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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Mitzi Montoya, vice president and university dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Arizona State University, has been named the Sara Hart Kimball Dean of the College of Business at Oregon State University.

Montoya begins her new duties on Aug. 31. She succeeds Ilene Kleinsorge, who announced her retirement earlier this year after 12 years as dean.

As dean at OSU, Montoya will oversee a growing College of Business that has 3,900 students seeking business majors, 850 students with business and entrepreneurship minors, and more than 800 design students. The college just moved into its new headquarters - the 100,000-square-foot, $55 million Austin Hall, which opened last year.

In her position at Arizona State, Montoya has been responsible for advancing entrepreneurship and innovative collaborative initiatives across the ASU campuses. She also has been dean of the College of Technology & Innovation there, and vice provost of the ASU Polytechnic campus.

"We are very excited about Mitzi joining OSU - her candidacy generated a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and excitement across the campus community, and I am thrilled that she will join our leadership team," said Sabah Randhawa, Oregon State's provost and executive vice president.

"She has a background that dovetails nicely with the strengths of OSU's College of Business - including entrepreneurship and innovation - and she also has the vision and experience to help the college grow in other areas," Randhawa added. "The college is seeking to expand its graduate programs and work more collaboratively with other units on campus, and with private, public and non-profit organizations."

"She also has done a lot of work in the aerospace industry and with clean energy - two initiatives that Oregon State University has become deeply involved with in recent years."

Montoya established the Aerospace & Defense Research Collaboratory in Arizona, a statewide platform for collaboration across the aerospace and defense supply chain and research institutions.  She also has been leading ASU's global training program for clean energy, sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Montoya is a professor in the Management Department of ASU's W.P. Carey School of Business. Before coming to ASU, she worked for 15 years at North Carolina State University, where she held the Zeinak Chair in Marketing and Innovation in the Poole College of Management. She also founded and led the Innovation Lab, a collaborative effort between different NC State colleges and private industry.

An international scholar, Montoya has taught courses on innovation and marketing strategy - at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels - in Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, England, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Panama, Russia, Switzerland and the United States.

Her research has focused on innovation processes and strategies, and the role of technology in team decision-making. She has received research funding from numerous institutions, including the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Education, USAID, the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation and others.

Montoya has a bachelor's of science degree in applied engineering science, and a Ph.D. in marketing and statistics - both from Michigan State University.