UA promotes Eller department head to dean

The University of Arizona has named Paulo Goes, head of the Department of Management Information Systems in the Eller College of Management, the new dean of Eller starting in March.

Goes, who was selected after a yearlong national search, joined the UA in 2008 as the the Salter Distinguished Professor in Management and Technology.

UA President Ann Weaver Hart said Goes is “a wonderful scholar” and credited his leadership for helping to build the MIS department into “an international powerhouse.”

As dean, Goes, 59, will receive an annual salary of $411,000, the UA said.

“As a leader and as a faculty member, he is deeply attuned to the needs of business, and his unique perspective will see the Eller College achieve new heights of excellence and impact,” Hart said in a news release.

The UA’s Department of Management Information Systems, or MIS, is ranked the No. 2 public undergraduate and No. 1 public graduate program in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report.

The school has generated more than $85 million in grant funding, helping to make Eller a top business school for externally funded research, the UA said.

“The MIS program was already highly ranked. We expanded its reach, its academics and programs,” Goes said.

Under Goes, the UA said, the MIS department increased its enrollment through the expansion of its top-ranked master’s degree program, launched an online MIS master’s degree program and created a donor-funded program aimed at attracting and retaining undergraduate students.

Goes also co-founded INSITE, a research center focused on big-data analytics projects for clients in health care and other industries, and raised funds for a major technology upgrade that transformed lab and teaching spaces for Eller graduate students.

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Goes said management information systems — essentially the study of computer data systems used to manage organizations — cuts across many disciplines both in academics and the business world.

“In today’s world, the technology is what drives the strategy of the business — MIS is about how business and technology go together,” he said.

“These days, it’s a lot about data analytics, which drives the strategy and the decisions. ... It’s the heart of business in the 21st century.”

Goes said the MIS program’s core competencies — big-data anlaytics and cybersecurity — are in increasing demand.

The UA program already has spun off some commercial success stories.

Knowledge Computing, a maker of software used by law-enforcement agencies, was founded by a UA professor and later merged with a company called i2, which was bought by IBM for $500 million in 2011.

Goes said health care and the biosciences are another big-data focus for management information systems and for Eller as a whole.

He cited the iPlant Collaborative, an ongoing, $50 million National Science Foundation initiative to develop a cyber infrastructure for biological and agricultural research, co-led by the UA.

Goes said he looks forward to working with Tech Launch Arizona, the UA’s technology commercialization arm, to develop new technologies for the marketplace. Prior to joining the UA, Goes spent five years as a professor of information technology and innovation at the University of Connecticut.

Goes, a Brazilian-born U.S. citizen, came to the U.S. in 1985 to attend graduate school at the University of Rochester in New York, earning a master’s degree in operations research and a Ph.D. in computers and information systems.