Richard E. Sorensen

Dean, Pamplin College of Business

Richard E. Sorensen

Phone: 540-231-6601

Fax: 540-231-4487

Office: Pamplin 1030

Education:

• B.S. Electrical Engineering, Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute
• MBA, NYU Stern School of Business
• Ph.D., NYU Stern School of Business

Biography

Before being appointed dean and professor of management science (now business information technology) at Virginia Tech in July 1982, Sorensen was dean of Appalachian State University's John A. Walker College of Business for nine years. During his tenure there, the college received AACSB accreditation.

Sorensen served as managing director of the Virginia Tech Business Technology Center, founding director of the Virginia Tech Center for Leadership Studies, and a founding director of the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. He chairs the master of information technology advisory committee and the Virginia Tech Council of College Deans and serves on the Virginia Business Editorial Advisory Board.

Sorensen recently served as chair of AACSB International. He currently chairs the Blue Ribbon Committee on Accreditation Quality and previously chaired the doctoral faculty shortage working group. He has chaired the AACSB's accreditation coordinating committee, accreditation quality committee, business accreditation committee, committee on issues in management education, executive committee, and nominating committee and served on numerous other committees. He recently served as chair of the Global Foundation for Management Education.

A former director of Brad Ragan, Inc. of Charlotte, N.C., Sorensen chaired the company's corporate audit committee. He chaired the board of directors of Plastic Packaging Inc. of Hickory, N.C. He has been a consultant to a number of other corporations, including Schuelke Laser Services, IBM, Riegel Textile, Vermont American, and Lucent Technologies.

Appointed by the Comptroller General of the United States, Sorensen serves on the Government Accountability Office educators' advisory panel. He has been appointed to various government committees and task forces dealing with issues affecting the state of Virginia. He has received a number of awards for community service.

His work has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Supervision magazine, Proceedings of the Conference on the Implementation of OR/MS Models at the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business, and Proceedings of the Conference on the Implementation of Computer-Based Decision Aids at MIT's Sloan School of Management. He is a contributing author to Implementing Operations Research Management Science.

Sorensen served as an airborne-ranger qualified officer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Vietnam, where he received the Bronze Star and the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross.