Last month, University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business announced that it was naming an interim Dean while it extended its search for a new permanent dean.

Now, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management is joining Haas in concluding that it apparently won’t have a permanent dean in place by the time its current dean steps down. The school has appointed Kathleen M. Hagerty Interim Dean, effective September 1.

Hagerty is a professor of finance who has been at Kellogg over 30 years. During her time at the school, she has been chair of the finance department, faculty chair of PhD programs and senior associate dean of faculty and research.

Hagerty’s research focuses on topics including security market regulation, insider trading, disclosure regulation, financial market microstructure and derivatives markets. She received an MBA in finance from Berkeley and a PhD in economics from Stanford.

Kellogg’s current dean, Sally Blount, is scheduled to step down on August 31. Blount said that “as a long-time member of the Kellogg faculty, no one knows the school better or has a stronger commitment to our mission than Kathleen.”

Meanwhile, Hagerty said that she was “honored to assume this role and add to the myriad accomplishments of the Kellogg team under Dean Blount’s leadership.”

In appointing an interim dean, Kellogg is only the latest top business school to extend its search for a permanent dean. In fact, as Poets & Quants notes, Kellogg is one of four prominent B-schools on the search for a dean this year and the fourth of those schools to name an interim dean.

With Hagerty in place as interim dean, Kellogg continues its search for a permanent dean. Provost Jonathan Holloway said the school remains “committed to finding the best leadership fit and a world-class dean to build on Kellogg’s strong foundation.”

Once the school does conclude its search, it says that Hagerty will join the Office of the Provost as associate provost for faculty. Until then, Holloway expects that Hagerty “will provide a seamless transition when Dean Blount steps down later this summer.”

For applicants, then, the appointment of an interim dean doesn’t necessarily change the calculus of whether Kellogg is an attractive MBA program.

Still, the lack of a permanent dean always adds a little uncertainty about a school’s future trajectory and priorities. If you’re wondering how Kellogg fits with your profile as an applicant or how your application will stack up in the eyes of the adcom, contact us for a free assessment!