David Schmittlein, a longtime Wharton faculty member and academic leader who served as interim dean before becoming dean of MIT Sloan, died on March 13, 2025. Dave was a beloved member of the Wharton faculty from 1980 until 2007. He profoundly enriched our community and leaves behind an extraordinary legacy of visionary and collaborative leadership and academic excellence.
Dave was an exceptional scholar, teacher, and administrator at Wharton for more than 25 years. He will be distinctly remembered for his selfless dedication to his students and colleagues and for his leadership, which helped cement Wharton’s preeminence in global business education.
Dave joined the Wharton faculty as assistant professor of marketing in 1980 and was promoted to associate professor in 1983 and to full professor in 1990. He held the Ira A. Lipman Professorship from 1996-2007. A celebrated academic leader, Dave served as vice dean for the doctoral program from 1993-1995, as chair of the marketing department from 1994-2000, and as deputy dean from 2000-2007. In July 2007, he was named Wharton’s Interim Dean after Pat Harker left for the University of Delaware presidency and before Tom Robertson’s arrival.
He departed Wharton in 2007 to take up the deanship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management where he held the John C Head III Deanship from 2007-2024. When he stepped down in 2024 because of health concerns, MIT’s Provost noted that his leadership was “inextricably linked to MIT Sloan’s far-reaching impact, and his contributions [were] too numerous to list…” At MIT, he prioritized creating new high-quality academic programs, such as the Executive MBA, and expanding concept-based learning opportunities through MIT Sloan’s Action Learning Labs.
Dave was a celebrated scholar as well as a beloved teacher, respected commentator, and highly sought-after expert and consultant. His research and teaching focused on the impact of a firm’s marketing actions and he was recognized for his work on designing market and survey research and creating effective communication strategies. He showcased a remarkable commitment to innovation in business education and to advancing collaborations globally, including with schools in China and India, where he held multiple governing and advisory board positions. He served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Marketing and Branding and earned many accolades for his research, editorial work, and teaching.
His many friends and colleagues at Wharton will remember Dave as a humble, collaborative leader who wanted to create positive change to benefit those around him. We also knew him as an incredibly kind, positive, generous, and intelligent colleague and educator. As his academic home for nearly three decades, our Wharton community joins many others around the world in mourning the loss of a giant figure in the academic and business communities.
