When Dene (pronounced “Dean”) T. Hurley, Ph.D., became dean of Lehman College’s School of Business – its sixth and newest school – on July 1, 2022, she got the predictable joking academic response: “What are we going to call you, Dean squared?”
In a sense, however, Hurley – or Dean Dene – is a dean to the power of two, an economist with an eye on both macro- and microeconomics and an administrator with a finger on the pulse of corporate America’s and students’ differing perspectives on the workforce.
The former chair of Lehman’s burgeoning Department of Economics and Business – which was one of the Bronx-based City University of New York (CUNY) college’s largest departments, with more than 1,500 undergraduate and graduate students – Hurley now presides over a school with three departments.
The Accounting department is “very popular,” she said, with Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees. The Management and Business Innovation department includes a Bachelor of Business Administration – “This has the most students,” Hurley added – and a Master of Science in business. The department of Finance, Information Systems and Economics offers a Bachelor of Arts in economics and a Bachelor of Arts in economics and mathematics. “Down the road, there will be a BBA in finance,” she said.
As with universities like Iona in New Rochelle and Bronxville and Mercy in Dobbs Ferry, Lehman College is part of a growing trend in which institutions of higher learning serve as pipelines for various industries.
“Lots of firms come to us, because we are a diverse institution,” Hurley said.
Lehman is a Hispanic-serving college, with 60% of the students identifying as Hispanic and 25% as African American. It is one of three CUNY colleges that participates in Futures in Finance, a program funded by Bloomberg, Centerbridge Partners and Goldman Sachs to prepare students for careers in that sector.
As a whole, the School of Business educates students in the eight competencies established by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) – career and self-development, communication, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, leadership, professionalism, teamwork and technology. As those names imply, coursework is not just in knowing how to use something like the Bloomberg Terminal in the school’s Bloomberg Finance and Business Lab to access real-time global news and data. It’s also about how to think, how to express yourself and how to get along with others.
“The arts and the humanities are the basis for this,” Hurley said of disciplines now under siege across the country not only politically but for being qualitative rather than quantitative. “They are not marketing themselves correctly….Those of us in the business world need them to teach these skills.”
Hurley, who spends time at business conferences and with industry leaders, said that “the one thing they’re looking for is soft skills. They’ve become more important since Covid. But many students don’t know how to communicate with people. A lot of life is knowing how to talk to people.”
The current student population nationwide may be the most technically proficient, inclusive and climate-minded to date, but it is not without its challenges. Covid has fostered a remote approach to school and professional work that dilutes the synergy, creativity and collaboration of in-person experiences, the so-called “watercooler conversations,” Hurley said. Students, more than a third of whom nationwide are first-generation college attendees, may be looking for a return on their parents’ investment or to justify student loan costs. Often, they have unrealistic expectations of the job market, in terms of compensation and the time it takes to establish a career. A $60,000-a-year starting salary isn’t good enough for them, Hurley said. They want to come out of college with a $90,000-a-year job.
“Social media has distorted the way they look at life,” she added. “Everything must be instantaneous….It’s a huge part of what we’re seeing in society.”
What we’re seeing, she said, is a disconnect between what is actually happening in the American economy – with lower inflation and unemployment, 3.09% and 3.7% respectively – and how people view the economy. Part of this is numerical.
“Unemployment doesn’t consider people who have given up looking for jobs,” she said, so unemployment may be higher.
But a large part of how people see the economy – and economics itself – is psychological.
“People feel they don’t have the same standard of living that they did in the past,” Hurley said, a feeling abetted by the reality that it takes time for lower inflation to trickle down to the prices that matter to the average consumer – at the grocery store and at the pump. The U.S. gas price is at $3.37 a gallon, down from $3.49 a year ago. But grocery prices remain stubbornly high, thanks to a combination of the residual effects of Covid and supply-chain problems, labor shortages, avian flu and natural disasters.
Still, there is a difference between needing the economy to improve as soon as possible and wanting everything life has to offer immediately. “Some people,” Hurley said, “don’t know what struggle is.”
In a life that has been spent at home in the world, Hurley has seen both struggle and bounty. She was born and raised in Myanmar (the former Burma), the child of a Scottish father and Burmese mother. At age 10, she and her family left Myanmar, as her father thought it was not the right place for their racially mixed family. His work with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), setting up central banks in various countries, took the family to Gambia, where Hurley went to school and learned English, and Barbados.
Having grown up on three continents, she added a fourth, Europe, when she earned a Bachelor of Science in economics from City, University of London and a Master of Science in development studies from the University of Bath, both in England.
“I wanted an international job where I’d be involved in different cultures,” Hurley said, which led to her work with the Seychelles Islands’ Ministry of Finance.
“To work as an economist internationally, however, you need a Ph.D.,” she added. “That’s how I came to the United States.”
Hurley earned that degree at Northeastern University in Boston, married and carved out a career in the maritime industry and environmental consulting. New roots in the States and two children led the Hartsdale resident to her 25-year career at Lehman, where her research has been focused on international finance and trade, primarily in Asia, as well as on labor market issues concerning gender and Hispanics. She has published in peer-reviewed journals, including Economics Papers, Gender in Management, Applied Economics and Global Economic Review.
Economics has enabled Hurley not only to peer into a crystal ball but to hold up a mirror to human nature – and herself. She said that while we need less fossil fuel, she does not think that a reliance on it will ever disappear entirely as we won’t have the infrastructure for a 100% relationship with alternative energy sources.
On a personal note, she has seen a great deal of entitlement in the world, which makes for unhappiness.
“I do what is the right thing to do and what makes me happy,” she said. “I’d also say, Be grateful for everything. If you have gratitude, then every day is a blessing.”
For more, visit https://www.lehman.edu/academics/business/ .
