Eli Jones has been appointed as the dean of Mays Business School. Jones, the current dean of the Sam M. Walton College of Business and the Sam M. Walton Leadership Chair at the University of Arkansas, will assume his post at Texas A&M on July 1, 2015.
“There’s nothing sweeter than the sound of home,” Jones said in a press release on the Mays website. “My wife and I are excited about returning to Aggieland and becoming an integral part of my alma mater. Texas A&M University and Mays Business School have been on an upward trajectory for some time, and I know that’s definitely a tradition that the talented faculty, dedicated staff and wonderful students want to continue.”
Jones is no stranger to College Station – he earned his bachelor’s in journalism, his MBA and his PhD in marketing at Texas A&M. In 2009, Jones was a recipient of Mays Business School’s Outstanding Doctoral Alumni Award. The late Jeff Conant, former head of the marketing department at Mays, called Jones “one of our most outstanding doctoral students in the mid ’90s.”
Prior to accepting his current appointment at Arkansas, Jones served as dean of the E.J. Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Before that, he was the founding executive director of the Sales Excellence Institute, an associate dean and professor of marketing at the University of Houston, where he worked for 11 years. Now he comes to Mays, a school consistently ranking among the top public business schools in the country for its MBA programs, and for its faculty research.