Rev. Aloysius P. Kelley, S.J., president of Fairfield University, has announced that Arjun Chaudhuri, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Marketing Department, will be the first person to hold the newly created Rev. Thomas R. Fitzgerald, S.J., Chair in Marketing in the Charles F. Dolan School of Business. An installation ceremony will take place on Monday, May 3, at 4:30 p.m. in the dining room of the School of Business.

The chair has been named for Fr. Fitzgerald, the sixth president of Fairfield University, who oversaw the creation of the School of Business, and the construction of the Student Recreational Complex and the Center for Financial Studies, which has since become the home of the School of Business. The new position has been endowed with funding from a $25 million gift made by Charles F. and Helen Dolan in 2000.

"Dr. Chaudhuri has distinguished himself as a scholar, teacher and a department chair. Under his inspired leadership the Marketing Department at Fairfield University has graduated more Marketing majors than ever before," said Norman Solomon, Ph.D., dean of the Dolan School of Business. "His own classes are highly sought after by graduate and undergraduate students alike."

Dr. Chaudhuri has served as chair of the Marketing Department since 2001. Under his guidance the department has enhanced both its undergraduate and graduate curriculum, adding two concentrations to the undergraduate degree and a number of classes to the graduate requirements. Dr. Chaudhuri joined the University in 1991 as an instructor of marketing.

Prior to that, Dr. Chaudhuri had worked as an assistant professor of marketing at King's College and then Eastern Connecticut State University, as well as a visiting instructor and graduate assistant at the University of Connecticut.

Dr. Chaudhuri received his bachelor's and first master's degree, both in English, from Calcutta University in India. He went on to earn a second master's, this time in Communication Science, from the University of Connecticut, where he went on to get his Ph.D. in that field in 1992.

Dr. Chaudhuri has been studying the role of emotional communication in advertising and marketing and the relationships between psychological responses and marketing phenomena, for more than a decade. In April 2001, he reached a pinnacle in his field when he co-authored an article published in the Journal of Marketing, a leading, peer-reviewed publication with a circulation of more than 20,000. Dr. Chaudhuri has written and co-authored a number of other articles, which have been published in several journals, including Human Communication Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Zeitschrift fuer Sozialpsychologie, International Journal of Research in Marketing and others. Dr. Chaudhuri has frequently won best paper awards and nominations at leading conferences.

"Dr. Chaudhuri's path breaking research in the areas of branding and the role of emotions in branding have brought international acclaim and recognition to himself and to the Dolan School of Business," Dr. Solomon said. "We are indeed fortunate to have a faculty member of Dr. Chaudhuri's caliber."

Dr. Chaudhuri said he enjoys working at Fairfield University and looks forward to continued successes in the marketing department - particularly in growing the graduate program.

"Fairfield allows me the freedom to do the research that interests me, and I am deeply grateful for this recognition," Dr. Chaudhuri said.

Fr. Thomas R. Fitzgerald, S.J., was born in 1922 in Washington, D.C. A graduate of St. Paul's Parochial School and Gonzaga High School, he studied at Georgetown University from 1938-1939, when he entered the Society of Jesus novitiate at Wernersville, Pa. Fr. Fitzgerald received his B.A. in 1945 and an M.A. in 1948 from Woodstock College. Ordained a priest in 1952 in Belgium, he went on to earn his Ph.D. in Classical Languages from the University of Chicago in 1957.

Prior to joining Fairfield University, Fr. Fitzgerald taught at St. Joseph's Preparatory School, the Wernersville novitiate, Fordham University and Georgetown University, where he was made the academic vice president in 1966.

Fr. Fitzgerald served as president of Fairfield University from 1973 through 1979, overseeing the construction of the Student Recreational Complex and the Center for Financial Studies, which has since become the home of the Dolan School of Business. He also directed the creation of the School of Business in 1978, which had been the Department of Business Administration for 31 years within the College of Arts and Sciences. The new school, approved in the fall, offered majors in accounting, finance, management and marketing. Fr. Fitzgerald felt his successes in growing the University were the result of careful planning and he envisioned even more milestones for Fairfield that would come to pass after his departure, including another academic building and a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. "The planners of the late 1940's and early '50's could not have seen exactly what would happen here," he said in a 1979 Fairfield Now article. "But what we have at the University today is, in some ways, a great fulfillment of their dreams and aspirations." Fr. Fitzgerald, who went on to serve as president of St. Louis University and then Rector of the Jesuit community at Loyola College in Maryland, passed away in late March 2004.

Mr. Dolan is a trustee of the University and founder and chairman of Cablevision Systems Corporation. He and his wife, Helen, are the parents of two Fairfield University graduates, and will be given honorary alumni degrees at this year's Fairfield Awards Dinner, in recognition of their years of service to the University.

Posted On: 04-05-2004 10:04 AM

Volume: 36 Number: 231