A New Chapter for Albers Dean

As the dean of the Albers School of Business and Economics for just shy of a quarter century, Joseph Phillips, PhD, saw a lot while leading business education at Seattle University.

An economist by training, Phillips started at SU in July 2001, weeks before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. He saw stock market highs, lows and the corresponding boom and bust cycles of higher education. He witnessed and navigated the absolute penetration of the internet and now social media into society and business. Then came the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the whipsaw back and forth of presidential administrations.

And at the conclusion of this academic year Phillips left his role as dean. But no goodbyes are in order, as Phillips will be returning to the classroom to teach—following a sabbatical—grappling with the newest challenge facing higher education, business and society at large: artificial intelligence.

“I don’t really look back very easily, I probably have rose colored glasses when I do,” he says, adding that while living each day and responding to the needs of students, his time leading the school never felt like a long time. When asked to reflect on his time and sum it all up, only then do the years stand out in their sum total: “Oh yeah, 24 years, that's a pretty long time.” 

For former Albers Associate Dean Madhu Rao, whose time at Seattle University almost perfectly overlapped with Phillips, the impact Phillips had on Albers stands in high relief. There was Albers before Phillips and Albers after. 

Under Phillips, the business school added a host of MBA programs, aimed at meeting students where they are. The changes initiated by Phillips, however, started with establishing processes for advancing within the department, Rao says, a procedural shift toward greater fairness and integrity. Faculty knew the expectations and knew those expectations applied to all, which Rao sees as the hallmarks of Phillips’ time in charge.

“I think his legacy will be how he transformed Albers into a professional, deeply caring, deeply connected business school that produces graduates who make a difference and research that impacts the world,” says Rao, now academic dean of the Anderson College of Business and Computing at Regis University. “His leadership placed Seattle University and Albers at the forefront of Jesuit higher education.” 

When he’s not focused on the world of academics, Phillips is a well-known sports fan—college basketball and football, in particular—and enjoys cycling, hiking and camping. Originally from the Philadelphia area, he lives in the Seward Park neighborhood in South Seattle with his wife, Mary Sebek, a retired dentist, and has two sons and a daughter along with two grandchildren.

Seattle University Magazine recently caught up with Phillips to chat about his time as dean and his thoughts on academia and what makes a Jesuit business education special.

After your final day as dean, which will see you in Bogata, Colombia, at conferences for the International Association of Jesuit Business Schools and the International Association of Jesuit Universities, what are your plans for your year-long sabbatical? 

Phillips: Obviously, I have to get ready to come back and teach. And the biggest challenge there, I think, is figuring out artificial intelligence and teaching. AI was not around the last time I was teaching, which I think was 2011. So, you have this balance of teaching students the tools but also making sure they know how to use them and evaluate them. 

Why step down now?

Phillips: Well, I always said I didn't want to be dean longer than Father Stephen Sundborg was president, so he was here 24 years and I'll be 24 years. And the other thing would be, I always said I would stay until we got in the West Coast Conference and we’re now in the conference.

You earned your BA in economics from LaSalle University and then your MA and PhD from the University of Notre Dame. What led you to economics?

Phillips: I was very interested in public policy at the time and politics. I found economics interesting. And I kind of got into it from that angle. It's only as I got through my PhD program that I decided to go the higher ed route.

You started out your teaching career at Creighton University, rising to associate dean. What led you to pursue higher education?

Phillips: One thing is I liked the independent contractor vibe that you have as a faculty member. You have a lot of autonomy and you have some flexibility. You have summers for research or travel. That appealed to me. Plus, I had done a little teaching and I liked working with students.

When you walked in as an undergrad at LaSalle, what would you have said if someone told you one day you're going to be the dean of a business school?  

Phillips: I don't think I knew what a dean did when I went to LaSalle. I think most students don’t know what a dean does either, to be honest.

What turned for you? What made you want to follow the administrative track?  

Phillips: I established a reputation of being willing to jump in and try to solve a problem or if there's something that I thought needed to fix, I would speak up about it. Then they would turn around and say, ‘Well, good, you're in charge of that committee. Go find out what the solution is.’  

What stands out from your time as dean?

Phillips: Maybe the biggest surprise was when I first got here, I was sure online education was going to take off and it was going to clean our clocks. Well, it didn’t take off as fast as I thought and we’ve figured it out and survived that transition. The Center for Digital Learning and Innovation here at Seattle University has done a great job of constructing courses that really work well for faculty and students. Everything about them exceeded expectations.

Did you think it was going to replace graduate or undergrad or end higher ed as we know it?

Phillips: No, there's always a place for face-to-face, but it would be much diminished. And you can see that that has happened and it’s continuing to happen, but at a much slower pace than I anticipated.

What is distinctive about Jesuit business education?

Phillips: I think there are multiple factors. It’s the focus on the student and supporting the student, not just academically, but in a holistic way. And it’s not just through graduation, but after graduation and seeing what you can do for them for their first step into their professional career.  

Then the other thing that’s distinctive, I think even though everybody else has sort of climbed on board, is the emphasis on ethics and social responsibility.  

And then we’ve always really been fans of experiential education. Now that’s becoming more popular these days and more and more schools are adopting it, but we’ve always valued experiential education for the students.

What do you think the next revolution in business is going to be?

Phillips: I think it’s AI. That goes without saying. It’s going to revolutionize everything, not just how businesses do their work and not just the kinds of products they offer, but it’s going to affect your personal life. It’s like inventing electricity. It’s going to be very much permeated like that.

How does a business school adjust for that?

Phillips: Well, we don’t know. We’re trying, right? I mean, that’s a question we don’t have an answer for. We’re all trying to figure that out and I think there are answers at every level. Answers within individual classes, answers across the program curriculum, answers with respect to the research that faculty do that’s going to be impacted by AI.  

Do you share the anxiety about it or do you see it more as an opportunity?

Phillips: I have to see it as an opportunity. I don't think we have the time and the bandwidth to have anxiety. We just have to dig into it and figure it out.  

It's inevitable too, right?

Phillips: Yeah, it's coming and nothing that you do is going to change it. Some of us are geniuses and we can change what AI can actually accomplish, but most of us are like me. I’m just going to be waiting for those brilliant ideas to come along.