As an innovator, entrepreneur, business owner, health care executive, university dean and educator, David R. Klock, Ph.D., has succeeded in almost every endeavor that he has undertaken. His only failure? Retirement.“It’s true, I flunked retirement,” laughed Dr. Klock, who was appointed dean of Florida International University’s (FIU) College of Business and Ryder Eminent Scholar in Business this past July. He began his new position on October 1, succeeding Joyce J. Elam, who is continuing her role as dean of University College.
Klock comes from the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where he served as dean of its School of Business and the university’s Wells Fargo Chair of Business Administration. He was previously dean at the College of Business Administration at Cal Poly Pomona, and professor and chair of the Department of Finance at the University of Central Florida. He also has held faculty positions at Virginia Tech, University of Florida and Texas Tech.
A successful CEO as well, Dr. Klock and his wife, Phyllis, helped to build CompBenefits Corp. from the ground up, taking it from a one-employee provider of dental and vision care products and services in 1990 to a $360 million company that was sold to Humana in 2006.
An entrepreneur at heart, Dr. Klock understands the importance of education in laying the groundwork for success. “My father was a milkman out of Boston, and I was a first-generation college student,” he explained. “A lot of the students here at FIU are first generation as well.”
In addition to being able to provide a wealth of new opportunities to these students, Dr. Klock was attracted to FIU for its innovative approach to cross-disciplinary education. “As one of the largest business colleges in the country, FIU is focused on health care, entrepreneurship and international/global studies,” he explained. “They understand that all of these things are interconnected—these broad-based themes impact all curriculums.
“This connection between entrepreneurship, health care and international relations was a big draw for me,” he added. “FIU is an extremely entrepreneurial university and its growth has been staggering—there are more than 50,000 students now, including 9,000 students in its extremely successful College of Business.”
At the University of Alabama-Birmingham, Dr. Klock worked to create these same types of symbiotic relationships. “UAB has an extremely large academic medical center that did $500 million in sponsored research last year,” he explained. “Before I became dean of their School of Business, it was not that involved in the health care sector; during my time there, the school got very engaged with other schools across the campus and in the health care community.”
One result of this was the creation of the Healthcare Leadership Academy in 2008, which provides training in leadership and management skills to physicians, nurses and others in the health care field. The Healthcare Leadership Academy includes classroom sessions, off-site team projects and experiential learning activities designed to identify and strengthen leadership skills and capabilities.
“In the five years that I was at UAB, I accomplished what I was asked to do, so when the opportunity presented itself to come to FIU, I got very excited about taking on a new challenge,” explained Dr. Klock. “My wife and I have had a home in Winter Park, FL, for 32 years and our son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren are in Florida. We’d also spent a lot of time in Miami when we were purchasing an oral health services company here for CompBenefits, and we just fell in love with the area. It’s a great community—it’s entrepreneurial, diverse and a culturally and economically exciting place.”
While one of Dr. Klock’s goals is to promote the commercialization of health-related intellectual property, he and the college are looking at the bigger picture as well. “It’s important to understand that health care is more than just health care – it’s health. It’s a great industry but it is also a genuine social concern,” he explained. “An awful lot of people in Florida need better health care, and we need to explore how to provide these services cost efficiently.
“We need to create viable business entities that survive and prosper in order to diversify the economic base,” he added. “There is a correlation between improved economic performance and better health care—when you lift up the economy, you also lift up health care. And the fact that we will be developing young people as change agents for the better is a pretty special mission.”
