UMUC Welcomes Monaco as New Dean of Graduate School

By Greg Rosenthal
Special to FYI Online

Salvatore Monaco

Salvatore Monaco, UMUC’s new vice provost and dean of the Graduate School, knows what it’s like to be a nontraditional student. As a U.S. Air Force officer in the 1970s, he pursued a PhD—hardly a traditional path—and broke with tradition again by attending one of the first doctoral programs to combine business and technology.

“That [coursework] helped me think about management in a different way,” said Monaco, whose education included a master’s degree in aerospace engineering. “I felt that business could benefit from a scientific and mathematical approach, and I think it’s important for the dean to have the management and technology perspective.”

After learning to approach business from a scientific perspective, Monaco developed his own approach to education—from a business perspective.

“Particularly at UMUC, we need to act like a business, focus on customers, and serve them well,” he said. “That means thinking strategically about programs and markets and innovating with new programs when necessary.”

Blending business and technology defined Monaco’s success prior to joining UMUC. As director of new product development at Standard & Poor’s, he determined strategies and tactics to improve existing information products and helped develop new ones. He also negotiated strategic partnerships and alliances—another skill he would apply at UMUC.

“We’ve been very innovative in responding to market needs,” he said. “Look at our new graduate programs—e-commerce, biotechnology, teacher education, and information assurance,” he said. “We have to do two things—build a program and then prove its quality.” As examples, he noted UMUC’s National Security Agency certification as a center of excellence, along with UMUC’s numerous national and international awards.

Monaco sees proof of quality in UMUC’s still-new MBA program, which has grown to 1,200 students in just five years. “When I look at the success of our graduates, it’s been transformational, allowing them to get new jobs and new positions,” he said.

Looking to the future, Monaco said he plans to apply UMUC’s business and technology expertise in a three-pronged strategy: increasing growth, building quality programs, and retaining every student who can be successful.

He also wants to leverage UMUC’s intellectual capital, capturing the enthusiasm of the school’s best lecturers via online video, so students from different disciplines can share the same outstanding lectures on cross-curriculum topics such as leadership. Other cross-program initiatives could include a course on survey techniques and methodology.

In addition to building synergies and relationships across departments, Monaco seeks to build more alliances across universities, businesses, and government agencies. And he sees the University becoming a more global institution.

“We will be an international program, world class in content,” he said. “Our programs and curricula must be internationalized and contain real international content, so a student could take a course from us and from other highly regarded universities around the world.”

To meet his goals, Monaco believes an ever-evolving organizational structure is key. “Our structure must meet our strategy, and the structure will look different,” he said. “As UMUC expands and changes, the Graduate School has to change as well.”

Other parts of Monaco’s life are less in flux, such as his marriage of 35 years to his wife, Margaret Anne. They have two sons—David, a program coordinator at Georgetown University, and Daniel, who just graduated from law school in May.

Monaco earned a BSE from Manhattan College in 1967, an MSE from the University of Michigan in 1968, and a PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lally School of Management and Technology in 1974.