and to achieve our vision of transdisciplinary education at every level and across the university.”
Like UNCW’s Cameron School, the college is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International.
Prior to joining UNCW, Porterfield was a professor of management at Hofstra University and Mississippi State University. She spent more than 15 years in the private sector as a senior financial analyst and as a small business technical development consultant, the profile stated.
Porterfield earned a B.S. in Management and an MBA in Management from Mississippi State University, a Ph.D. in Industrial Management from Clemson University, and a Management and Leadership in Education (MLE) certificate from Harvard University.
Porterfield did not immediately return requests for comment Friday.
