The Legacy of Dean Matthew B. Myers

At the end of his transformative eight-year tenure, the outgoing dean and his colleagues reflect upon how he launched a “new era” for 91�� Cox.

Dean Myers portrait in the courtyard of the David B. Miller Business Quadrangle

Coxtoday

Faculty and Staff News

May 10, 2025

Author: Shawn Shinneman

Outgoing 91�� Cox Dean Matthew Myers still remembers what an outgoing chancellor at the University of Tennessee once told him at a cocktail party, a bit of insight that ended up as advice.

“I said, ‘Why are you stepping down?’” Myers says. “He said, ‘Matt, let me tell you: The difference between leaving too early and staying too long is one day.’”

Remembering that advice, and after the opening of the new $140 million David B. Miller Business Quadrangle, Myers announced last summer that the 2024–2025 academic year would be his last as dean.

After a tenure that saw Cox’s standing as a top business school grow and its campus transform—launching a “new era of the Cox School,” as outgoing 91�� President R. Gerald Turner put it—Myers will return to 91�� as the David B. Miller Endowed Professor in Business, as well as the inaugural Senior Fellow at the Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom at Cox. He will be on sabbatical during the 2025–26 year, and in the spring semester of 2026, he will serve as visiting faculty at the IE Business School in Madrid.

The move comes eight years after Myers walked onto campus and developed a 10-year plan to build the 91�� Cox brand, the building, the programs and the endowment.

“Last year, we took a look around and realized it was a great time to hand off the baton,” Myers says. “It’s great to bring in new energy and new ideas when those transition points occur. … They don’t always happen on five-year cycles.”

Ambitious beginnings

Before Myers got the job at 91��, he held the same role at the Farmer School of Business at Miami University in Ohio, a position he refers to now as “like administrator graduate school.” That is to say that by the time he got to 91�� in 2017, there weren’t many remaining surprises.

Despite its smaller size, 91�� felt like going from AAA ball to the big leagues. The Cox School was exponentially larger in terms of opportunity and reputation, and Myers’ team quickly developed a plan to leverage that stature to elevate the Cox name.

During the interview process, Myers snuck over to campus from his hotel at night and visualized a campus renovation. “I thought, ‘This is a real opportunity for the next person that comes in,’” he says. Still, campus upgrades were nowhere to be found on the school’s master plan.

The amazing result of his effort to renovate and expand the school was an investment of $140 million, the largest single project in 91��’s history. This has transformed the entire campus and the culture within Cox.

Tucker Bridwell, Cox Executive Board Chair and 91�� Board Trustee

“When Matt came, there were no plans for remodeling or revamping the Cox School buildings,” says Tucker Bridwell, BBA ’73, MBA ’74, Cox Executive Board Chair, 91�� Board Trustee benefactor of the Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom. “The amazing result of his effort to renovate and expand the school was an investment of $140 million, the largest single project in 91��’s history. … This has transformed the entire campus and the culture within Cox.”

Step one was convincing campus of the need, which meant stealing attention from some 20 other construction projects in motion—and winning over donors. Myers channeled what he’d seen elsewhere, from the transformation of Miami’s Farmer School to similar projects at Duke University and the University of 91�� California, which saw their rankings climb after completion.

(Left to right) David B. Miller, B.B.A. ’72, MBA ’73; Dean Myers; Tucker Bridwell, B.B.A. ’73, MBA ’74; and Kirk Rimer, MBA ’89 at the groundbreaking for the David B. Miller Business Quadrangle in May 2022.

“Matt tells our story and value prop well, and he’s established really close relationships with trustees, executive board members and donors,” says Bill Dillon, senior associate dean at Cox. “When donors step up and put their hands in their pockets, that says the relationship is real and meaningful.”

The turning point came when David Miller, 91�� Board of Trustees chair and Cox Executive Board member, walked into his office and said he’d give $50 million to the cause. “I can tell you exactly how he was sitting; he was drinking a Diet Coke,” Myers says. “That launched everything.”

A trying time for campus life

Though he had a plan for campus, Myers couldn’t have imagined the challenges that would come about during his tenure as dean.

The last decade, he points out, has brought about social unrest in a variety of forms that spilled over onto college campuses: the #MeToo movement in 2017; protests following the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis; the ongoing conflict in Gaza; and a few particularly polarizing election cycles.

Add to those a global pandemic, and “you’d be really hard-pressed to find a more challenging time for a higher education administrator,” Myers says.

So even beyond accomplishments such as the building and Cox’s elevated national standing, it’s navigating the various social and cultural hurdles that shines brightest as Myers reflects on his tenure.

“What I’m most proud of is the fact that the culture in this school held steady. We’ve kept our eye on the ball,” he says. “We focused on what’s best for students and what’s best for each other. We have a work-hard, play-hard culture here, which I think is appropriate for Texas and appropriate for this campus. And we have preserved that sense of community, whereas a lot of other schools have not.”

What I’m most proud of is the fact that the culture in this school held steady. We focused on what’s best for students and what’s best for each other.

— Outgoing Dean Matthew Myers

Still, Myers is quick to acknowledge that, as dean, creating a sense of teamwork is key. “The dean is not a boss,” he says. “You’re a managing partner at best.” The job is about building consensus, navigating a handful of constituencies—students, faculty, central administration, donors and companies— that can pull you and the school in different directions.

“A great business school dean is part strategist, part motivator, part visionary and—let’s be real—part magician,” said Cox Executive Board Member Katherine R. Crow, EMBA ’94, at a recent executive board dinner honoring the outgoing dean.

