MELISSA L. GRUYS, Ph.D., SPHR, SHRM-SCP
937-609-6201
melissa.lynne.gruys@gmail.com
April 6, 2016
CSU Business Dean Search
R. William Funk & Associates
100 Highland Park Village, Suite 200
Dallas, Texas 75205
Dear Search Committee:
It is with sincere interest that I submit my application for the position of Dean of the Monte Ahuja
College of Business at Cleveland State University. I see a strong fit between the position and my
qualifications and expertise and between the goals and activities of your college and my own
professional and personal values. While I have been happy in my position as a Department Chair
at Wright State University, I am looking to take my career to the next level. Doing so as the Dean
of the Monte Ahuja College of Business, a high quality AACSB accredited program, would be a
privilege. Please refer to my vitae for more complete information, but I will comment here on
how my background and experience match the position’s minimum and preferred qualifications.
Minimum Qualifications:

An appropriate academic or professional terminal degree
I have a Ph.D. in Human Resources and Industrial Relations from the University of Minnesota
(AACSB accredited).

A record of excellence in teaching, service, and scholarship commensurate with
appointment to Full Professor with tenure in one of the college’s departments
I am a Full Professor with a strong record of teaching, service, and scholarship. I am an
enthusiastic, award-winning teacher with more than two decades of teaching experience. My
service record is excellent and I am an accomplished researcher with over 20 peer-reviewed
publications in journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, and
Human Resource Management.

Administrative experience at least at the level of department chair or its equivalent
I have over sixteen years of experience in tenure track and tenured faculty positions at both
Washington State University-Vancouver and at Wright State University. I have been involved in
progressively responsible positions, which have culminated in my current position as a Full
Professor and Chair of the Management and International Business Department in the Raj Soin
College of Business at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. In my role as Chair, I oversee 12
full-time faculty, over 15 adjunct instructors, 2 staff, 4 Graduate Assistants, 5 undergraduate
student workers, and manage a budget of $2.5M.

Demonstrated commitment to:
o Academic excellence, student success and program development
I promote excellence among our faculty and students. I have been involved in many efforts to
support student success (e.g., contacting students who have not graduated, but who are not
registered for classes). I have also helped create new programs in our college and across
disciplines and colleges within the university. For example, our college recently designed and
launched a general business degree at our regional Lake Campus. Through interaction with
alumni, area executives, and community leaders, we identified a strong demand for business
education in that community (about 1.5 hours from our campus) – and this four year degree
program, a major we do not have at the Main Campus, was designed specifically to address that
need. In my role as Chair, I work directly with the Lake Campus administrators and staff to
deliver four core business classes and one additional required class for the major. This program is
only in its infancy, but shows great promise to be highly successful.
o
Shared governance and collaboration
I always pursue a true shared faculty governance approach, seeking the participation, feedback,
and support from faculty, because I want to utilize the expertise and creativity of my talented
faculty colleagues and seek their support in all college efforts. It is my pleasure to collaborate with
faculty, staff, students, and other stakeholders.
o
Diversity in an academic setting
In everything I do, I foster a respect for diversity and work hard to build diversity and
multiculturalism among faculty, staff, and students. In the area of recruiting, over my tenure at
two different institutions, I have served on committees to hire more than 20 faculty, staff, and
administrators. During my time at Wright State, I am proud that we have improved the gender and
racial diversity within our department greatly as we hired ten new faculty members (mainly due to
retirements) – four of whom are female and four who have diverse racial backgrounds. We have
recruited and retained outstanding faculty by being a collegial group who mentors and supports
our colleagues. At the university level, I Co-Chaired a university wide Task Force on GenderBased Violence which resulted in the hiring of a Title IX Coordinator and numerous other
important outcomes and I also worked with the Office of Equity and Inclusion to develop and
facilitate training for all faculty and staff search committees.
o
Development of internal and external relationships and engagement with
stakeholders
I have a strong record of developing relationships with internal and external stakeholders. Within
the institution, through my roles on faculty governance and through extensive service work, I have
created relationships with a wide variety of people across the university. I am using these strong
relationships to help build cross disciplinary programs. For example, I currently serve on a
university-wide Steering Committee to create a cross-disciplinary Master’s program in disaster
preparedness and emergency management which will be housed in the Graduate School.
I have also built meaningful external relationships with our area community partners. One
exemplar of these relationships is our Human Resources (HR) Senior Seminar class, which
matches student teams with local area community partner organizations (public and private,
nonprofit and for-profit) in order for students to provide human resources consulting services. Our
faculty and I have supervised extensive projects for over 30 community partner organizations and
we have provided over 6,000 thousands of hours of consulting in the last four years. We create a
three way partnership between the business community, faculty, and students. Faculty facilitate
having the students learn by doing and at the same time they are able to offer advice and support
to local organizations in their business goals and endeavors - it is truly a win-win situation.
o
Excellence in research
I am an accomplished researcher with over 20 peer-reviewed journal publications. In my role as
Department Chair, I demonstrate my commitment to research by facilitating the hiring of
outstanding faculty, mentoring and providing professional development funding for faculty, and
by co-authoring with colleagues.
Preferred Qualifications:

