Kenneth Anderson admits that there’s no way he ever would have believed he’d one day become dean of the Gonzaga University School of Business Administration.

“A professor in the business school, sure, but the whole dean thing … no,” Anderson says emphatically before erupting with laughter.

Gonzaga appointed the 57-year-old Anderson to lead the business school in April after he’d served nearly 2 1/2 years as interim dean. He was named to the temporary post in January 2014, replacing Clarence H. “Bud” Barnes, who retired from the position and is now an economics professor and dean emeritus.

Anderson’s hiring followed a national search. He worked as associate dean for the business school from 2008 to 2013. Now in his 30th year at Gonzaga, Anderson has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in management, strategic management, and human resource management. He also served as acting dean in fall semester 2012.

“Dr. Anderson brings an energetic commitment to advancing the quality of the school’s undergraduate and graduate programs, expanding student and faculty engagement in the local community and beyond,” said Gonzaga’s academic vice president Patricia O’Connell Killen in a press release at the time Anderson was named.

“He also brings intimate knowledge of Gonzaga’s School of Business Administration and the wider university,” O’Connell Killen said.

The 6-foot, 6-inch Anderson arrived at the Gonzaga campus after being recruited by former men’s basketball coach Dan Fitzgerald. Anderson, whose hometown is San Pedro, Calif., played two years at Los Angeles Harbor Junior College. Anderson then committed to play for Gonzaga for the 1979-80 and 1980-81 seasons.

Anderson earned both his bachelor’s of administration and MBA from Gonzaga. He earned his doctorate in management from the University of Nebraska and returned to Gonzaga in 1986 as an assistant professor of management. He was promoted to associate professor in 1991 before being promoted again to professor of management in 2000.

Anderson says he wants to continue the process of helping the university’s business school to grow.

“We’re on the rise over the last three to five years,” Anderson says of the business school’s enrollment.

Gonzaga’s business school had 1,246 undergraduate students and 175 graduate students for the 2015-16 academic year. That compares with 1,145 undergraduate students and 175 graduate students for the 2010-11 academic year.

“The undergraduate numbers are specifically attributable to the fact that not only the business school, but the university as a whole, is now seen by more people—students, or the people who may be paying for the students—as a destination place,” Anderson says.

However, while the MBA program saw a slight increase in enrollment figures last year, Anderson says graduate school numbers have remained steady in recent years, in part due to the growing numbers of MBA programs online and the increased perception that an MBA may not be as important as it once was, he says.

“It’s part of a nationwide trend,” Anderson says of enrollment decreases in MBA programs. “Enrollments just aren’t where they were a decade ago because there’s a question of the value of the MBA. We’ve been able to buck that trend a bit, but it’s still a challenge. That’s an area that the business school has been aggressively working on.”

In the short term, three to five years from now, Anderson says he wants Gonzaga to be in the conversation as ranking among the best Jesuit business schools “in the world.”

Job placement after college, the ability to secure internships while in school, study-abroad programs, and success at competitions such as DECA will determine whether or not Gonzaga’s business school will be part of that conversation, he says.

U.S. News & World Report this year ranked Gonzaga’s undergraduate business school the 93rd best program in the U.S. and its MBA program the 78th best in the country. Additionally, Gonzaga’s finance concentration in the MBA program was ranked 18th best in the U.S for specialty finance programs.

USA Today assigned Gonzaga’s business school even more lofty rankings last year, listing it among the top 10 schools to study business.

Anderson says the business school has been active in not only building relationships with the Spokane-area business community in recent years but with other departments on GU’s campus as well.

“The ivory tower is broken; it’s gone,” Anderson says. “We can’t be isolated if we’re going to progress and move forward.”

Anderson specifically cites the University of Phoenix and TED Talks as a business and organization that have made inroads in capturing business school students away from traditional colleges and universities. TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short discussions and talks.

Meanwhile, the University of Phoenix, which features most of its course study online, says on its website, “We focus on what’s relevant in the job marketplace.”

Says Anderson, “They have forced us to be more connected to the local business and nonprofit community. Our faculty and staff are now going out and discovering how the real world does it.”

Anderson then points to the discipline of digital marketing, something that many, if not most, Gonzaga business school professors aren’t familiar with.

“A lot of our professors weren’t raised in digital marketing, so we’ve got to learn that by bringing the expertise in,” he says. “We’ll never be current, let alone cutting edge, if we don’t.”

Additionally, Anderson says the deans of different academic departments at Gonzaga have recently been involved in initiatives designed to create more cross-campus interactions with each other.

For example, some business school professors with an interest in the medical profession have been working with professors in Gonzaga’s School of Nursing and Human Physiology to get a better understanding of the economics involved in the health care industry, Anderson says.

“Ultimately we want to help our students become a better candidate for employment,” he says.

Gonzaga’s business school has existing partnerships with the Spokane YMCA, Second Harvest Food Bank, and the Evergreen Club, to name a few, where students can secure internships for experience.

“Nonprofits are a valuable resource for our students, and vice versa, because they are typically underfunded, understaffed and everybody’s got projects they need help with,” Anderson says.

“It’s learning by doing,” he says. “If we can do these things we can be doing right by the community and students,” he says.