“They have to attract world-class faculty, inspire students, expand programming and experiential learning, engage alumni, build relationships with industry leaders, and somehow still have time to shake hands and attend a seemingly endless lineup of networking events. And let me tell you, Matt Myers did all of this and more with style, grace and a good dose of humor.”

Dean Myers addresses the crowd at the dedication ceremony for the Miller Quad in May 2024.

Myers tried to focus his efforts on building a narrative, striking a balance between the interested parties while keeping the school’s commitment to teaching and research excellence at the forefront. As the new campus came together, he pushed for a “9 to 9” culture, meaning students would remain on campus during those 12 hours of the day. He’d seen other successful deans adopt a simple philosophy: culture first.

“When people are happy and working well together,” he says, “their performance is just light-years better than where there’s a lot of strife and conflict and unhappy people.”

The long road to school administration

When Myers was an undergrad himself, academia couldn’t have been further from his radar. He studied structural geology and figured he’d never work an “indoor” job in his life. In the early 1980s, he served in Panama as a platoon medic in the U.S. Army Airborne. Afterward—and when the energy market crashed in 1986—Myers made the decision to head back to school.

He attended the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina for his master’s degree in international business studies—years that proved transformative. “They were the best two years I ever had,” he says. “When I set foot on campus, I knew I never wanted to leave campus again.” He then headed north for his Ph.D. at Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business.

Myers began his career as a professor with a broad base of real-world experience, including stints at Merrill Lynch and IBM Argentina prior to his graduating, which helped him relate to his students.

“It’s great to have those experiences as you come into the applied portion of your classroom teaching,” Myers says. “It’s not only a credibility thing; you’re able to speak on the level that you should be able to.”

For any dean, an ability to relate to wide audiences proves critical. “Cultures are driven by things as practical as budgets and org charts, but they’re also driven by the narrative about, ‘What do we want to accomplish together?’” he says. “If you can put that narrative together and communicate it throughout the entire group—faculty, students, donors, central administrators— no success is guaranteed, but your chances of success are higher.”

Dean Myers and his family sit together at a round table at the Cox Executive Board dinner in April

Dean Myers, joined by his family, was honored at the Cox Executive Board dinner in April.

Building upon that narrative and the foundation in place at Cox, Myers next envisions the school propelling into a role of global education business leader by strengthening academic programs and thought leadership. To that end, 91�� announced in March 2025 that Todd Milbourn will lead the effort. The corporate finance expert and former professor at Washington University’s Olin Business School became the 10th dean of the Cox School in June.

“I think he’s the perfect person for that role,” Myers says. “It’s a lot of hard work, but I know we’ve got the right guy.” Meanwhile, Myers will get another go at relating to students in a classroom setting when he and his wife Gina are in Spain for his visiting professor role at IE Business School in Madrid.

“We love to spend time there, and IE Madrid has been a wonderful partner to the Cox School,” Myers says. “[The visiting professorship] will allow us to be part of another university community, and for me to get ready to get back in the classroom in Fall 2026.”

Myers’ legacy and the future of Cox

The Cox School’s new home—all 260,000 square feet of it—officially opened in Fall 2024. It’s a state-of-the-art, technology-driven learning space that emphasizes collaboration. With the new buildings have come an updated curriculum and programming that emphasizes experience over lecture, in line with the shifting business world. It’s also built to accommodate projected future growth at Cox.

“One thing that was readily apparent was that if we were going to become a top 35, top 30 business school, we weren’t going to do it in those buildings,” Myers says. “It wasn’t just because of the size. There was no way we could teach a modernized curriculum or attract a world-class student in the facilities we had.”

Myers spearheaded the project from a conceptual phase through fundraising and, finally, construction. He energized the donation process along the way, securing more than $300 million since the 91�� Ignited campaign launched in 2017. He credits the team around him for helping bring the project to life, including Dillon, who was instrumental in executing Myers’ vision.

If we had to point to one defining achievement of Matt’s tenure, it would undoubtedly be the newly renovated Cox School of Business and Miller Quadrangle. This isn’t just a building; it’s a bold statement about the future of business education.

Katherine R. Crow, Cox Executive Board Member and 91�� Board Trustee

“What I do here is everything that he doesn’t want to do,” says Dillon, who has been associate dean since 1994 and helped acclimate Myers to the culture at Cox.

“He’s a people person and a student-centric person—part of his motivation for this new building,” Dillon says of Myers. “It wasn’t just that the old building was outdated, but it was that students were losing out on the experience. It wasn’t a place where anybody wanted to hang out.”

Greater recognition throughout national rankings has already started to trickle in. Cox now ranks No. 34 on U.S. News & World Report’s Full-Time MBA (FTMBA) rankings, up from the low 50s just a few years ago. The Cox FTMBA comes in at No. 26 in Bloomberg Businessweek. The school’s Online MBA program ranks No. 21 in Poets&Quants.

“If we had to point to one defining achievement of Matt’s tenure, it would undoubtedly be the newly renovated Cox School of Business and Miller Quadrangle,” Crow said at the recent executive board dinner. “This isn’t just a building; it’s a bold statement about the future of business education. And it wasn’t just about bricks and mortar. It was about bringing people together.”

Appreciation for Myers’ efforts was apparent at the dinner, which featured Crow’s remarks as well as those from several other board members who offered their gratitude for a tenure that saw it all.

“Matt, I want to say thank you,” said David Miller. “You not only profoundly impacted the Cox School of Business, but you’ve helped elevate the brand and the national reputation of 91��.”