Extensive leadership experience and demonstrated significant accomplishment in
higher educational institutions, business, government or consulting organizations
I am a proven leader in higher education. I play a key administrative role as Department Chair,
and I have served on a wide variety of critical department, college, and university level
committees and initiatives. For example, at the university level, I have served on Graduate
Council, the Student Affairs Committee, Research Council, Conflict of Interest Committee, and
the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) Steering Committee. I have led strategic planning at the
department and college levels.

A commitment to the values of academic freedom, intellectual pluralism and dissent
The academic environment thrives when academic freedom allows faculty to engage in their
desired research interests and to express their diverse perspectives and views. Intellectual
pluralism and dissent allow for respectful debate of important societal issues in an environment
that respects differing viewpoints and also respects the people who hold these viewpoints. I value
and promote this type of environment.

An open and collaborative management style and the ability to communicate difficult
decisions with empathy and clarity
My management style is one of collaboration and inclusion and I believe strongly that the way to
successfully collaborate is through communication. I have strong communication skills and my
leadership fosters an environment in which we all work together and we do so through trust,
respect, and communication. This style of leadership has effectively allowed our department to
improve on existing programs and offerings as well as help us move forward with innovative new
initiatives. In my service roles and administrative positions, I have gained experience in
communicating difficult decisions with empathy and clarity.

Ability to be a champion of academic excellence who can mentor, inspire and lead
others to strive for excellence
In my role as Department Chair, I take great pride in encouraging and facilitating excellence in
teaching, scholarship, and service on the part of faculty. All three areas play a critical role in
higher education. The first key to excellence in all three areas is to recruit stellar faculty who are
oriented toward achievement in these areas. Faculty who are enthusiastic about their disciplines
and who are absolutely committed to student engagement and achievement contribute positively to
student retention and success. Once stellar faculty have been recruited, then mentorship and
support for their efforts is what will retain these great employees and encourage excellent
performance in their job tasks. As a Department Chair, I serve as a support and mentor to each
member of our department in different ways: by co-authoring with faculty colleagues, providing
informal and formal feedback on performance and progress toward tenure and promotion, and
facilitating professional development opportunities. We also hold departmental seminars on
teaching and research to promote an environment of professional development. This is the kind of
thriving culture of excellence we have created within our department, and we all benefit from it.

