Katz

Harry Charles Katz, the Jack Sheinkman Professor of Collective Bargaining and director of the Institute of Collective Bargaining at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), has been named dean of the school, Cornell President Jeffrey S. Lehman has announced. Katz's five-year term as dean begins July 1. In making the announcement, Lehman also charged Provost Biddy Martin with conducting, in consultation with Katz, an external review of the school's programs and activities in light of issues that emerged in the process of the dean search.

"Harry Katz has long been recognized as a leading light of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. A distinguished scholar who appreciates the special role the school plays in the larger society, Dean Katz truly understands the soul of ILR," said Lehman.

"Professor Katz is a very distinguished scholar, devoted member of the ILR faculty and a generous university citizen. His leadership will be critical to enabling the school and the university to meet the challenges ahead," added Martin.

"I am honored and look forward to keeping ILR at the forefront of the changes occurring at the workplace due to globalization and other pressures," said Katz.

Katz succeeds Edward J. Lawler, the ILR dean since 1997, who announced in 2004 he would be stepping down effective June 30 of this year.

As dean, Katz will be the chief academic and administrative officer of the ILR School, which has approximately 50 resident faculty members and more than 800 undergraduates and 200 graduate students. In addition, more than 50 extension faculty members annually serve more than 30,000 workers, managers, union officials and government and labor relations professionals throughout the state of New York and beyond. The dean oversees the school's programs of teaching, research, extension and outreach; has responsibility for internal administration of the school and its relationship to the university; and plays a key leadership role with alumni, as well as with both labor and management leaders in New York state and throughout the nation.

Katz, whose major fields of interest are industrial relations and labor economics, joined Cornell in 1985 as an associate professor in the ILR School and in 1989 was named director of Cornell's Institute of Collective Bargaining. Katz had been a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1977 to 1985. He also was director of the National Telecommunications Research and Policy Consortium from 1993 to 1996. He earned his A.B. degree in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1977, both in economics from the University of California-Berkeley. He has written, co-written or co-edited more than 14 books and numerous articles in his field and is the associate editor of Industrial and Labor Relations Review and a member of the editorial board of Revista Latinoamerica de Estudios del Trabajo.