Prior to joining Northeastern University as Provost, Dr. Jim Bean served as Senior Vice President and Provost at the University of Oregon from 2008 to2013 and Dean of the Lundquist College of Business from 2004 to2008. Dr. Bean spent 24 years at the University of Michigan, including appointments as the Ford Motor Company Co-director of the Tauber Manufacturing Institute, Associate Dean for Graduate Education and International Programs in the College of Engineering, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. He has earned a master’s degree and PhD from Stanford University in operations research and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Harvey Mudd College. He is Vice-chair of the Board of Trustees at Harvey Mudd College.

Dr. Bean has worked on various industrial projects with companies such as General Cable (production control), Penford Products (production scheduling), Homart Development (divestiture scheduling), General Motors (scheduling and equipment replacement/capacity planning), Michigan Consolidated Gas Company and IBM (equipment replacement), Bethlehem Steel (capacity planning), and Tektronix (forecasting).

Besides his service as a Trustee at Harvey Mudd, Dr. Bean is a former member of the Crest Region Advisory Board for US Bank and the Board of the James Beard Public Market in Portland. He is a former President of the Arts and Business Alliance in Eugene, Oregon. Dr. Bean is a former gubernatorial appointment as an Advisory Member of Oregon Inc., and Presidential Appointee to the Corporation Visiting Committee for Engineering Systems at MIT.

Dr. Bean’s research interests are in genetic algorithms, integer programming and infinite horizon optimization as applied to equipment replacement, capacity expansion, asset management, production, and scheduling. He has been published in Mathematics of Operations Research, Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, Management Science, IIE Transactions, Naval Research Logistics, The Engineering Economist, Interfaces, Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, INFOR, Engineering Design and Automation, Information Processing and Management, and the Journal of Biomechanics. Dr. Bean is Past-President of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, a charter Fellow of the Institute, and 2010 winner of the George E. Kimball Medal.