Steven C. Currall

Professor Steve C. Currall was named the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Southern Methodist University effective January 1, 2016. He was previously a Special Advisor to the Chancellor, the dean, and Professor in the Graduate School of Management, University Of California, Davis 2009-2014.

Early life

Currall earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University, M.S. from the London School of Economics, and B.A. from Baylor University. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business.

Education

• Ph.D., Organizational Behavior Cornell University | Ithaca, N.Y.
• M.Sc., Social Psychology London School of Economics and Political Science
• B.A., Psychology Baylor University | Waco, Tex.

Career

Steve Currall was named the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Southern Methodist University effective January 1, 2016. He was previously a Special Advisor to the Chancellor, the dean, and Professor in the Graduate School of Management, University Of California, Davis 2009-2014. As a behavioral scientist, he has conducted research and taught for over 20 years on organizational psychology topics such as innovation, emerging technologies, negotiation, and corporate governance.

At the invitation of the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Currall was a member of the Nanotechnology Technical Advisory Group. He has been a grantee on $18.5 million in external funding, of which over 75% came from refereed research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). He was principal investigator of an NSF-funded study of technology innovation in 22 NSF-funded engineering research centers in the United States.

Currall has held a range of administrative and faculty positions. In addition to positions in schools of management, he has served in engineering schools as vice dean, department chair, and endowed chair holder; he has also held faculty appointments in a Department of Psychology and in a Department of Statistics.

He has served as a member of the boards of the ten-campus University of California Global Health Institute, BioHouston (interim Vice Chair; Executive Committee; chair of Governance Committee), Leadership in Medicine, Inc., Nanotechnology Foundation of Texas, and Interferometrics, Inc. a venture-funded medical device start-up. He is co-leader of the University of California’s Summer Institute for Emerging Managers and Leaders, a university system-wide program to educate under-represented minority undergraduate students and position them for graduate education. He has been quoted over 475 times in publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Economist (UK), Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Business Week magazine, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television and the Nightly Business Report.

Currall’s research has been published in management, psychology, and science/engineering academic journals such as Organization Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Personnel Psychology, Journal of International Business Studies, and Nature Nanotechnology among others. Currall has served as a member of the editorial review boards of Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Academy of Management Perspectives, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Group and Organization Management. He is a Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Trust Research.

He was formerly Vice Dean of Enterprise and Professor of Management Science and Innovation in the Faculty of Engineering Sciences at University College London (UCL). He was Visiting Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Entrepreneurship and Faculty Co-Director of the Institute of Technology at London Business School. At UCL, he was founding Chair of the Department of Management Science and Innovation. Currall was the William and Stephanie Sick Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Brown School of Engineering at Rice University and tenured Associate Professor of Management, Psychology, and Statistics in the Jones Graduate School of Management. In 2003, he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

He was Founding Director of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, which is a Rice University education and research center that is a partnership of the Schools of Engineering, Management and Natural Sciences. During Currall’s five-year tenure leading the Alliance, it assisted in the launch of over 160 technology start-up companies, which raised in excess of $300 mil. in equity capital. The Alliance attracted more than $4.5 mil. in external funding. Currall also founded the Rice University Business Plan Competition, which involved the largest number of competing universities (36) and richest prize money ($325,000) of any graduate student business plan competition in the world. Currall received Stanford University’s Price Foundation Innovative Entrepreneurship Educator Award, Ernst & Young’s regional Entrepreneur of the Year Award®, and the Grand Velocity Award for Academic Entrepreneurship, Indiana University. He has advised organizations such as Schlumberger, BMC Software, BP, Shell, and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. He earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University, a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics (as a Rotary International Scholar), and a B.A. (cum laude) from Baylor University.

Currall currently serves on the board of the Bay Area Council and the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance, a non-profit organization founded to foster high tech entrepreneurial growth and attract investment capital to the greater Sacramento region.

Awards

• Grand Velocity Award for Academic Entrepreneurship, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2006.
• Entrepreneur of the Year Award®, Ernst & Young’s regional Supporter of Entrepreneurship category, 2005.
• Price Foundation Innovative Entrepreneurship Educator Award, Stanford University Technology Ventures Program (School of Engineering), 2004.
• Vocational Leadership Award for facilitating collaboration between the academic and business communities, Rotary Club of West University Place, Tex., 2003.
• Best Theory Paper, International Association of Conflict Management, 2002.
• Best Paper, Institute of Behavioral and Applied Management, Organizational Behavior/Organizational Theory/Organizational Development Divisions, 2002.
• Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize Finalist, Rice University, 1999, 1995.
• Listed in Rice University’s Jones Graduate School’s “Outstanding Faculty,” Business Week’s Guide to Best Business Schools (5th edition), 1997.
• Halliburton Foundation Award of Excellence for professionalism in education, research and service to students, Jones Graduate School, Rice University, 1995.
• Best Dissertation Competition Selection, Industrial Relations Research Association, 1992.
• Graduate Fellowship, Cornell University, 1989.
• Rotary International Fellowship, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1984–85.
• Omicron Delta Kappa, Psi Chi.

• SMU in Dallas. "Distinguished academic leader Steven Currall joins SMU as Provost, Vice President for Academic Affairs". SMU. Retrieved December 10, 2015.