Skills and experience in program development, review and assessment, including
experience assessing faculty teaching, research and service in light of AACSB
accreditation standards
I have been involved in curriculum and program development, review, and assessment efforts my
entire academic career. At Wright State University, I was part of a committee which shepherded
an overhaul of all three of our departmental majors (Management, Human Resources, and
International Business), and the complete semester conversion of those curricula. I have also been
involved extensively in program review, conducting a full review of the three majors and three
minors housed within our department (twice for the Human Resources major).
I am responsible for conducting annual reviews of all of our faculty in the areas of teaching,
research, and service, in accordance with the contracts for our two faculty union contracts and also
AACSB accreditation standards. I have deep knowledge of the 2013 AACSB Accreditation
Standards and experience on AACSB related committees. We just completed our AACSB
Continuous Improvement Review (CIR) visit, and, as a Department Chair, I am responsible for
adhering to Faculty Sufficiency and Deployment (Standard 5) in Participating versus Supporting
faculty roles and Academic Qualification and Engagement (Standard 15), as well as the
corresponding calculations and ratios for each. I have been on the Strategic Planning Committee,
Co-Chaired the Assurance of Learning (AoL) Committee (was responsible for managing all
graduate level assessment), and have served on the Faculty Classification Committee which
developed our faculty qualification definitions. I have attended AACSB conferences and I am
completing the AACSB volunteer training online to become an AACSB visiting team member.

Having a clear understanding of the challenges of business education in an
increasingly competitive and technologically diverse environment as well as success in
enrollment enhancement
A critical challenge for business education is ensuring the currency of programs and anticipating
necessary changes to address the increasingly competitive landscape of higher education. There
always needs to be a spirit and practice of continuous improvement in curriculum design and in
program review and evaluation and it is important to be entrepreneurial and to innovate in
program offerings. Our department has enhanced enrollment - developing some of the most
popular majors, minors, and concentrations in our College. We offer three undergraduate majors,
three minors, and three MBA concentrations, serving over 450 undergraduate majors (34% of
undergraduate business students) and over 155 MBA students (45% of MBA students). I led our
department in creating a new means to serve the business community, while also generating
additional FTE student credit hours through a new Human Resources (HR) Certificate program.
We developed the program in response to a strong demand from area human resource
professionals who desire to gain HR content knowledge and to achieve HR certification and
recertification credit hours. This new program, which serves both current undergraduate students
and also non-degree students from the community, is the first certificate program at Wright State
University to serve non-degree students. Through this kind of program, business schools can
promote workforce development and develop business competencies for our current students, but
also simultaneously serve emerging needs in the broader business community.

Ability to motivate and manage change
I am an effective leader who successfully manages the change process, and motivates and
energizes stakeholders. It is the role of the Dean to help develop a specific vision that unites the
college toward a common objective and then to provide the leadership to move the school
successfully forward with those plans at the operational level.

Ability and desire to raise funds and align resources with strategic goals
In terms of fundraising, at Wright State University, Department Chairs are not involved in
fundraising. However, annually we hold the Campus Scholarship and Innovation Campaign
(CSIC) to solicit donations from faculty, staff, and alumni and I served as the CSIC Chair for our
college for two years. Through my efforts, in two years, the total number of donations was
increased by 71% and the total amount of funds donated were increased by 285%. My success in
this role led me to be invited to be a member of the CSIC Unit Chair Committee, a steering
committee which provides insight to the campus development officers on best practices in
fundraising. While these are some of my first fundraising activities, I enjoy the process and I have
found early success. I look forward to fundraising in my role as Dean and I am excited to partner
with current donors and cultivate new friends and donors for the school. It is always my priority
to align resources with strategic goals. My approach to managing the budget is to look directly at
what will allow us to achieve the mission of our unit and our organization, and then support those
activities directly.

Experience in the development of corporate relationships, economic development and
community service
I interact regularly with our Corporate Advisory Board members and work with many private and
public sector organizations in management and human resources consulting relationships. As the
Chair of my department, I also hire approximately a dozen Adjunct Instructors each term to teach
courses for our department. Our alumni and corporate leaders also serve as guest speakers for our
student clubs and in our classes and we hold events that connect community members with faculty
and students. For example, community human resource professionals annually conduct mock
interviews for all senior HR majors.
It has been my pleasure to outline ways in which my skills match the qualifications of the position.
I am excited about the possibility of working with the faculty, administration, and your
community partners to continue to advance your college. I look forward to exploring further how
I might contribute. Thank you for your consideration and good luck with your search.
Best regards,